46. CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 46
ARI
“ O K, what’s going on?” I grab the remote from the coffee table and turn off the TV, swinging around so I’m sitting cross-legged and facing my best friend.
“What do you mean?” Sophie feigns confusion. We’re sitting on her couch in her apartment above the Millers’ garage.
“Come on. Out with it. You’ve been distracted all day and, come to think of it, you were quiet all week. What gives?”
She sighs and visibly deflates. “Something’s up with Gino.”
“ Up how?”
She turns toward me. “It’s so weird. It’s like someone flipped a switch one day. Last Tuesday, actually. That was exactly the day. We were hot and heavy, and he was calling and texting me all the time, and stopping by just to say goodnight. And then last Tuesday he had to cancel dinner plans with me last-minute, which was totally fine.”
Sophie adjusts her glasses. “When he canceled, he was so apologetic, but he also sounded a little off. I asked if he was OK, and he said he was just distracted by a big project at work. The next day, I didn’t get a text from him until late in the day, which is weird because I always wake up to a ‘good morning’ text from him. At least I did. And when I called him later that night he just sounded … sad. And ever since then, he’s been acting differently. He hardly reaches out at all, and when I call or text, he always responds, but it’s short.”
“Shit.” I reach out a hand and place it on her thick forearm.
“I swear, Ari”—Sophie puts a hand on her chest—“I swear I wasn’t doing the thing where I try to push him away because I’m being self-destructive. I was in. I was all-in.”
“I know you were, Soph.” I suck in a lungful of air through my nose. “Wait, why are we talking past-tense? This doesn’t mean you guys are over. He’s obviously going through something, and it sucks that he hasn’t been open with you, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be with you.”
Sophie wipes away tears. “But why would he totally shut me out like that? I don’t get it. What did I do wrong?”
My chest tightens. “Nothing, Sophie. I’m sure you did nothing wrong. And even if he had a change of heart, it can’t be anything you did that was a turnoff, because he was freaking crazy about you. He still is. He has to be. I know it.”
“I thought so, too,” she says with a sniffle.
I hop up and head to the little kitchenette to grab a tissue for my best friend, who wipes her nose with it. “Anyway,” she shakes her head and her hands. “I’ve been dwelling on it for days, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. At least, not for a little while. There’s nothing I can do about it unless I decide to show up on his doorstep and demand that he let me in—physically and emotionally—and I’m just not sure if I’m there yet. So, let’s just move on.”
“Got it!” I say a little too animatedly. “Moving on … This involves manis, pedis, and lots of Mexican food!”
ETHAN
I feel like it’s a bit of a betrayal, coming to the pub to see Lena without telling Ari. And my skin crawls with the idea that Axel could stop in at any moment. I could easily go to his house. I think about it at least six times a day. But I haven’t been back there since the night I trashed his place. I’m taking a page from Ari’s book. I’m trying to change. I can’t hold onto my anger and desire to strangle the life out of that motherfucker anymore. It just leaves me ill.
Instead, I look forward to all my days with Ari—and that future involves helping her figure out a missing piece of her past. A piece Lena has.
I walk up to the pine and take a seat, and the bartender nods in my direction. “What’re you having?”
I shake my head, then rethink it. “You got Genny Light on tap?”
He nods.
“I’ll take that please.” He fills a glass and places it in front of me. “Is Lena working?”
He stares at me a second then answers, “She’s in the back. Should be out any minute.”
I give a stiff smile and take a sip. Sitting quietly and drinking my beer as time ticks by, the bartender looks my way a few times, and when he sees I’m almost finished points at my glass but I shake my head.
Finally, the door to the kitchen swings open and Lena comes walking out, tying a black apron around her waist. She’s wearing a pair of jean shorts and sneakers, and a bright orange T-shirt with a logo on it. Her dirty-blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail.
“I rolled a bunch of silverware,” she says while approaching the bar, and the bartender nods in response.
“You got a visitor.” He jerks his head my way.
“Oh?” She turns and starts walking in my direction. I see her eyes pinch together as she tries to place me, and then her steps falter, but she continues. When she stops in front of me, her eyes trail and down my body as I sit perched on the stool.
“My God! What the hell kind of hormones are you taking?”
I can’t help but laugh. For God’s sake, if she wasn’t attached to such a piece of shit human being, I might almost tolerate her.
Actually, no, I couldn’t.
“Hi, Lena.” I don’t move to touch her in any fashion—hug or handshake.
“Ethan.” She acknowledges me with a nod as she places her hands on her hips. “This is unexpected. What, uh, what’s up?”
I turn on my stool to face her. “It’s about Ari.” I scratch my short beard, and she raises her eyes at me. “Who are Shirley and Bonnie Wilcox?”
I watch as Lena’s eyes widen, and then her face falls as defeat washes over her. I don’t prompt her to answer. I just wait for her to start talking. I’m not leaving until she does.
