Chapter Twenty-Two
Chap-ter Twenty-Two
F or the four-teenth con-sec-u-tive day since she and Adam had bro-ken up, Dina took a walk through Mor-ris-town. Un-able to stay still for long, lunch breaks were the worst. She’d spend the en-tire hour star-ing at the door of the li-brary, ex-pect-ing Adam to walk in and beg her for-give-ness. So she walked, try-ing to fo-cus on any-thing—items in store win-dows, how cold it was when the wind blew, pity for the home-less woman sit-ting in the green—any-thing other than Adam.
But to-day, she couldn’t stop her mind from pic-tur-ing a re-union. She’d be com-ing out of a store and bump into some-one. That some-one would be Adam and he’d grovel un-til she for-gave him. Not that she would, but it was nice to imag-ine. A pass-ing car honked and she jumped, star-tled out of her reverie. Her stom-ach dropped—she’d walked up to Adam’s of-fice. Or rather, his for-mer of-fice. Spin-ning around to head the other way, she banged into some-one.
“Watch where you’re go-ing,” a deep voice said.
When she looked up at his face, she blanched. It wasn’t Adam. But it was worse. She’d bumped into his dad.
“S…sorry.” The smell of his cologne trans-ported her back to din-ner at his house, when Adam had been so-lic-i-tous of her even as he was be-ing hu-mil-i-ated by his dad. Her throat tight-ened.
He stepped back and frowned. “You’re Dina, right? My son’s girl-friend.”
Oh God, he re-mem-bered her. “Sorry for bump-ing into you.”
“That’s al-right. How are you?”
She nod-ded, hop-ing he’d take the ac-tion for an an-swer. “How are you?”
“Very well. I’m on my way back from a client meet-ing. How’s Adam? I haven’t spo-ken to him in a while.”
She swal-lowed, ig-nor-ing for the mo-ment the sad fact fa-ther and son didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could have this con-ver-sa-tion, not with-out dis-solv-ing into a pud-dle on the side-walk.
“We’re not to-gether any-more.”
He ush-ered her into the lobby of the build-ing and the warm air slammed into her, mak-ing her gasp.
“Oh, that’s too bad. You were a great in-flu-ence on him.”
She bit her lip. “I have to get back to work.”
“You’re too good for him,” he said. “I knew it from the mo-ment I saw you. I hoped it would work out, that he could change, but I had my doubts.”
The con-ver-sa-tion would have been awk-ward if she had still been dat-ing Adam—what kind of fa-ther spoke ill of his son to the girl-friend—but now that they were bro-ken up, it was even worse. The phys-i-cal re-sem-blance she’d noted vaguely at din-ner was high-lighted now in the harsh win-ter sun-light. The space their bod-ies took up was sim-i-lar and their tone of voice, while not ex-act, was close enough to make her ache. All she wanted to do was for-get Adam, and his fa-ther was mak-ing her want to de-fend him.
Her blood pres-sure rose and her head be-gan to pound. Adam did not de-serve de-fend-ing. Not af-ter the way he’d treated her. How dare his fa-ther make her feel this way?
“Adam is a grown man. He’s ca-pa-ble of what-ever he wants on his own. He doesn’t now, nor has he ever, needed me.”
With that, she turned and walked back into the cold, but not be-fore see-ing a glim-mer of ad-mi-ra-tion in his fa-ther’s eyes.
Damn them both.
Adam sifted through his email and shook his head. Still no word from any of the seven firms he’d in-ter-viewed with. The knot in his stom-ach tight-ened. No call-backs, no ques-tions, noth-ing. He sup-posed it was bet-ter than a re-jec-tion, but there was lit-tle so-lace in that thought, since he still didn’t have a pay-check com-ing in and he was loathe to ask his fa-ther for a loan. Just the thought of ap-proach-ing the man made his shoul-ders ache from ten-sion.
How-ever, if he didn’t get a job soon, he might have to. Bile rose in his throat and he swal-lowed the bit-ter taste.
