"What the hell did you do to my best friend?" Sarah whispered, staring at his face. She was on the website of Ascent Kapital GmbH, headquartered in Zurich, looking at his picture on the founders' and management page for the umpteenth time.
He kept his black hair short, almost a buzz cut, and he was wearing a black suit, a light blue shirt, and a silver and matching blue fractal pattern tie in his headshot. His smile was slight but real, his gray eyes sharp behind his rimless glasses.
He looked so ordinary, she thought. He was handsome, but not overly so. Going on appearance alone, he could have walked by her and she wouldn't have looked a second time.
Unlike David Brenner, she thought, who generally had women looking back more than once. Including herself, before he had approached, confident and sure of himself, and introduced himself to their group of girlfriends on one fateful night out, making it very clear that it was Honor, who had shyly said the least to him, that had piqued his interest.
That was another cause of disquiet; after the ride home from the airport, Honor no longer mentioned her fiancee. At all. Previously, not an hour went by without some mention of David Brenner, to much general annoyance.
But Sarah had listened in to Honor speaking with her mother, and realized that Jaya Banet still had no idea that her daughter's wedding was no longer happening.
To be fair, as Sarah had also witnessed, neither did her fiancee. He still called, and Honor answered. But she mostly listened to him speak and answered as expected, her face frighteningly, almost sociopathically neutral.
It was as if David Brenner and everything to do with him no longer mattered in the least. As if Marq Haydn had wiped him clean of any significance or impact in Honor's life.
Again, Sarah was struck by how ordinary he looked, how easily she could pass him by on the street.
And yet, she suspected that she would notice him if he wanted her to. Even without reading his deceptively modest biographical profile, he exuded competence and the confidence that came from it.
The emergence of Phoenyx Electronik with Ascent Kapital's Marquin Haydn spearheading the deal was the talk of the financial and technology world. As if in homage to its name, the company arising from the ashes of Helios and Nomi was already worth billions as demand for its shares soared in the market.
But Sarah only needed to look at the state of her best friend, more than a week since her return, to know that Marquin Eduardo Haydn was anything but ordinary.
She had known there was no doubt, no 'I think' necessary, about Honor being in love with the man who had 'rescued' her in Bangkok. She had known immediately after her confession in the gas station.
She had noted the way her eyes changed when she spoke about him, the way her breathing became deeper, her lips parting, pupils dilating; as if becoming aroused at the mere thought of him.
She knew Honor had not told her everything, she knew some memories her friend was keeping for herself alone, which said a lot by itself.
But she had told her enough.
Enough to also know there was no 'as if' about Honor becoming aroused by simply thinking about Marq Haydn.
Honor told her about how he had paid ten thousand dollars for a night with her. How he repeatedly made her miss her flights with his 'renegotiations' and gotten his money's worth over those days.
How he had spent another hundred thousand without telling her. How her own call had made Honor turn back, determined to give him the ten days he had paid for.
And how he had thoroughly dominated and enthralled her friend, how he had unapologetically 'displayed' her and compromised her modesty.
How she had become his 'odalisque', achingly eager to be nude for him, to be enjoyed by him.
Sarah had researched the word, then she had downloaded and watched the movie; and then she had invited Bryan Thomas over and nearly broken him.
She was told how Marq Haydn had made her friend feel so utterly beautiful and desired. How he had given her the happiest, most erotic and passion-filled days of her life.
It was what made it impossible for Sarah, try as she might, to hate him for transforming the most level headed and focused woman she knew into a distracted near-wreck, who embarrassingly confessed that she was masturbating multiple times a day and, only slightly less so that she was crying even more than that.
That was quite apart from sobbing herself to sleep every night.
Except she knew Honor was not sleeping. At least, not well.
She had spent multiple nights with her friend since her return, hearing her crying in her bed and seething at Marq Haydn and at David Brenner, livid at both men for causing Honor so much pain, even if for radically different reasons.
Even Bryan, meeting Honor for the first time, had noticed that she was a profoundly sad woman even as she tried to convey her genuine happiness for Sarah and her new relationship.
"Is she okay?" he had whispered to Sarah as Honor excused herself to go to the little café bistro's bathroom.
"No," Sarah had answered, tears filling her eyes. "No, she's not."
But it was when Honor came back from the restroom that Sarah had truly appreciated how deeply Marq Haydn had affected her.
Honor had refused the Bloody Mary Sarah had ordered for her, their longtime mutual favorite, quietly telling her that she no longer drank alcohol.
