“She was Solomon’s niece, Benelli,” he sputters. “How am I going to explain this?”
I give him my best level glare.
“Look, are you in the business of keeping your poker buddies happy or running successful companies? You asked me to take care of the files for the tire shop, and I did. They were a huge mess, but I organized every single thing, color-coded it all, got everything in coordinated file folders, all in order. You told me you’d bring someone in to maintain it all while I finished the paperwork for the rental properties. I went back to check, and it was like all my work had been undone, Pop! We can’t afford to run a business like that. I gave her two warnings, walked her through the entire process all at least four times. I think it was nice of me to let her get to three strikes. And I only went that soft for your benefit. And Solomon’s.”
“How’d she take it?” His brows are knit in a bushy, dark line over his blue eyes.
I walk my coffee mug and his to the sink and rinse them out.
“Well, she cried, of course. Don’t think I fell for those crocodile tears for a single damn second, either. Lazy girls are always convincing criers. They have to be, because it’s their ace in the hole when their crappy work ethic catches up to them and they get sacked. Keep that in mind next time you’re trying to fire some girl who’s on a crying jag. You need to toughen up, Pop.”
My dad stands up and gives me a fierce look, then walks over and grabs me into a bear hug.
“Why the hell were you born a girl, Benelli? If you were a son, we’d have already take over the entire East Coast together.”
I kiss his cheek, my heart sad over all the things his sons have done to let him down and the trick of fate that made it impossible for me to help him the way he needs me to, no matter how capable I am and how much I want to.
“Well, I am definitely glad I wasn’t born a boy. And since I’m a girl, I’m off to get ready for a nice, relaxing spa day.”
“You girls treat yourselves.”
He opens his wallet and I try to press the money back, but my father insists, and I reluctantly take it, enjoying the glimmer of happiness that flits too quickly across his face, replaced with that frown of perpetual worry when he thinks I’m not looking.
Mom and I pretend to enjoy our pampering, but I know her mind is on my out-of-control siblings and my mind is wrapped around Damian. She’ll notice if I look too anxious when I check my phone, so I try to do it with a blank face.
A woman with strong forearms rubs her hands in a slow, luxurious rhythm down along my spine and up again. I breathe the smell of lavender and a mix of other essential oils deep into my lungs, hoping I can be chemically tricked into not worrying by all the supposed relaxers in the aromas.
“Benelli, your father and I have been meaning to ask you if you wanted to visit Aunt Abony a few weeks earlier than we’d planned this summer. A couple of the families will be going to the lake, and your father and I were thinking we’d join up later. I know I’ve been so neglectful about getting any meetings and dates lined up for you.” Her voice is lazy and a little slurred from the way her cheek is pressed hard into the fluffy towel under her face.
Aunt Abony is my father’s sister, a crazy artist who lives in Hungary on the outskirts of the Youngblood family property. I love her cozy, bright house and the long days spent lounging near the lake, walking through the woods, and reading curled in a big chair in a sunny corner.
But I have things to patch up here, with Damian.
“I’d rather leave with the family, Mama.” I take a minute to breathe against the long, slow rub of the masseuse’s hands on my skin. “There’s plenty of time for all that this fall, when you’ve had some time to relax.”
What I’m saying isn’t exactly a lie, but it burns my tongue to tell it.
“Such a good girl. So sensible,” Mama murmurs sleepily.
I cut a look in her direction and see that her eyelids are fluttering shut. When a long snore rattles from her nose, I tell the woman giving her a rubdown to extend her massage by twenty minutes and excuse myself to the private bathrooms.
Wrapped in a thick terrycloth bathrobe, I press Damian’s contact on my phone and wait through the rings. I leave a short, simple, direct message that might be a little bitchy, but oh well. I’m feeling pissed. If he wasn’t hell-bent on dragging his feet and being a stubborn ass, we’d have announced our engagement and he might be headed to the lake with my family in a few weeks. I don’t think there’s enough time for that now.
By the time we get back home, I need to get busy helping Ithaca through a tricky new set of theorems, then there’s dinner and coffee with mom, so the night clicks by quickly. I decide it will be easy enough to wait Damian out.
And it is.
Fairly easy.
For another day or two.
But when one or two days slide into the first full week, then a second, I start to get unnerved. We’re both passionate, aggressive people. It’s part of why we were always so attracted to each other. But, no matter how brutal our verbal sparring could get, nothing ever kept us from talking for more than a week. Usually a single text or call from me had Damian crawling back, begging for us to figure it all out and make it work again.
My pride stings more and more as the days go by, like an infected bug bite spreading a little pool of venom wider and wider into my system. Finally the burn is too much to bear, and I push my resistance aside and tell my parents I’m going to check on some rental properties my father had been eyeing for a few weeks. Instead, I head straight to Damian’s work.
I know something serious is wrong the minute my heels click on the lobby tiles. Damian’s cousin, Freddy, gets up from behind the glossy front desk, wipes his hands on his dark suit pants nervously, and heads in my direction.
“Hey, Benelli, hey, uh, whatcha doin’ here? Uh, you didn’t call first?” He licks his lips nervously and tries to clear his throat, but it sounds like he’s got a dog’s squeaky toy stuck in his esophagus.
“When do I ever call first, Freddy? I just stopped by to say hello.”
I breeze right past Freddy’s skinny frame, ignoring his attempts to call me back to the lobby while I march in a determined line right up to Damian’s door to get some answers about why he hasn’t been returning any of my calls.
Before I put my hand on the doorknob, I have a pitching feeling low in my gut, like my stomach is a rowboat on the ocean in a hurricane. But it’s never been my nature to hold back, and that’s even more true when it comes to confronting the bad.
