29. Boring, Respectable, and Stable
29
Boring, Respectable, and Stable
Banana-Spinach Smoothie
Combine a frozen banana, 1 cup fresh spinach, 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, a dollop of almond butter, 1/2 cup almond milk, and a drizzle of honey in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into a glass and drink your goddamn electrolytes, Lucie.
DANNY
W hen I flicked on the overhead lights, Frank and Walter squinted and grumbled. “Go on home, guys,” I said. “Need me to call you a ride?”
“I’ve got them,” Leo said. “And Nico and I’ll take care of the cleanup. You should worry about that.” He tipped his chin at something behind me.
I turned and spotted Lucie in the residents’ hallway. She shuffled like a zombie, and she looked just as pale. What was she doing out this late? Had something happened?
I curbed my urge to run to her and took a breath. “You sure you’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. We’ve got this. But…” He looked down at his kitchen clogs. “Could you meet me tomorrow morning? I’ve got something I want to show you.”
“Everything all right?” He’d been weird tonight, switching between wild-eyed excitement and quiet, almost guilty introspection.
“Yeah, it’s good. I just had an idea I wanted to talk to you about, but it can wait until tomorrow.”
“If you’re sure…” But I was already moving toward the hall that led to the stairs. I felt a tug in my gut like Lucie was a magnet and I was a nail.
I caught up with her on the second-floor landing. “Hey.”
“Hey, Danny.” She didn’t even try to smile. She looked dead on her feet.
“Let me take your bag.” I lifted the messenger bag from her shoulder. She shook out her arm, and that’s when I noticed the bandage, the bruise, and the hospital bracelet. “Jesus Christ! What happened?”
She slapped her other hand over her wrist. “Nothing. I mean, yeah, I had to go to the hospital, but it was only dehydration. They pumped me full of electrolytes and let me come home. They said I had to keep the bracelet on for twenty-four hours, though, in case anything else happened.”
I tugged her into my arms and held her like I could protect her from whatever “anything else” meant. And she let me. She didn’t push me away. Instead, she relaxed into my arms. I never wanted to let her go.
But she needed her bed. “Can I carry you up?”
“Carry me?” she scoffed. “There’s nothing wrong with me that twelve hours of sleep won’t cure.” She pushed away and slowly ascended the stairs. Then she looked back. “Come on.”
Joy filled me up and threatened to overflow. I bounded up the stairs after her, her bag bumping against my hip. “How’d the interview go?”
“Okay, I hope. I started to feel a little out of it toward the end, so I don’t know if I asked the right questions.” She handed me her key, and I fit it into the lock. “I’ll listen to the recording tomorrow.”
I pushed the door open and flicked on the light. Not bothering to take off her shoes, she went straight to her bedroom while I took a moment to bolt the door and slip off my sneakers. On the way to her bedroom, I set her satchel in her desk chair.
She’d flopped onto her side on the bed, her feet sticking out over the edge. I unlaced her boots and pulled off her thick socks. “These must’ve been a bitch at airport security.”
“God, yes,” she said, her voice muffled by the comforter.
“Want me to find you some pajamas?”
“Pajamas? Like anything fits. Can you do the zipper?”
I lowered the back zipper of her dress and averted my eyes. This was no time to ogle her. She was exhausted after a long day of airports, airplanes, and interviews. I wanted to shake her for going on the trip in the first place, examine every part of her to be sure she was okay, lick her pussy until she admitted she belonged here with me, and hold her forever so she’d never leave the state again.
But that was my lizard brain trying to take charge. Lucie always thought with the rational part of her brain, and none of that would make any sense to her. Finally, an idea appeared that would satisfy my caveman urge to claim her without being creepy. “I could bring you some of my T-shirts. They’d probably fit you.”
“That would be amazing.” She pushed herself up to sit. “How about that one?” She stared at my black Barb’s Bar tee.
“Yeah, I’ve got one like it downstairs.” I stood.
“Don’t go,” she said. “That one’s fine.”