Switch-ing gears, he looked on his com-puter at his bills com-ing due. He had enough saved in the bank for this month and pos-si-bly next, but sweat gath-ered on his up-per lip as he looked at his list of ex-penses: rent on his “lux-ury” apart-ment, his BMW lease and law school loan. Those were the big-gies. But then there were his ev-ery-day ex-penses: food, phone, ca-ble and clothes. And oth-ers he couldn’t think of right now. His friends ex-pected him to so-cial-ize a cer-tain amount, and while he’d cut back af-ter his breakup with Dina, they wouldn’t let him con-tinue to live the life a her-mit for long. Al-though he didn’t need ex-pen-sive work clothes right now, he still had a look to main-tain, es-pe-cially dur-ing in-ter-views. And a guy had to eat. He might be jump-ing the gun a lit-tle, but he was start-ing to get ner-vous.
Should he look for a dif-fer-ent job to tide him over? It would keep him from hav-ing to ask his fa-ther for money, but what would he do? Bar-tend? He’d seen help-wanted signs at plenty of the bars he fre-quented. The places did great and were al-ways packed, which meant good tips and plenty of work. But it was one thing to be a pa-tron. It was some-thing com-pletely dif-fer-ent to work there and let his friends and ac-quain-tances see him. What would they think of him? Temp work? He wasn’t qual-i-fied for much, and what if he was placed in the of-fice of a for-mer client? God, the em-bar-rass-ment would be aw-ful.
No, he’d have to wait it out a lit-tle longer. If he didn’t get a job of-fer in two more weeks, he’d eval-u-ate his other op-tions. In the mean-time, he’d wait.
His ring-ing phone pulled him out of his wor-ries about the fu-ture, un-til he saw his caller ID. His fa-ther. Crap. He was tempted to let it go to voice-mail, but the slight, but im-prob-a-ble, chance that he was call-ing to of-fer him his old job back made him an-swer the phone.
“Adam, we need to meet.”
Should have let it go to voice mail. “About what?”
“Things I’d rather not dis-cuss on the phone.”
Great. A crick formed in his neck. “I’m busy, Dad. I’ll give you a call when my cal-en-dar clears up.”
“No, we’ll set some-thing up now. Your cal-en-dar can’t be that full, you’re not work-ing for me and I haven’t heard of any-one else hir-ing you yet.”
Score one for good ole dad. “Okay, when?”
“Sun-day, eleven o’clock. The house. And don’t bring any of your women.”
Adam hung up the phone and banged his head against the wall. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.
Dina bur-rowed un-der the quilt as she sat on the hearth in front of the lit fire-place, hands wrapped around her steam-ing teacup, and still she couldn’t warm up.
“Deen, come back over here,” Tracy said, jug-gling the baby on the sofa. “You’re go-ing to catch on fire.”
She shook her head and stared into the flames. The yel-low edges re-minded her of Adam’s hair, and tears leaked from her eyes. Dammit, she should be done cry-ing over that jerk.
“Why did Adam’s dad up-set you so much?” Tracy asked.
Dina had dragged her-self back to work af-ter her lunch break and hid-den her-self in one of the stor-age rooms for most of the rest of the day. When Tracy had found her, she’d pulled her up and brought her to her house. Joe had taken one look at Dina, grabbed his jacket and left the house, with just a quick kiss for Tracy. Dina didn’t want to talk about it, had given Tracy only the barest of de-tails, but she was her best friend and de-served to have her ques-tions an-swered. With a sigh, she turned to-ward Tracy.
“Be-cause he made me feel sorry for Adam and I don’t want to feel sorry for him. I want to hate him, and I do…mostly.”
“I still can’t be-lieve he thinks you set him up.”
“I know. He was the one who forced me to take him to the stupid re-union. Why would I have re-sisted so hard if I wanted to set him up?”
“You know,” Tracy said, “for a lawyer, he’s not be-ing log-i-cal.”
Dina shrugged and brought the tea to her lips. The liq-uid burned her throat, but she didn’t care.
“And for a guy, he’s be-ing a dick.”
