Regret16 min read
“Sign It, Then Watch Me Go”
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"I knocked and the sound bounced off the wood."
I hear the scrape of his pen before he answers.
"You already looked at it?" I say.
He doesn't look up. Bennett Vasseur flips the last page, sets the pen down, and reaches for the paper like it's another file.
"I don't need to read it to sign," he says. His voice is flat. "Give it here."
I take a step forward, the suitcase zipper open. Clothes spill out on the floor like a careless life.
"I'm almost done," I say. "I just—"
Bennett stands, tall, and his shadow blocks the room.
"That's it? Just that?" he asks, eyes level with mine.
I swallow. "Keep the rest," I tell him. "The jewelry, the coats. You bought them."
He lifts an eyebrow, goes back to the chair, and picks the pen up again.
A phone buzzes on the desk. Bennett scans it, throws the pen down like it is hot, and takes the call without turning to see me.
"Has my mother been told?" I ask. My voice is small.
"No," I say. "I haven't told her."
He breathes out, pulls his collar straight, and starts out the door. "Don't go public yet. Talk to your mother. Tell me tomorrow."
"Okay," I say. I smile the smile I have used for three years in public.
I watch him walk away with his phone to his ear. He leaves me on the threshold of our house and I am carrying the one suitcase I am allowed.
*
The week before I wrote the divorce, a set of photos arrived in a folder I never wanted to open. They were taken at Bennett's other house. The angle didn't show faces, but I knew the curve of that back, the scar on his shoulder. I knew the hand that stroked that scar. The hand was small, pale, nails perfect. The other arm curled around Bennett's neck like it belonged there.
Ximena Alvarez.
She was a rising actress signed to Bennett's media group. Her face had been filling screens all year. The gossip column had already sewn patterns, but the photos felt like a blow.
I filed my paper and wrote the word "END" like a clean cut.
When Phoenix Burns called me that night about the show, I felt the world tilt. "Bennett will be on my show," he said, voice loud and excited. "Ximena too. It'll be huge."
"Tonight?" I asked. "He's talking about my divorce and then he's going on TV with her?"
"Ratings, Alessandra. This is a moment," Phoenix said.
I put the phone down and stared at the photos until my eyes burned.
*
I went to work the next morning with sunglasses and heavy makeup. People in the studio said the things people say to a woman they think is single and winning.
"Those two will announce it," one assistant laughed.
"Ximena must have something," another said.
I smiled and joined their talk. I had learned how to appear light when I wanted to be dead inside. I let them lead me down the hall so they could see me hold it together.
That night was the dinner at South River Tower. Bennett came quiet, barely drinking. I drank to blur the edges and he finally sipped when I raised my glass the third time.
"Alessandra," he murmured at one point when we were almost alone in the car. He pushed me toward the passenger seat like a good man would, but his hand slipped inside my coat and his fingers found the place where pain lives on my body.
"It hurts," I said.
He froze, then his face shifted to a look I recognized—there is a thing you get used to with him: a practical anger, a coldness so smooth you can slip beneath it if you try hard enough.
"Have you told your mother?" he asked when the car hummed late at night.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
"Do it first thing tomorrow." He said it like a command.
Then he left me. He never looked me in the eyes leaving the car.
*
I hadn't had a proper night in two years. I went home, pulled everything about us into my small bag, and left. I bought the divorce papers and signed the places I had to sign. Then I called my mother, Cristina Greene.
"Is this real?" she asked.
"It is," I said.
"You want me to come?" she asked, voice small.
"No, I'm fine. I'll come by."
My family had fallen from money, but we had dignity and a house big enough that I did not have to explain myself to the city. Mom had eyes that read everything I tried to hide.
When I told her I wanted the divorce, she cried. She told me what mothers always say: that she worried for me, that I had given too much.
"Mama," I said, and the word felt like the rope that kept me tied.
"I'm not leaving because you say it's time," I said. "I'm leaving because I have to."
She cleaned my scraped knees like she used to. She told me to be careful and to be proud.
*
Then Phoenix called. "Alessandra, good news. Bennett agreed to come on the show. Ximena will join too."
I put the phone down. The show would be live. The dinner meant nothing. He was more eager to make sure Ximena looked good on TV than he had ever been to ask why I wanted to leave.
"Are you going?" Charlotte asked when I told her I had been invited to a publicity taping the next day.
"Yes," I said.
I showed up with calm in my steps. I had rehearsed a few lines to sound breezy.
