Page 3 of Nothing Left
Two. I am enough. I am worthy. I don’t need to constantly prove my right to exist.
Three. She’s just miserable. So she wants me to be miserable, too.
Swallowing down the tightening in my throat, I finally force out enough strength to speak.“I’m sorry, Valeria. I’ll try my best not to embarrass you or your husband.”
If my unpolished nails were any longer, they’d do some serious damage to my palms from how hard I'm clenching my fists.
“Doubt it,” she laughs, shaking her head.“Off you go, go get dressed. Wear black—it’ll hide the fact that you’ve gained a few pounds.”
The minute I finally set foot outside her bedroom, I can actually breathe. Fuck. Valeria is like fire. She’s gorgeous, but she burns. She kills. She sucks all the oxygen out of the room, leaving everyone else gasping for air. What’s the benefit of being beautiful if you suffocate everybody around you?
That, I shall never know.
But when I step into my own room in their massive mansion, the air gets trapped in my throat all over again.
There is a dress laid out across my bed.
My eyes widen to the size of saucers when I realize what it is. It’s vintage Versace. It’s a dress that Valeria would have sold one of her own kidneys for. She talked our ears off about it for a solid week, completely obsessing over it.
But it wasn't gifted to her. Her millionaire husband bought it for me.
My trembling fingers find the small card resting on the fabric, and my heart stops completely as I read Graham's handwriting on the note:
“My dear Maya,’it’ll look better on you in every universe. In every life. And even if a thousand women wore it, you’re the only one who would leave a mark.”
3
Maya
Ihide in a shadowed corner of the ballroom, trying to make myself as invisible as possible.
In my hand is the third wine glass of the evening. I drink it slowly, having absolutely no desire to get intoxicated tonight. Truthfully, I’m only snatching the drinks off the silver trays because I don’t know what else to do with my hands.
Through the corner of my eye, I catch Valeria conversing with a group of wealthy women. Out of all of them, she is source of the room's gravity—undeniably the prettiest—but the sour look pulling at her features completely diminishes her beauty. Suddenly, she looks right at me. I shiver as the cold fire in her eyes projects across the crowded room, threatening to burn me whole. She’s fucking pissed about the dress. She couldn’t show it as much as she wanted with Graham standing right there, but now he's mingled into the crowd, and she is hunting me down to turn me into ash.
I’m not God’s strongest soldier. So, yes. I’m running.
Swapping my empty wine glass for a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, I turn around, desperately searching for an escape route. As subtly as I can, I move toward the double doors leading to the terrace. The entire time, my heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs as I pray she’ll lose sight of me, or get pulled back into a conversation with some bored trophy wife in the crowd.
My luck runs out.
The exact second my heels click onto the tan-colored tiles of the terrace, the air behind me turns freezing. I feel her presence before I even hear her.
She grabs my arm, her manicured fingers digging deep into my flesh as she twirls me around to face her. Her teeth are bared at me, and I just know I’m going to end up with mascara streaks all over my face by the time this interaction is over. The difference between her personality when she’s prowling around her husband’s high-society connections and how she treats me is night and day.
Why can’t I be treated with respect like she treats them?
Why can’t she smile at me like she smiles at them?
Why can I never be enough for her?
“Where the fuck did you get that dress from?” she hisses directly into my face, but simultaneously turns her cheek to the side, pretending to give me affectionate air kisses for anyone watching through the glass.
As always, appearances are what she cares about most. The truth is she hadn’t actually kissed or hugged me since I was thirteen years old.
What the fuck am I supposed to tell her? That her husband left it on my bed as a gift? That he wrote me a note telling me I’d look better than her in it in every single universe? She wouldn’t even believe me anyway. It would sound like a delusion.
“A friend gave it to me as a gift,” I lie straight through my teeth, gripping the champagne flute tighter to keep from fidgeting.