She sput-tered and choked on the tea that was al-ready half-swal-lowed. Her eyes wa-tered fur-ther and Tracy rushed for-ward to pat her back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you choke.”
Dina rested her head on Tracy’s shoul-der and stroked the baby. “That’s ac-tu-ally the best thing any-one has said to me since he broke up with me.” She played with the baby’s feet in their footy pa-ja-mas. “I’m an-gry, I’m hurt, and I want to be al-lowed to feel those things. But run-ning into his fa-ther made me feel bad for him, and why the hell does he get my sym-pa-thy? I’m the one who was wronged. I shouldn’t care at all what his fa-ther thinks of him.”
“Would be nice if we could just turn a switch in our brains,” Tracy said. “But you’re a good per-son, so of course you care. Plus, you love him.”
She swung around to face Tracy. “What? I don’t love him.” She had thought she did. She’d been try-ing to fig-ure out the right time to tell him. And then he’d ac-cused her of trap-ping him and those feel-ings had died. It proved she hadn’t re-ally loved him, didn’t it?
Tracy tilted her head and gave her a look like she didn’t be-lieve her.
“I don’t. I might have thought I did, or could, but if those feel-ings can dis-ap-pear when he makes an ac-cu-sa-tion at me, how true could they re-ally have been?”
“Or, it’s be-cause you re-ally do love him that you feel sorry for him. I don’t think you’d feel so emo-tional over a guy you didn’t love.”
Dina turned back to the fire. It wasn’t fair. She’d fi-nally fallen in love—head-over-heels, ev-ery cliché ever writ-ten about, in love—and it was with Adam. Golden-haired, way above her ev-ery-thing, Adam. And what was more amaz-ing? He loved her back. In fact, since she hadn’t had a chance to tell him her feel-ings, he loved her “first.” She should have been giddy. She should have swooned. She should have at least got-ten to hug her-self. In-stead, she’d missed out on ev-ery-thing be-cause of Ash-ley.
And this was what Tracy chose to fo-cus on?
“You’re not mak-ing me feel bet-ter. So I loved him. Big deal. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him or to spend time think-ing about how he loved me. It’s moot at this point, be-cause he hates me. I’m an-gry, and he and I are fin-ished.”
Tracy put the baby down in her playpen and gave Dina a hug. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. What-ever you’re feel-ing for him is jus-ti-fied. And you’re right, he’s the one who’s in the wrong here, not you. Also, he has no idea what he’s miss-ing. His dad is an even big-ger ass than he is, so don’t let his be-hav-ior make you ques-tion yours.”
Dina’s phone rang and Tracy reached for it. “Want to an-swer it?”
She shook her head no. There was no one, other than Tracy, whom she wanted to talk to.
“I think we need a girls night out,” Tracy said.
Dina shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go any-where right now.”
“I know that, and I can’t with Peanut, here, any-way. But Sat-ur-day night you and I are go-ing out. There’s a film fes-ti-val at the uni-ver-sity. We’ll go and for-get all about Adam and his dad.”
“Okay.” Dina gave Tracy a hug and kissed the baby. Her smell car-ried her back to the day she and Adam had babysat and she blinked. She was not go-ing to cry. Not again. She would think of some-thing else—any-thing else—and some-how get over Mr. Flashy-pants.
Ex-cept as she made her way home, some-thing Tracy had said ear-lier stuck with her. “For a lawyer, he wasn’t be-ing log-i-cal.” She re-played the sen-tence in her mind, as she got ready for bed. Once un-der the cov-ers, star-ing out the win-dow into the dark-ness, she tried to fig-ure it out. He wasn’t be-ing log-i-cal, like his pro-fes-sion re-quired him to be. There-fore, his re-ac-tion was more per-sonal. She bolted up-right. From a per-sonal per-spec-tive, Adam was al-ways con-cerned about his rep-u-ta-tion and afraid of what oth-ers would think of him.
He’d ac-cused her of set-ting him up, which aside from be-ing wrong wasn’t log-i-cal. And he’d know that. So what was he afraid of her find-ing out?