Ximena greeted me like a fresh wind. She was young and pretty and asked me to lunch like some small sister.
"Alessandra, I'm so glad to meet you," she said, arm in mine. "Bennett told me about you."
I watched her for the way she said his name, like a note she kept repeating in tune.
When Bennett walked in we all pretended to be strangers. He gave me a chair like a favor. He didn't look at me until he had to.
Ximena took his arm when she could. She laughed at his jokes. I watched them together and felt the old ache fold into something I had named long before.
"You two were in the same school, right?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said. "We were."
She had no idea how old that thread was. She thought we had never shared anything.
After the lunch I went to the apartment I had bought for myself. I slept on the couch and woke up to a new message from Ximena.
"Alessandra," it said. "Sorry I missed you! When can we have coffee? I owe you."
She had added me on every platform. The message was polite and sweet. I replied because I was too tired to do anything else.
*
The night Bennett came to the apartment without warning, I was in the tub. The hot water made my skin soft and the steam kept my face safe.
When he lifted me out and wrapped a towel around my shoulders, his fingers were rough and his breath was warm.
"You were sick here last time," he said.
"I don't want you to think I staged anything," I whispered. "I just—"
He kissed me like hands could hold a person back from leaving. He stopped halfway, half tender, half pushing.
"Sign the papers tomorrow," he said, flat. "We can do it. Then be done."
I told him I thought there would be more anger. He told me he would handle it.
But the truth was, he always handled things in ways that let him keep the center.
That night he left again.
*
A week later, Ximena took me to a private restaurant. She was so open and bright that it made my bitterness feel old.
"Do you like sweets?" she asked. "My favorite chef started making desserts here because Bennett told him I liked them."
Every time she said his name it sounded like she had a map inside her hand.
"Do you two—" I started.
She laughed. "Why would you ask that?"
"You flirted," I said. "You went to his house."
"He's kind," she said.
"Is he kind to you?"
"Yes," she said. "He is."
When she greeted him across the table he stood up and took her hands like a man who owned an island and decided to let a guest stay for a night.
I left before the dessert.
I pretended I was sick. I called Charlotte and told her to come pick me up. She did.
"Why do you keep going?" she asked when she dropped me back at my apartment.
"I need to close the door," I said.
"Don't let him open it again," she said. "You told him you wanted out."
I smiled, but it was thin. "I know."
*
At the studio, Phoenix told me the show would tape next week. "Bennett is going to give a special interview," he said. "He wants to talk about law, justice—"
"And Ximena?" I asked.
"She's there for the entertainment piece," he said. "It'll be perfect."
I barely slept that week. I flipped through old messages. He had messages like tide marks: once a month he texted to say he had work, he would be late. One date always had one line: "Not home tonight." On the twentieth of every month there was, without fail, a short message: "Out tonight."
The photos stung because they were not the only proof. They were the proof I could hold up. But I had the paper, and that mattered.
On the morning I waited for him at the civil office, rain started to wash the city. I waited under an awning and then a passerby splashed mud on my shoes.
Halfway through, someone knocked on my shoulder. It was Charlotte, breathless.
"He's on the news," she said. "Some case. It's a mess, Aless."
I went home, heart bumping.
Bennett wasn't there when I arrived. He was later, strange and dark-eyed, like someone who had been kept up for days.
He walked into the apartment like he had set his suitcase down in the hall.
"Why didn't you come?" I asked.
"I had to work," he said.
"You promised you'd be there," I said.
"I tried," he said. "I had to finish a case."
"You always have a case," I said.
He didn't argue. He sat on the couch like a man who had not slept in too long. "Come to dinner tonight," he said.
"I will not," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I need it to be over."
He looked at me hard like I was an unsolved problem. Then he said, "Three o'clock tomorrow."
"Okay," I said.
*
That night, something happened I had not expected. Bennett was attacked. He was stabbed. The news filmed the ambulance and the stretchers. Photos of the blood on his shirt sprawled across the city page.
My phone rang and rang until Charlotte pried it from my hand and answered for me. "Alessandra, get to the hospital."
In the emergency room, I stepped past the crowd and saw Bennett. There was a bed, tubes, a pale face with one eye only half open.
"Who brought him?" I asked.
"Someone found him in the square," the nurse said. "He was carried in."
I sat before them like someone in a play. People tried to claim they were family. Ximena walked in with a hat and pale cheeks. She stood at the foot of his bed and said, "I am here."
