Chapter 4 No.4

The first thing Arvin did was block Jorja's number.

He didn't do it with anger. He did it with the same detached efficiency he used to file household receipts. It was a simple administrative task. A clean cut.

He then went through his contacts and deleted every number associated with the Romero family. Kallie. The cousins. The family friends. He left only Elizebeth's. The contract was with her. All communication would go through her.

The next day, a text came through from an unknown number. It was a picture.

Jorja and Cale, on a yacht. The sun was setting behind them. Cale was kissing her cheek. Jorja was smiling, her eyes closed in bliss. The text below it read: Isn't this romantic? Wish you were here! ;) - K

It was from Kallie, of course. A final, petty twist of the knife.

Arvin looked at the photo, at the perfect couple against the perfect sunset. He felt a faint tremor in his chest, a ghost of an old pain. But it was distant now, like an echo.

He typed a reply.

Wrong number.

He deleted the picture and blocked the number.

That afternoon, he met with his old mentor, Goldie Buck, the woman who ran the orphanage where he grew up. She was the closest thing he had to a mother.

They sat in her cluttered, sunny office, the smell of old books and lemon tea in the air. He told her everything. The contract. The burn. The cufflinks. Kallie's text.

Goldie listened, her face growing tighter with each word.

"That family," she said, her voice laced with fury. "They used you, Arvin. Elizebeth used your loyalty, and that girl... that girl broke you."

"She didn't break me," Arvin said. "She just showed me the truth."

"And what about Paris?" Goldie asked gently. "The scholarship?"

"It's gone. The five-year deferment is up." He had checked. The opportunity was lost forever.

"No, it's not," Goldie said, a determined glint in her eye. "I never stopped fighting for you. I told the foundation what happened. They were... sympathetic. They've extended the offer, Arvin. It's still there, waiting for you."

The air left Arvin's lungs. Paris. It wasn't a ghost. It was real. It was possible.

That night, he dreamt of Jorja.

In the dream, they were back in the second year of their marriage. She'd had a terrible flu. He had stayed by her bed for three days, changing her cold compresses, spoon-feeding her soup, reading to her until she fell asleep.

In the dream, she woke up and looked at him, her eyes clear. She reached out and touched his face.

"Thank you, Arvin," she whispered. "You take such good care of me."

He woke with a jolt, the phantom sensation of her touch still on his cheek. The memory was so sweet it was agonizing.

He sat up in the dark. It wasn't the cruelty that had destroyed him. It was the hope. The small moments of tenderness, the glimpses of a life that could have been. It was the giving of that hope, only to have it casually, brutally annihilated, that had finally gutted him.

He got out of bed and walked to his desk. He pulled out a stack of documents from the bottom drawer. They were routine business papers for the Romero estate holdings, things Elizebeth occasionally asked him to review. Jorja always signed them without a glance.

He slipped a new document into the middle of the stack. It was a single page. A petition for dissolution of marriage. Simple. Uncontested.

He placed the stack on the corner of the desk where she would see it in the morning.

When Jorja returned from her weekend with Cale, she was in a foul mood. She swept into the house, complaining about the traffic.

She saw a small, dusty box of his old art supplies on a hallway table, waiting to be moved to his new, small apartment.

"What is this junk?" she asked, nudging it with her foot. "Get rid of it. It's cluttering up the hall."

Junk. His past. His future. All junk to her.

"I will," Arvin said.

It was the final confirmation he needed. She saw no value in him, in his life, in his art. To her, he was just part of the clutter.

And he was done being clutter.