Coming Home (49 page)

When she picked up the brown dress, Holly turned to Leah. “You need to buy this. It looked amazing on you.”

Leah shook her head. “I have nowhere to wear a dress like this,” she said, taking it from her and hanging it on the rack.

“Maybe not right now, but you will one day. This dress needs to be on reserve in your closet. It’s too perfect on you. I’m not taking no for an answer,” she said, taking the dress off the rack and hanging it over her arm with the red one before walking to the register.

“Not taking no for an answer?” Leah mumbled to herself. “Shocking.”

“I heard that,” Holly called over her shoulder.

They paid for their dresses, and as they were walking out of the department store, Holly pressed a hand to her stomach.

“I’m starving. Can we stop and get something quick?”

Leah shrugged. “If you want.”

“I’m dying for one of those Greek salads from that place in the food court. You want one?”

“I’m not really that hungry,” Leah said.

“Get one. You can pick at it, and if you don’t finish it, you can take it home.”

Leah sighed, resigning herself to the fact that Holly was going to get her way in every aspect of today’s outing.

A few minutes later, they were sitting at a small table in the corner of the food court with their salads on plastic trays, and Holly smiled.

“Thanks for being a trouper today.”

Leah smiled softly, reaching to open her bottle of water.

“So, since I forced you out of your comfort zone and you were such a good sport about it,” Holly said as she sifted through her salad, “you can call the shots now. Do you want to talk about him, or not talk about him?”

Leah lifted her eyes to see Holly watching her as she took a bite of her salad.

The shards in her chest came to life, twisting and piercing and slicing.

God, she wanted to. She wanted to say his name. She wanted to hear his name. She wanted to talk about him every minute of every day of every week until she could make sense of everything that had happened.

Until she could figure out a way back into his heart.

But whenever she thought about him, it hurt so badly she could hardly breathe through it.

She couldn’t stand not being part of his life anymore—couldn’t stand the thought of him alone in that place. She hated picturing him in a cell, wondering if he was sad, or scared, or angry. Wondering if he was lonely. Wondering if he thought of her even a fraction of the times she thought about him.

“I feel like I can’t breathe without him,” she said, her chin trembling as the words left her mouth. “I miss him.”

“Of course you do,” Holly said. “Let yourself miss him. Don’t fight that.”

Leah nodded as two tears slipped over her lashes, and she swiped at them quickly.

“But what you’ve been doing these past few weeks? That’s not missing him. That’s
mourning
him. There’s a difference.”

Leah raised her eyes to Holly’s.

“And I’m sorry, but I won’t let you do that. It’s not over for you guys. So there’s nothing to mourn.”

“Holly—”

“Remember when we were in seventh grade,” Holly said, cutting her off, “and N’SYNC was going to be on TRL? And we camped out in Times Square for two days so we could see them when they arrived?”

Leah pulled her brow together as she swiped at another tear. “Yeah.”

“And you had your whole plan. Do you remember?”

The corner of Leah’s mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile. “Yeah. I was going to sing for Justin Timberlake so he would take me on tour with the band.”

Holly laughed as she took another bite of her salad. “And what happened when he finally walked by you?”

“You shoved me, and I face-planted in front of everyone.”

“Hold on,” Holly said, holding up her hand, “what happened
before
that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happened before I pushed you?”

Leah shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Nothing. And why not? You had a plan. You practiced for weeks trying to make your voice sound a little less like a cat getting a root canal.”

Leah threw her napkin at Holly and she batted it away easily. “You were ready,” she said, not missing a beat. “So why didn’t you go through with it?”

“I don’t know,” Leah said, sifting through her salad. “I panicked.”

“Right. You freaked, and you bailed. So…I shoved you.”

“And I landed flat on my face in front of him with my skirt practically over my head!”

Holly pointed at Leah with her fork. “That wasn’t my fault. Who wears a skirt in the middle of January?”

A breathy laugh fell from Leah’s lips as she looked down at her salad.

“But you remember what happened after I shoved you, don’t you?”

Leah sighed. “He helped me up and asked if I was okay.”

“And?”

“And he helped me back behind the barricade.”

“And?”

Leah smiled softly. “And he signed my CD, and I got a picture with him.”

“Exactly. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Leah laughed to herself as she twirled her fork between her fingers.

After a few seconds of silence, Holly sighed in exasperation. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

She gave Leah a patronizing look. “You had a plan. You thought you were prepared. But when it was go-time, you panicked. You got scared, and you bailed.”

Leah blinked at her. “Okay?”

“Jesus, Leah! You still don’t see it?”

“See
what
?”

“That Danny’s just panicking!” she shouted. “He thought he was prepared, and he wasn’t, and it scared the shit out of him, so he backed out! It’s the same damn scenario!”

Leah stared at her friend, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. After a stunned second, she shook her head. “I don’t think—”

“He loves you,” Holly interrupted, her voice softening significantly. “You know he does, Leah. I can see it in your face, even now. He’s just scared. That’s all this is.”

Leah swiped at a fresh round of tears with shaking hands.

“He just needs someone to shove him. Hard.”

Leah laughed through a sob as she wiped her nose with her napkin, and Holly smiled as she picked her fork back up.

“So,” she said, looking pointedly at Leah. “Are you gonna shove him?”

