She, however, continued to stare at me with tears covering her entire face, making me wish I could punch a hole through the wall.
Chapter 6
Aria
I couldn’t believe what Zayden had been saying and wished I could stop the damn tears from pouring all over my face. The last thing I needed was to show weakness in this situation, yet I felt completely lost in terms of words to produce from my mouth. Scammed. He had said he felt scammed. That I had somehow, unintentionally scammed him!
My gut felt like it was falling low on a downward spiral of a dangerous roller coaster when I had heard him use that word. How could he? In the time we had gotten to know each other, he had most certainly gotten some idea of the kind of person that I was? If not, then this whole relationship itself was a scam. After how much I had insisted that he add the clause about me paying him back to the contract, how dare he question my character.
He had overheard the whole conversation between me and mom, which meant that he knew very damn well that I was completely clueless about this and intended on telling him everything. He found out as soon as I found out.
It was not good enough though! None of it was apparently good enough for him. He had decided what I was doing was my fault even when I wasn’t and demanded payment – literal and figurative – even though he knew the insinuations would hurt me. It wasn’t that I minded the idea of paying his bank the money my dad owed it. After all, if things all went as planned, I was going to be successful in a couple of years and it would only make me feel good to know that I cleared up the mess my dad left behind. This was regardless of whether I had ever found out South National Bank’s involvement. No, the money was not what hurt me so much. It was the fact that he sat there, looking me straight in the eye and asked me to pay him that money as though I had personally stolen it from him.
The fact that he could make me feel so low made me furious!
To think I was coming to believe our relationship had been making progress. Maybe it had. To Zayden’s credit he had gone out of his way to make me feel like our relationship was, at last, real, even going so far as to asking to meet my mom. Obviously, when he had asked for that he wasn’t expecting all these revelations and neither was I. It wasn’t some trick or an effort to make me feel as shitty as I was feeling right now. He was genuinely interested in my life and getting to know my mom.
I tried imagining myself in his place when he overheard the conversation, from the point of view of a guy who had just gone against all his reservations and jumped into a serious relationship with me. After all that he had been doing for me these past few months, a part of me understood why hearing about my dad must have completely ticked him off. His running off last night was completely justified. I would have run out of there myself if I could have, given what I had heard.
I couldn’t run every time things didn’t go the way I wanted to. Perhaps it would take more time to earn Zayden’s complete respect and if I wanted to keep this relationship, I was going to have to be okay with that. As angry as I was, I was not willing to give up what we had built over the past few months. It would be much easier and respectful to just agree to pay him the money that my dad owed.
“Option two,” I spoke after what felt like an eternity, wiping off my tears. “One business-oriented person to another, I will pay you every single penny back. Happy?”
“Far from,” he snapped, somehow looking even angrier for getting what he had wanted. He had expected me to put up a fight, or argue in some way, or most likely of all, walk away. I had thrown him off with my response, undoubtedly, and it felt oddly like the ball was in my court all of the sudden.
“But well, good,” he said, standing up from his chair. “That’s settled then. Is that all you wanted?”
“Are you kicking me out?” I looked at him quizzically, now beginning to feel amused.
“I don’t know, last time I checked, it was still my office.”
“So you are kicking me out?” I pressed, trying not to laugh out loud.
“I have a bank to run, Ar
ia, so if there isn’t anything else you need from me today—”
“My paper,” I cut him off. “Remember the paper I was telling you about? That you so nicely volunteered to help work me on? Well, the deadline for that is coming up, so I was wondering if you were up to helping me out?”
“I seem to be making a career out of helping you out.” He snarled at me trying to look menacing, but simply appeared comical to me.
“I mean you don’t have to help me. I was just reminding you because you volunteered.”
He sat back down and played with his stress ball for a bit before speaking. “We will do it tonight,” he eventually said. “Now for the rest of the day, please just let me be okay?”
“Gladly.” I smiled and walked out of his office.
---
Later that night, I told the whole story to Nick and Stacey, who for some reason found it hilarious and burst into a chorus of laughter.
“Oh my supportive best friends,” I said sarcastically. “It wouldn’t be so funny if you were in my place, would it?”
“No,” Nick said, trying to straighten up his face. “It wouldn’t at all. And it’s not funny that this is happening to you, Aria. Not at all!”
“That’s not the impression one would get based on your uncontrollable laughter,” I snapped.
“It’s just that,” Stacey, who had finally managed to catch a breath, spoke. “What are the odds you know? Very, very low. But then, you’re not going to believe,” she started laughing again. “I can’t, Nick, you tell her.”