Chapter 10 Decision Making

• Becca stared at the man, sure that she had misheard him or she was hallucinating. Peter stared back at her evenly, raising an eyebrow at the shock on her face.
• “What? Why do you look so surprised? You’re an adult, after all. What are you? Twenty-three… twenty-five?” He asked, sipping his wine slowly. Looking at him, one would not believe that such a kind and innocent-looking man would say such a thing so freely and carelessly.
• “I’m nineteen,” Becca replied dully, wondering why she was still even seated there.
• “Same difference. Think about it. I’m going to pay off thousands of dollars just like that, all for you to have sex with me, something I’m sure you already do for free. Come on, I like you … a lot. I’ve been seeing you at the supermarket, so it’s not as though you’re going to be having sex with some faceless creep. Think about it, Becca.” Peter said.
• “A creep is a creep, faceless or not.” Becca wanted to say, her hands itching to slap his irritating and annoying face into oblivion, but she didn’t say it. The sound of her ringing phone broke the tense silence between them, and Becca sighed in relief, picking up her phone, but her relief did not last when she saw that it was her grandmother who was calling. By the time she finished taking the call, her face was ashen.
• “What’s wrong?” Peter asked, looking at her with beady eyes that reminded her of the eyes of a snake.
• “It’s my brother. It seems there’s been a complication. I must go.” Becca said in a rush, standing up and turning to go out of the restaurant. Peter stood up alongside her and pressed his card into her hands.
• “Remember my offer, Becca. Call me.” He said, and walked away, leaving Becca gaping after him. For some reason, she clutched the card in her hands as she hurried back to the hospital, and later on, absentmindedly kept it in her purse, where she all but forgot about it.
• She was rudely reminded after they got discharged and she got the bill from the hospital. Soon, they were threatening her with taking her to court when she could not pay up the exorbitant bill. A week after that, she was in Peter’s house, hating herself for what she was about to do, but she did not have any other choice. There was no one she could turn to for help. The act was quick, painful, and disappointing.
• “Goddamn it. You’re a virgin?” Peter asked after, shaking his head in bewilderment. “You should have told me.”
• “It doesn’t matter now. You promised to help me pay off the debt.”
• “That I did,” Peter replied, going over to take his checkbook from the table and writing a check for fifty thousand dollars, which was enough to pay for her brother’s medical bill and have change left over. Becca stared at the check in surprise. She had fully expected him to go back on his promise, or give her a paltry sum.
• “I’ll like to see you again, Becca,” Peter told her before she left. Two weeks later they were officially dating. How was Becca to have known that he was stealing money from the company he worked for, a company owned by Ryan? But that was only just the beginning.
• Coming out of her reverie, Becca pulled up to the front of her remote-controlled gate, not pleased to see that the paparazzi had followed her here too. They swarmed around the car, shouting questions at her. Questions about whether it was true that her marriage to billionaire Ryan Harris had ended and other questions that she was not in the right frame of mind to answer. She ignored them and drove into the compound, taking great pleasure in slamming the gate shut against them.
• Once she was inside, she began stuffing some of her clothes into her traveling box. She could not stay here for one more night. She was sure she would go crazy if she did. She did not know where she was going to go just yet, but she had to leave this city or even this state. When she settled down wherever it was she found herself, she would decide what to do. In the meantime, she could not stay here. By the time she finished packing, she could see that the paparazzi were still outside, so she sat down and just stared at the television until it was dark, and every last one of them left.
• Only then did she get into her old and rickety car, and drive to a motel on the far side of town, where she spent the night. The next morning, she took her car to a mechanic, who serviced it for her. That night, she slept at the motel again, and then early the next morning, she got up, took her bath, and went back to the big, empty house. She had a lot of packing to do. Belatedly, she realized that since the divorce had not been finalized and there was still some paperwork that would need to be sorted, she could not move yet, so she stayed back grudgingly, counting the days until the process was over. She did not want to complicate anything now that it was clear that there was no changing Ryan's mind. Besides, she had no intention of letting him know her new address when she finally settled, not that he cared.
• Luckily enough, he had promised to continue paying her brother’s way through school and also take care of her grandparents' needs, so all the money she had saved during her marriage to him would come in handy for her during this period. However, she had now seen that she could not depend on anyone but herself, and that was the way it was going to be from now on.
• The next day, the deeds to the house were delivered to her by one of the former servants, who dropped them over that afternoon. Becca also got the sum of twenty million dollars as the amount she was to get in the event of a divorce. When she called Ryan to thank him for the money, he declined her call as he had been wont to do ever since he moved out. Before, Becca would have burst into tears at his callous attitude, but now, she seemed to have spent all her tears.
• The next three weeks were a series of back and forth between her and Ryan. He kept sending her documents that she had to sign regarding their divorce, and she signed them without bothering to as much as glance through them. Suddenly, she wanted this to be over as soon as possible. It did not help that she had been feeling under the weather lately.
• First, it was a persistent headache that refused to go. Then, later on, she began to throw up, and then she lost her appetite. She also felt very weak, but that was no surprise since she had zero appetite and could hardly keep anything down no matter how hard she forced herself, because of how nauseous she had been feeling lately.
• Chalking it up to a bug or something of that nature, coupled with the stress and emotional trauma that she had been through lately, Becca got some over-the-counter pills and took them, but there wasn’t much improvement. Throughout this period, she did not hear even a single word from Ryan, which was just as well because she was only just trying to get used to him not being around or his newfound hostility towards her, and it would not do to have her progress shattered.
• Within this period, she made preparations to leave the city for good. Once everything was finalized, at least to a great extent, she would disappear from the city as though she had never been there in the first place. There was nothing left here for her. Little by little, she boxed up the stuff she was going to need in the meantime. It wasn't as though she did not have the money to hire a moving company to do the work for her. It was just that she needed to keep herself busy, and packing her stuff by herself kept her really busy and kept her mind off things. She would decide about the rest of the property in the house and what to do with them and the house itself once she was settled where she was going.
• Exactly a month and two days after Ryan served her the divorce papers, Becca moved away from the city in which she had lived with him without letting a single soul know, not that she had anyone to tell. Her brother and grandparents, who were the only people she was close to, lived miles away, so there was no one to tell, which was for the best, she decided. It was time for her to start afresh, even though her old wounds had not yet healed.