A stunned Sarah had known exactly what, or, more exactly who, had inspired this change.
Sarah found herself fidgeting at her desk, unusually nervous for her friend, because she knew Honor would soon need to be at her best and fully present in the moment, because her dream, years of thrift and hard work, hung in the balance.
Sensible, disciplined Honor Banet needed to show up in a few days, not the lovesick woman desperately craving and missing a man on the other side of the world, who may have already forgotten her.
"What the fuck," said Sarah again, to the profile picture on her screen, "did you do to her?"
________________________
The invitation to speak to the bank's loan committee had arrived in her apartment's mailbox the day before her return from Thailand, ominously, waiting for her. The letter had asked her to pick from a set of available dates within the following month.
Honor responded to the letter's email counterpart, selecting the first available date, one week away.
She had read the friendly instructions to send ahead and come to the meeting with the business plan, market analysis, evidence of collateral, financial projections, necessary legal documents, and her own personal qualifications with some bemusement; she was unable to fathom how anyone could pitch for a loan without such basic prerequisites.
She picked the first available date because she had everything she needed at hand, prepared long before, with location and foot traffic analysis for three separate locations within her planned leasing budget. She had models detailing the production and retail areas, with floor plans for seating, tables, counters, bathrooms, an office and a resting area for staff.
She had practiced her presentation to the point that she could do it seconds after being woken up from a deep sleep and deliver every pertinent fact in nine minutes.
It was just preparing the array of samples and getting them perfectly done in time for her delivery, with Sarah's help, to the panel members that she had to worry about.
Which was the problem. Her father had told her that one could taste her heart in her baking, in everything she made.
But what if her heart was no longer available, because it was with a man in Switzerland, thousands of miles away? What if all that she had left was the immovable, leaden weight in her chest?
What if she was heartsick, haunted by a man's pained plea for her stay, that she had run away from for reasons that increasingly made less and less sense to her?
She had not told Sarah about that; that at the last, he had asked her to stay with him. That she had literally run away because she had so wanted to do exactly that.
It would have meant abandoning everything; the life she had already built, her friends, an apartment she loved and was still paying for, moving even farther away from her family, letting go of her patisserie dream - meaning all of her careful, painstaking plans and two years of gathered equipment.
She would have done it, she realized. If she had gone to him as he sat in that chair for that one last kiss that she had wanted. If he had followed her out the door of 1615. If he had said one more word as she left.
Two days to her meeting at the bank, when she should have begun preparing, she was lying in bed, clutching at herself and shuddering as she came from her fingers, images of Marq - making a face at her on the beach, holding her on 1615's balcony, seeking her eyes as he spoke on the stage, smiling at her as he flew them - dancing through her mind.
She lay quietly afterwards, still wet, nipples swollen and hard under her T-shirt, hand still between her legs, unable to sleep, tears welling in her eyes.
She had returned to work, much to her boss' happy relief, and he had quickly put her back in as his chef de partie in charge of desserts and confectionery.
But she had lost her joy in the work, if not her meticulousness, and more than one of her colleagues had noticed.
So she feigned cheerfulness as best she could, suffering in silence, which meant she also had to feign an increased need to go to the bathroom. So she could cry. Or touch herself. Or both.
Lychee tarts had been the last item to send her out of the kitchen, memories crashing into her mind of chasing after the fleshy white fruit with her lips in Ayutthaya as Marq fed her, remembering the taste of it still on her tongue as he entered her body soon afterwards.
Her resulting arousal had so noticeably destroyed her concentration that the chef had asked if she were alright, questioning her mental presence in the kitchen for the very first time. That was when she had scurried to the bathroom to relieve herself with her fingers, biting her lip to keep from crying out as she came.
In her bed, she started to cry again.
The part of her that was sensible, disciplined Honor Banet reminded herself that she had known the risk of opening herself to him, that she had known every time when a red line was about to crossed, when Marq had stopped just being a financial arrangement, when he had stopped just being an instrument of revenge... when she could have turned back.
Not for the first time, she asked herself, was it worth it? This miasma of loss, longing and pain with no end in sight?
Yes, she thought, remembering him holding her and exclaiming over her beauty in the mirror, how he smiled at her, how he had held her every night, almost cocooning her so she felt safe even when she barely knew him.
Yes, she concluded again. It was worth it. Meeting Marquin Haydn, being with him, having him inside her, having him in her life, even for as short a time as it was... she would do it all over again.
And knowing what she did now, that she was completely in love with him, she wouldn't have run away.