I wanted to slap her. I wanted to shake her shoulders and ask why she did not recognize what he was doing to me.
Instead I went to the nurse and said, "I'm his wife."
There was a pause. The room gave a small noise like the air shifting. Ximena looked as if she had been kicked.
"You are family?" the nurse asked.
"Yes," I said.
They let me in. For the first time since we met I sat beside Bennett and felt something like fear for him, not for myself.
He opened his eyes. "Are you all right?" he murmured.
"I'm fine," I said. My voice trembled.
He reached for me and his fingers were cold.
"You scared me," he whispered. "You should not be out in the rain."
"It's not my job to keep you safe," I said. "You signed a paper, Bennett. We will finish tomorrow."
He blinked. "You will make me sign?"
"Yes."
He smiled like a man who had just remembered a private joke. "You are very stubborn."
"I know," I said.
There was something raw and true in that moment. The fear had removed the armor between us. He bled on the sheets and still looked like the man I had loved.
But hospital rooms erase a lot of lies. People bend toward you when you're hurt and then they forget the reasons.
I left before the night was over. I walked home with mud on my shoes and rain in my hair.
The next morning Bennett was better. He paced like a man who had been wounded and wanted to prove to the world he still had heat.
"Why were you out there?" I asked.
He looked at me like I was asking the sky why it rained. "I had to meet someone."
"Who?"
"An old client," he said.
I knew it was a lie. He always said "old client" when he wanted to keep a woman off his chest. He said he had been that night at Ximena's place, trying to make sure she was safe.
I wanted to push. I wanted to tell him I had proof. He only said, "You'll sign today."
So I did.
We drove to the city office and signed the papers. He signed his name in slow black ink like he believed the thing he was doing.
"Are you happy?" he asked as we walked out.
"No," I said.
"Then why do it?" he asked.
"Because you belong somewhere else," I said.
He laughed then, a small, bitter laugh. "You are still dramatic."
Later that day Phoenix called and asked me to tape a short promo. Unexpectedly, Bennett said he would come.
"Do you want me to sit beside you?" he asked.
"No."
He walked into the studio and gave an interview that made him look like a hero to the public. He spoke in careful sentences about justice. He showed up for Ximena on camera and everyone clapped.
I sat behind the glass and watched. People wrote about him the next day like he had saved one thousand lives. The story did not mention the way he had left me in the dark for a year.
Two weeks later Bennett's team announced a charity gala. It would be the season's event. I received an invitation and an off-hand call from Bennett.
"Will you come?" he said.
"Will you?"
"I will come," he said.
I went. Ximena arrived in a dress that made every light hold its breath.
That night, he danced with her. He watched her laugh like the world belonged to her.
When I walked out, someone from the press tapped my shoulder. "Alessandra," he said. "Do you have a reaction to your husband's new relationship?"
I didn't answer. I walked into the rain and let it hit my face. I had expected to be angry in some big way. Instead I was tired. Being angry took energy I did not have.
People called me a graceful exit. They told me I had dignity. The papers were kind sometimes.
*
Months passed. I kept working. The show grew. I kept my name clean and made sure I never showed the parts that hurt.
Bennett tried to appear warm from time to time. He would call late and say, "I was at the office," and then, "I found these tickets to your premiere."
I used the tickets. I accepted the small kindnesses because who would refuse a full house for a show you worked on?
When the season turned, Bennett stepped into a scandal that had little to do with me. Ximena had been filmed with someone whose temper matched hers. The tabloids flared and then cooled.
It was not the kind of event that made me jump with joy. But the final blow came in a way I had not anticipated.
At an awards event, Bennett stood up and took the stage. He looked at me from the crowd and his voice carried like a rope.
"I was wrong," he said. "I treated her badly."
He named things I had known. He described how he had been blind to the harm he had caused. He spoke about not recognizing what he had until it was gone.
"Alessandra," he said, the microphone catching every syllable. "I was wrong. I'm sorry. Please come back."
The crowd murmured. Ximena was at the side of the room and her face went white, then red, then composed.
I felt the room tilt. People around me leaned forward like watching a train approach.
I stood. The floor was cold.
"I won't," I said into the microphone. My voice surprised me with how steady it was.
Bennett's mouth fell open.
I walked to the stage.
"Stop," he said. "Alessandra—"
I held up the divorce papers. "You signed this," I said. "You left one line empty. Your name on that page was a window you left open. I gave you time to close it."