“I just worked a ten-hour shift in this. It smells like sweat and beer.”
She shrugged. “Keep it then.” She let her dress fall from her shoulders and reached back to undo her bra.
As on edge as I was, I’d combust if I saw her bare breasts. There was no way I could keep my hands off her, and she needed rest. I ripped off the shirt and handed it to her. “Here. If you want it.”
She smiled, victorious, and slipped it over her head. It fell to the tops of her thighs, and there was just enough room in it for her rounded belly. It skimmed her breasts as she did a complicated shimmy to take off her bra underneath it. She sighed as she tugged the bra out of the armhole and dropped it on the floor. “Much better.”
She rose to her knees to tug back the covers, and I averted my eyes from the tantalizing glimpse of her panties and the backs of her thighs. It reminded me of yesterday’s angry sex and the blinding pleasure when I’d come inside her.
I’d been right about the trip. It had been too much. But there was no comfort in being right. She settled in bed, her curls fanning across her silk pillowcase. “You going to join me?”
“I, um, I don’t think I should.” Sex was the last thing she needed when she was this exhausted.
“You don’t want to stay, or you don’t think I want you to stay? Because I do. I want you to stay.” She met my gaze, and hers was unguarded, revealing her need. “No funny business. I promise.”
“I can’t do anything about this.” I gestured at the bulge in my jeans.
“Sure you can. You can jack off in my shower if you need to.”
“Jesus, Lucie!”
“Look, I need to go to sleep. And I’ll sleep better with you. So will you stay? Please?”
“Yeah.” Because what else could I say? “I’ll stay.” I shucked off my jeans and socks and crawled into bed beside her. “You’ve got to be the big spoon, though.” I turned my back to her.
“No problem.” When her arms came around me, the plastic bracelet scratched my chest.
I put my hand over it and the bandage on her forearm, snugging her arm tightly against my chest. Her belly pressed into my back, and I was thankful for the layer of cotton between us that let me pretend it was an extra-firm pillow and not the sexiest woman I’d ever met cuddling me. “Night, Lucie.”
“G’night.” Her exhale tickled the back of my neck, and in less than a minute, her breathing evened out. I stayed awake a while longer, waiting for my erection to soften and wishing I could fall asleep like this every night for the rest of my life.
T he next morning, I left a big insulated cup of water and a spinach-banana smoothie on Lucie’s counter while she slept. It was unappetizingly green, but I’d dosed it liberally with honey, so I hoped she’d drink it to replenish her electrolytes.
I didn’t want to leave her, but I’d promised to meet Leo. The address he’d texted me turned out to be an empty storefront next to a dry cleaner’s. On the dingy front window, I could make out the faint outline of the word DELI.
“Hey!” Leo bounced out of the front door like he’d had a full eight hours of sleep and not five or six. “Come in!”
“What are you doing in there?” I looked up and down the street, my gaze lingering on the business next door, which looked way more reputable than this one. “Is this a drug house?” I whispered. “Are you huffing dry cleaning chemicals?”
“What the fuck?” he said. “I don’t do shit like that anymore. Come inside.”
Inside was no better. The linoleum floor was so faded that I couldn’t distinguish the pattern. There was wood paneling halfway up the walls, and more of the dated panels covered the small counter to the left. Behind that were ancient refrigerated display cases. Everything looked like it had been installed at least a decade before I was born. To the right was a picture frame, but it didn’t hold a long-expired certificate from the health department. It showcased a bullet hole in the wall.
“Cool, yeah?” Leo’s eyebrows had lifted practically to his hairline, and he wore the same expression as when we used to go to the arcade as kids and he saw the neon-lit dance pad of his favorite game.
“Ugh, not unless you’re a cockroach.”
His smile dipped, but then it broadened. “I haven’t shown you the best part.”
He went through a set of double doors in the back. I followed him into the darkened space.