Better to just come face to face with whatever scares you, plant your feet, square your shoulders, and deal with it.
Except I’m not exactly expecting to come face to face with a pair of perfect, gorgeous, bobbing breasts.
I fossilize right there in the doorway. My lungs, my heart, my brain, my entire body just turn to stone, and I can’t force my feet to take a single step in any direction. Damian is so intent on the moaning girl and the quivering boobs and the frantic thrusting, it takes him a few seconds to look up.
Funny how very, very long a few seconds can be.
Long and brain-searing.
And heart-stampeding.
And air-choking.
All my stoniness avalanches away suddenly, freeing me to whirl around and run past Freddy, who’s wringing his hands and biting his lips, a look of sheer horror making his rodent-like face even more unattractive.
I hear Damian barrel past him, and when I glance back, my now ex-boyfriend or ex-
fiancé
or ex-whatever-the-hell-he-is is making a desperate attempt to yank his pants up.
“Benelli! Wait! I can explain! Wait a minute, please.”
I propel myself forward, forward, always forward and keep my eyes wide and dry and my heart tucked and shielded from all of this sudden, forceful calamity. I’ll let it out later and allow it to ache and bleed. I’ll let myself cry my eyes red and puffy, and let my body go weak and slack-muscled over this hideous, unbelievable, out-of-nowhere betrayal.
But not now. I can’t now.
“There’s nothing to say, Damien!” I call, fumbling for my keys and popping the locks.
Once he manages to get his pants fastened around his hips, he overtakes me quickly, his face crumpled with…what? Regret? Self-loathing? Upset?
“Benelli,” he pants, winded from his sprint and the manic exercise of his earlier recreation. “Look at me for a minute. What you saw…I’m sorry. I wanted to call you. You have no idea how many times I wanted to pick up the phone and just…straighten things out with us. That girl? She’s just a hookup, okay? I didn’t think you were interested anymore so—”
“So you decided to screw around with some random ‘hookup’ instead of just calling me?” My fingers are curled around my car door handle, and I twist around to face him, my arm behind my back, ready to swing the door open and shut and race away at a moment’s warning.
“Princess—”
“Do
not
call me that,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
His face is so handsome and sorry and upset all at once. “Listen, I’m a man. I have needs. And I needed you, but you weren’t there for me.”
“So this is because I wouldn’t sleep with you?” My head spins and my knees go so weak, I have to lean hard against the side of my car to keep from sliding down onto the gravel under my feet.
He runs a hand through his hair and paces back and forth before he stops and points at me.
“You wouldn’t sleep with me, you wouldn’t accept my proposal, you wouldn’t agree to start a life with me. What exactly were you expecting me to hold out for?”
“That’s not how it works.” My voice cracks in a whisper. “It’s not like that, Damian. It’s not ultimatums, it’s compromises—”
“Oh, yeah?” he interrupts with a sneer. “Compromises? Or you badgering the hell out of me until I agreed to do exactly what you want me to do?” My gasp murders his sneer, and he clasps his hands behind his neck and hangs his head. “Maybe this is all for the best.” He starts out looking at the gravel, but his eyes flick up to meet mine, and his look is all sorrow.
“For the best?” I repeat in a daze.
“Yeah. Maybe you and me…maybe it was never meant to be, you know?” He steps forward, but I slam my body tight to the car, as far from him as I can possibly get, because the thought of his hands on me after they were all over that other girl actually makes me feel like hordes of bugs are nesting under my skin. “Maybe we just don’t make a hell of a lot of sense together. I always admired how strong you are, Benelli. How smart and determined you can be. I felt like we had the same goals, the same personality. Now I think maybe we’re too alike. And I don’t want to spend my time butting heads with the person I’m supposed to love.”
His features are twisted like he’s in some degree of emotional torture. Like he’s maybe truly sorry. And his words are the kindest version of heart-shatteringly painful.
It could almost be an amicable break-up.
Except that I walked in on him fucking the brains out of some random girl.
“Have a nice life, Damian.”
I yank the car door open, and this tiny sliver, razorblade-thin in the core of my heart, is still sure he’s going to rush the door and pull me into his arms.
I would then, of course, have to slap him across the face or spit at him or something, but I’d feel so much better knowing that the end of this relationship, the end of all of these months of planning and dreaming and being so happy together, actually hurts him and he’s willing to fight to keep that end from crashing on top of him.
But I must have put a powerful set of blinders on a long time ago, because Damian is already walking back into the offices before I can pull more than a hundred feet away.
I assume to resume his afternoon delight.
Chills worm up and down my spine and cover my arms. I hold it all in and drive, just drive, until I make it home and rush past Mama, who wants to know what I thought of the rental properties and what’s wrong with me. I make it to the bathroom just in time to lose my lunch in the toilet.
My mother is right there, rubbing my back and murmuring soothing words. “Oh,
lelkem
, what’s wrong? You’ve worn yourself out, and you’re sick now. There, there, let’s rinse your mouth and come to bed.”
My mother lays out pajamas and straightens my room while I change. She helps tuck me in like I’m a little girl, and, though I’ve been lamenting my lack of freedom lately, having her cluck over me feels so good. “I bet you caught that awful flu that’s going around. I’ll make you some ginger tea and leave you alone to sleep it off.”
I nod, my face pressed to the cool fabric of my pillow. I drink the tea she brings me and watch as she leaves the room. I count the seconds it will take her to get back to the kitchen, where she’ll be busy getting an elaborate home-cooked meal ready for my family and, probably, where she’ll make a fresh batch of