"Why are you doing this now?" he asked.
"Because you chose to be messy in private and clean in public," I said. "Because you used people like props. I am done being someone's scene."
People watched. Ximena's eyes were wet and then dry. Bennett's face turned a color I had never seen on him.
"You will regret it," he said. "I will fix it. I'll make it right."
I laughed. It popped out like a small bell. "Fix what, Bennett? The lie? The timing? The part where you thought my life was a stage trick?"
"You don't understand," he said.
"I understand enough," I said. "I understand how late-night calls can be mistakes, but your choices were not mistakes. They were plans. You planned another life."
He grabbed my hand. The gesture was clumsy and loud.
"Please," he said. "Come back."
"I told you, I will not."
It was more than a refusal. The sound in the room shifted. Someone cried out softly. An editor in the front row began clapping slowly and then the entire theatre joined, not for Bennett but for me.
He stood there, stunned, like a man who had walked into a room where everything had moved.
I left the stage. Later, in the car, his voice came through my phone in a string of messages.
"Alessandra. Please. Don't do this to me."
I deleted them.
*
After that night, the paper chased me for a few weeks. It liked the narrative of a woman who had refused a man who had everything.
Bennett's reputation dimmed. People began to talk about his choices, his money, the way he used his power.
He fought. He did things he had never done before in public—apologize, be small, post contrition. He gave interviews about lessons and fault. He flew in from events with flowers. He made charitable donations in my name. He sent a lawyer to rewrite the agreement to ensure I would have more than I had asked for.
I read all of it like someone reading a map and saw how he had tried to buy the horizon.
One day, a friend from the firm called. "You should come," she said. "Bennett is at the board meeting."
"Why?" I asked.
"He's asking the board to step in," she said. "He wants to cut Ximena from the project. He wants to clear her name to you. He is trying to save you from shame."
That was the moment I saw my choice: he would ruin another person's career to fix his mistake with me. He would make Ximena the scapegoat to be forgiven.
I went to the meeting.
I walked into the conference room. Bennett looked smaller in chairs with witnesses.
"I wanted to do something," he said. "I had to fix the ripple."
"Fix the ripple," I repeated. "So you punish someone to calm the water?"
"I can't give her the life she wants," he said. "But I can make sure she doesn't ruin yours."
"Or you can admit that you were wrong and leave the rest to her," I said.
He looked at me like a man trying to find a loose thread to tie.
"You can't make this about saving my face," I said. "You can't ask me to let someone else carry your guilt."
Fire lit in Bennett's eyes. He was beyond reason. The room got quiet.
"Either she goes, or we do not," he said.
I stood. "Then do it," I said. "Ban her. Fire her from every project. Make the industry believe what you want. But understand this: you won't get me back by burning another woman."
It was like a slap more than a speech. Bennett sat down like he'd been struck.
The board looked at the proposal on the table. Silence stretched.
In the end, they did not choose him. They called an outside counsel and looked for other ways. Ximena's contract remained, but the damage had been done. Rumors sat like bruises.
*
Bennett tried to repair the private things as well. He sent gifts—small ones—and emails. He tried to appear in places where he knew I would be to seem like a man trying to be better.
I went to work. The show grew. I had lines I loved saying, and audiences that cared about the truth we tried to help them find. I interviewed victims who had been silenced. I asked their names. I learned to ask questions that cut to the bone without making the wound bigger.
My mother pressed her hand on my shoulder and said, "You look like yourself again."
One evening, a note arrived: Bennett wanted to meet. "One last talk," he wrote. "No cameras. Just us."
I went because sometimes you must look at the thing that hurt you and tell it you are done.
We met at his old office. He looked like someone trying to learn a new language with his hands.
"You made choices," he said. "I made choices."
"I know," I said.
"Why did you sign?" he asked. "Why did you leave when you could have stayed? We could have fixed it."
"Why did you have affairs?" I asked.
He looked small. "I was restless," he said. "I was bored. I thought I could find myself somewhere else."
"By hurting me?" I said.
"No," he said. "By not feeling the things you felt."
We argued. We cried. He begged. He tried to show me proofs of reform: therapy, statements, a list of things he would give up. He wanted me to be the center again and he would be the orbit.
"Will you ever forgive me?" he asked finally.
"I don't know," I said. "Forgiveness isn't a thing you give on command. It's not a trophy you hand out for being sorry."
