He Humiliated Me in Public, So His Regret Pays by the Tear novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Nothing for the Apology

His rehearsed apology at Marta's door pays nothing; when she shuts it and he cries alone on the stairs, the system pays three thousand dollars.

Marta's couch was too short for me and too long for anyone else.

I woke on it at six with a crochet blanket stuck to my cheek and my phone face down on my chest.

The money was still there.

I opened my banking app on the cushion, in the dark, and checked.

The account was the one I had opened at twenty-two for tip money, the one with my name alone on it.

Balance: $850.00 over what I had on Friday.

The memo said REGRET SETTLEMENT.

"You're doing the face," Marta said from the kitchen doorway.

She stood there in a Bears shirt that came to her knees, with purple streaks in her hair and her tattooed forearms folded.

"What face?"

"The face of a person who got fired and then found money in her coat."

I held up the phone.

She came over and read it, and then she read it again, and then she sat on the arm of the couch.

"Okay," she said. "Who sent this?"

"I don't know. I think it's him."

"Dominik sent you eight hundred and fifty dollars to say sorry?"

"No. It's, I don't know how to say this." I pressed my hands against my eyes. "A message came up when it hit. In my head. It said regret detected, and it had his name."

Marta was quiet for a while.

"You had a very bad night," she said.

"I know."

"And you're also a person who has never once said a word she didn't mean."

"I know," I said.

"So I'll believe you." She got up. "I'm making eggs."

At seven there was a knock at the door.

It was not a neighbor's knock.

It was three even raps, the way Dominik knocked at the walk-in when he wanted the door held.

Marta looked at me.

I went to the door in my socks and put one eye to the peephole.

He stood on the landing in last night's jacket.

His hair was flat on one side and he had shaved.

That meant he had been home, and up all night rehearsing.

I opened the door the width of the chain.

"Hal," he said.

"Dominik."

"I'm so sorry about last night."

He said it in a good voice, low and wrecked.

"I want you to know that what you saw with Lena was a mistake. One that got out of hand. I was under a lot of pressure with the opening, and I made bad choices, and it's already over."

He put a hand on the doorframe.

"Come home. Just for a week. Let the press cool off. The bank guy thinks you're unwell, and if you come back this week, that goes away."

I waited for the white line to come up.

Nothing came.

I looked at his face and I looked at his hand and I looked for the part of him that was sorry.

He touched the back of his neck, two fingers, quick.

He had done it for seven years every time he said something he did not mean.

"The bank guy," I said.

"It's not about the bank. It's about us."

"It's about the bank, Dom."

"Hal," he said.

I shut the door.

He knocked again, gently, twice.

Then he stopped.

I stood with my forehead against the wood and Marta's eggs burning behind me.

"Don't open it," Marta said softly.

"I'm not."

I put my eye back to the peephole.

He was still on the landing.

For a long moment he did nothing at all.

Then he turned and sat down hard on the top step.

He put his elbows on his knees.

He put his face in his hands.

His back shook.

It was a bad sound, the kind a man makes when he does not want to be heard.

[Regret detected. Source: Dominik Kral. Cause: her face at the door. Payout: $3,100.00.]

My phone buzzed against my leg.

I did not need to look to know what it was.

"He's crying on my stairs," Marta whispered, with her ear next to mine on the wood.

"Yes."

"I could charge admission."

"Don't," I said.

I was not being kind.

I was thinking, with a cold part of me I had not known I had, about the last twenty minutes.

When he lied, nothing came.

When he stopped lying and had nobody to lie to, three thousand one hundred dollars arrived in my account.

Whatever this was, it could not be fooled.

The stairwell light on its timer clicked off.

He did not get up to hit the switch.

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