Leah inhaled deeply as she picked apart her napkin. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I can. If he even wants me to. I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Alright then, here’s the deal,
chica
,” Holly said, her expression turning serious. “I’m going to give you as much time as you need. I’m going to let you miss him. I’m going to let you cry rivers upon rivers if you feel like you need to, and you can talk about him as much as you want, until his name sounds like nails on a chalkboard if it makes you feel better. But I will
not
let you keep doing what you’ve been doing these past few weeks. If this is gonna get fixed, then one of you has to keep it together. And I don’t think it’s fair to expect it to be him.”

Leah swallowed before she nodded slowly.

“Okay then,” Holly said with a nod. “Now let’s finish these salads so we can go get some shoes.”

They spent the next hour at the mall, looking for shoes to go with their new dresses, and the entire time, Leah kept replaying Holly’s words over in her mind.

They swam through her, collecting the little splinters in her chest so that each subsequent breath seemed a little easier to take.

If this is gonna get fixed, then one of you has to keep it together.

She wanted to fix it—more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life—but she felt the same way Holly looked the day she tried to put together Evan’s entertainment center: the instructions were in front of her, all the tools right there at her disposal, and yet she didn’t know where to begin.

When Holly dropped Leah off a little while later, she gave her a hug and told her she would call her the next day, and Leah walked up the path and through the front door to the utter paradox that was her apartment. It was the only place she felt at peace, yet at the same time, it was an endless source of torture.

The fact that Danny had spent every night and practically every day at her apartment for a month before he left made his absence that much more jarring.

His memory was all around her, in every single room.

Leah walked back to her closet and hung up the bag that held her dress before she kicked off her shoes and climbed into her bed, pulling the comforter up to her chin.

And then she closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep as Holly’s words continued to course through her, gradually collecting little pieces of her fragmented heart.

“The following people have been requested at the visitor’s center: Benjamin King, Daniel DeLuca, Michael Moroney, Steven Logan, Kevin Driscoll, and Duane Tanner.”

Danny stood from his chair, putting his playing cards on the table. “You just got lucky,” he said, revealing his hand.

Theo lifted his brow at Danny’s straight flush. “Well, shit. Thank your visitor for me.”

Danny smiled as he turned to exit the rec room. If Jake had shown up just five minutes later, Danny would have undoubtedly won the pot.

Thirty-seven postage stamps.

It was their only real form of currency, and something most prisoners took very seriously. Rory, the inmate-turned-barber, charged five stamps per haircut. Terrence, the guy who ironed prisoners’ jumpsuits on visitation days, charged three stamps for his services. Any favor asked, any bet made, typically involved an exchange of stamps. After two months in this place, Danny still felt like a kid playing with Monopoly money.

He approached the inmates’ entrance to the center, noticing that Marco was the guard outside today. He nodded a hello to Danny before he opened the door and gestured for Danny to enter.

“Arms out, please,” he said, and Danny lifted his arms.

“You catch that game last night?” Marco asked as he patted Danny down.

Danny gave a short laugh. “Yeah. I wish I didn’t.”

“Unbelievable,” Marco said. “Highest payroll in the MLB. Sure as shit didn’t look like it yesterday.”

“A lot of those guys haven’t been hungry for a long time,” Danny said, turning so Marco could pat down his other leg. “These owners throw money at their best guys, forgetting that money makes some people complacent.”

Marco lifted his brow before he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Very well-said.” He straightened, and Danny dropped his arms. “Alright, who you got today?”

“A buddy of mine,” Danny said.

Marco nodded as he checked his watch and then recorded the start time of the visit on his clipboard.

“Alright then, Mr. DeLuca,” he said, reaching forward and opening the door for him. “Enjoy your time.”

“Thanks,” Danny replied as he stepped around him and through the door.

He walked into the visitor’s center and turned toward the table and chairs set up near the vending machine where Jake typically preferred to sit, only to find an older couple seated there, waiting for an inmate.

Danny smirked as he realized Jake would have to walk a full fifteen feet to get his Skittles now. He typically went through four or five bags per visit, as if they were a luxury he could only get there and not something he could pick up in twenty different places on the way home.

Danny turned, scanning the other side of the room for him.

And then he froze.

She was sitting at the far table against the window, her eyes on him as she rolled her mother’s bracelet between her fingers.

It had been over a month since he’d seen her—over a month since he’d had any contact with her whatsoever—but the sight of her hadn’t even come close to losing its potency.

He couldn’t afford this kind of test today. His daydreams of her, when they were furtive enough to creep in uninvited, were bad enough.

Ironically, his worst days in this place were the days he found it the easiest to be without her. At his lowest points, Danny managed to find solace and comfort in being alone—in knowing that the only person he stood to hurt was himself. The days he felt demeaned to the point of detachment, the days his thoughts ran rampant through dark corners and bleak paths for hours at a time, unable to resurface, the days he struggled to even remember a life outside these walls—those were the days he was so grateful she was out of his life. In a way it was pacifying, knowing he could spin as far out of control as he wanted with absolutely no consequences for her.

But then there were other days.

Days that Danny somehow made it to “lights out” feeling somewhat like himself. Days he was able to keep a rein on his thoughts, steering them out of sinister waters. Days when he could see an end in sight—no matter how far off it might seem—and all at once there was something to strive for.

Those were the days his heart felt like it was being shredded.

Because when things were good, he thought about her constantly. Wondering if he’d made the wrong decision. How she was holding up. Whether or not she was angry with him.

Wondering if there was even the slightest chance she might take him back when this was all over.