He laughed hard at that. "You think I'm asking for trophies. I just wanted to tell you I was wrong."
"I hear you," I said. "But hearing and changing are not the same."
He stood and left some things on the table. A small wooden car with the little doll we used to keep in the car. The thing that used to make me smile.
"You always loved that," he said.
I picked up the doll and held it and for a moment I thought of the little things that had been honest between us. Then I thought of everything else.
"Thank you," I said. "But I don't want it."
He looked hurt. "Is that a final no?"
"Yes."
He left without another word.
*
Months later, Bennett gave a long interview on a channel and we all watched as he tried to shape the memory of us. He used the phrase "regret" like a new suit.
Afterwards, there was a public apology, then a private one, and then a hiring of a PR team. He learned the grammar of regret in public and forgot it in private.
Then came the night he chose to walk into the charity gala and take the stage and sound like a man who had changed. He asked for me to return, to "try again."
I walked onto the stage and refused.
"Don't you want him to suffer?" someone asked Charlotte.
"No," she said. "I want her to live."
That was the new feeling—living. I had learned to make myself a center that did not orbit around his choices.
People asked what happened next. Did he change? Did she take him back? The gossip pages had plenty to say. But the truth was smaller.
I signed the last papers with a lawyer's neat letterhead and a notary stamp. Bennett's name was in the line where it should be. He did not sign the months before. He signed when he thought he might lose everything.
I walked out of the civil office with my bag and the little wooden doll in my hand.
"You're free," the clerk said.
"I am," I said.
Freedom felt like the small sound a door makes when it closes, then opens on a balcony where you can breathe.
The days after were quiet. I kept working. The show continued to grow. Phoenix called to ask if we could take the program national. I said yes.
As the city learned to remember Bennett for the man who had fallen from his own pedestal, I learned to take small comforts in things that belonged to me.
One night in late autumn, I sat at a small café on a corner I had once thought too small for me. A man sat at the next table reading a script. We nodded. He asked me about the show and it turned into an hour of conversation. His name was Graham Barron. He listened. He did not ask me to fix his day. He ordered coffee and praised a line I said about truth.
It was small and tender and not a rescue. He did not try to fill me with grandeur. He simply said, "You were brave up there."
I looked at the little wooden doll on the chair beside me—the thing Bennett had left—and I put it in my bag.
"You'll keep that?" Graham asked.
"I will," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because it is part of what I was," I said. "And I am allowed to keep parts of my past."
He smiled. "Good."
The seasons turned. Bennett kept trying in small ways and large ones. He gave interviews and made small donations, and people watched him shrink and widen and do the hard work that sometimes comes after harm.
Once, months later, he stood outside a theater where my crew had a show and he called my name from the street. He climbed the short steps up the theater and stood in the doorway, an old suit on his shoulders, his hair thinner. He looked like a man who had been remade by fire.
"Alessandra," he said.
I paused. The air had that cold bite that makes you feel very small and very big at once.
"Go on," I said.
"You can have everything back," he said. "Come back."
I looked at him. I thought of nights when he had held me and pulled away. I thought of hospital lights and tabloids, of a young woman who had been used like a prop. I pictured the scenes where they had clapped at my pain.
"No," I said. "I will not erase what you did."
Bennett's face changed. He looked older then. He looked like a man alive for the first time who was asking for mercy. "Please."
"You were never mine to fix you," I said. "You were always free to make your mistakes."
He bowed his head. "I deserve this," he said.
"Maybe," I said.
Then I did a small thing that surprised him. I reached into my bag, took out the little wooden doll, and I put it on the step between us.
"This belonged to a time when we were both different people," I said. "Keep it if you like. But understand one thing."
He looked up, eyes wet.
"I signed the papers because I needed to leave," I said. "I left you the spaces you wanted. Don't make someone else erase themselves for your repair. Learn to live with what you did, and don't try to buy forgiveness for others."
He swallowed. "I won't."
I walked past him into the theater and then out the other door. The city smelled like rain and coffee.
In my pocket my phone buzzed. Graham sent a small joke. Charlotte sent a photo of our mothers having lunch. My mother wrote two words: "So proud."
I smiled. I sat down on the bus, the doll close to my heart like a small, stubborn truth.
Later, as the bus drove through the city, lights like small stars passed by, familiar and clean. I looked out the window and for the first time in years the reflection I saw in the glass looked like a woman who could choose.
"Goodbye," I whispered.
The bus kept moving.
The End
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