After a moment, Lena steps up and perches herself on the stool next to me. Resting her arms on the bar, she calls to the bartender, “Joe, can we get two shots of Jack over here?” He doesn’t speak as he steps up, flips two shot glasses over and pours the amber liquid into them. She picks one up and raises it to me. “Cheers?”
I shake my head. “Nah, I already had a beer.”
“You rebel, you.” Lena throws her shot back.
“Ari doesn’t drink, and I don’t drink much these days, either.”
“Oh, right.” She takes the other glass and shoots that as well before pushing both to the side and resting her forearms back on the sticky bar top. “Bonnie Wilcox is Ari’s biological mother.”
I stare at her, and she side-eyes me. “What—how long? What the hell, Lena?”
“Shhhh, keep your voice down, please.” She has the decency to look embarrassed.
“You’ve known all along who her mother is?” She nods. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I push away from the bar and pace backward a few steps before coming back. “You knew how hung up she was on finding her mother. You knew!”
“Exactly.” I sink back down onto the stool as I stare at her. “It’s complicated,” she says.
“I’m pretty smart. I can follow.”
She breathes in and out through her nose.
“George and I dated for years before we got married. We met in college and had a lot of good times. We continued dating long after, and when he proposed, I knew he was only doing it because he felt he needed to make a move one way or the other. He loved me. I never doubted that. But it wasn’t that all-consuming, I’ll-die-without-you kind of love you read about. But we got married, and we were happy, for a while …”
Lena gets Joe’s attention and points to the tap, and he begins filling a glass.
“But then he started to get distant. It took a while for me to figure it out, but eventually I noticed that he was, well, happy. And I knew he was happy because of someone else. I deduced that it had to either be someone at work, or at the nonprofit where he volunteered to help with people with disabilities. The latter more likely, because everyone there was just so good , you know? Fundraising and volunteering and all that.”
Joe places Lena’s beer down in front of her and she immediately picks it up and takes a sip.
“Anyway, that gets even more complicated, but the end result is he got this other woman, Bonnie, pregnant. He was honest with me when it happened. He and I hadn’t really talked about having kids, even though we were married. We were avoiding it, probably because we both knew our relationship was a dead end. But when he told me, I could tell he was torn apart because he betrayed me, but he was also so fucking happy. I could see it. And that just gutted me. So, there he was, tied to someone else forever. Someone he obviously loved.”
I nod as I look down at my hands clasped on the bar top.
“And then I did something I’m not proud of. Something really selfish.” She looks me in the eye. “I told him that he and I needed to raise the baby. I told him I would go to the courts and tell them Bonnie wasn’t fit to be a mother, and I’d blackmail him and get him into trouble—”
“Blackmail? How?”
“—and that I would make sure the baby went into foster care if he and I didn’t raise her. Because that was the only way I could keep George. And I must have been convincing enough because he went along with it, and we got custody of Arlene.”
Lena gulps half her beer. “But he hated me every day after she was born. I could see it in every look he gave me and hear it in every word he muttered. And I hated Arlene for being the thing that drove a wedge between me and him, even though I knew deep down it wasn’t her.”
I blow out a breath. “That’s so fucked up.”
“I know,” she concedes. “And then George died, and I was stuck with this baby. Axel came into the picture, and he was willing to help take care of both of us. Well, take care of is a bit generous, but he tolerated us both.”
She pushes her half-empty glass to the side and we are both silent for a few minutes.
“So, the house?” I ask. “How did you pay it off?”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “You did your research, huh?” I shrug. “Surprisingly, I have made good money waiting tables,” she says coyly. “Axel couldn’t pay his mortgage, and I wanted leverage, so I told him I’d buy it from him. He loved the idea.”
“Why did you want Bonnie’s mother notified if anything happened to you?” I ask, trying to get to the point.
She swivels to face me. “Because I didn’t want Axel to inherit the house. And when Arlene was a kid, it made sense to notify her grandmother, who could figure out that the house should go to Arlene, since she was my next of kin—sort of.”
“Why Ari’s grandmother? Why not her mother?” I ask.
She smiles. “You’ll see.” I tilt my head in question. “I assume you want to go meet her.”
“Do you have a contact number?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I have their last known address. Where Bonnie lived with her mother. I have no idea if they’re still there, but I also have no reason to believe they would have moved.”
I scoff and lean back on my stool. “All this time you knew. And with all the shit she’s been through, you never offered up this information to Ari?”
“I told you, Ethan, I’m not proud of my actions. But I’ve been honest with you today. I know what I did was wrong, and I’m forever sorry for the way I just stood by and let Axel treat Arlene. I kicked him out, by the way. He’s come in here looking for me, but I don’t give him the time of day.”
The idea that Axel comes in here—that he could come in now—makes my skin prickle. “You said you have an address?”
“I have it at home. I’m pretty sure I know where it is. Meet me back here tomorrow?”
I nod, looking off at nothing in the distance. Lost in thought.
“I start at noon.”