“The lights are still off, but…ta-da!” He flicked on his phone’s flashlight and illuminated a stainless steel kitchen. In the center was a long prep counter. In back was a stove with a griddle. On the left side side were a couple of refrigerators, and a dishwashing station was on the right. It was easily twice as big as the kitchen at Barb’s. Though I shuddered to think of what it looked like with the lights on. Or how many insects might be hiding inside the walls.
“Impressive, huh?” he asked.
“Impressive,” I echoed, “that it hasn’t been condemned and torn down.”
“So the storefront’s a little dated. All this stuff is perfectly serviceable. Or I bet it is once we turn on the power and gas.”
“Who’s we? We don’t need this. We’re six weeks away from buying Barb’s.”
“That’s not what Tad said. He said he was taking it over.”
I clenched my fists. “Tad’s a fucking liar.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, but I heard the disappointment in his voice. “You always said you wanted to raise kids in the suburbs, in a place with a yard. I figured it was your idea to let Barb sell to Tad instead so you could use the cash for a down payment on a house.”
“No.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “I promised you we’d buy the bar together, and I keep my promises. I’d have talked to you if I was thinking of changing my mind.”
“This is me offering you an out, then. Uncle Gio said he’d be my silent partner in a catering business. This place is perfect, right?”
“I never said I wanted an out. This place would be a lot of work. And it’s next to a fucking dry cleaner. It could be a Superfund site.”
“Come on.” He led me out into the front where there was light. “Do you really want to follow through on buying the bar? You’ve always wanted stability. A house. A fucking minivan. Are you sure you want to raise a kid over a bar? ’Cause that kind of sounds like how we grew up before Ma inherited Nonna’s place.”
“Look, I…I don’t know.” Buying Barb’s had been my dream for so long, and I hadn’t stopped to think about how being a father might change that. Months ago, Lucie had said she didn’t want to get married. But we’d grown closer, and things between us had shifted. She might’ve changed her mind. And how amazing would it be to become a real family with Lucie and our daughter? I could take Aunt Connie up on her offer to take over her insurance business. That would be the kind of job that meant I’d qualify for a mortgage and would be home in time to make dinner every night. Boring, respectable, and stable. All the things I’d imagined when I was a kid.
My brother drew himself up. “Well, I know what I want. And it’s not buying Barb’s. It’s buying a kitchen big enough to run a catering business.”
“What?” I pushed my hair behind my ears. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right. “But we’ve always wanted to run the bar together.”
“No.” He looked down. “You wanted the bar. And I wanted to give something back to my big brother who was always there for me, who was kind of a dad to me, who made time for me when no one else did. But now I’ve realized that isn’t a good enough reason. We’ll be happier if we each do what we love.”
Do what we love? But we’d agreed to do this together. “Jesus fucking Christ! When were you going to tell me this?” I roared.
“Today, Danny. I’m telling you today.” His voice was as quiet as mine was loud.
I pushed the door so hard it banged against the exterior wall.
Not caring where I went, I turned right and walked along the street, seeing nothing. It was a good thing it was Sunday morning and traffic was light. On a weekday, I’d have walked out into a busy street and probably been hit by a commuter.
I wouldn’t have cared.
My brother had betrayed me. After all we’d been through together, after all the times I’d fucking saved him from himself, after working at Barb’s for years, planning and saving for the day when it’d be ours, he’d dropped this bomb on me.
Without Leo, I didn’t have enough cash to buy Barb’s. And if Gio was funding Leo, he wouldn’t have any extra to help me out. I had a fleeting thought of asking for a loan at the bank, but who’d give a business loan to a bartender who’d never gone to college, who had no business experience, who owned nothing but a crappy old Toyota? Who had a child to support?
Maybe Leo was right. Maybe I’d be better off focusing on my daughter. The money I’d saved for the bar would buy a good chunk of a nice little house in the suburbs.
I realized I’d been walking next to a park, and at the next break in the hedge, I stepped inside. Stretching before me was an expanse of wood chips with a play structure. It had a few swings, a slide, and one of those towers that kids could climb. I sank onto a bench.
It’d be a pain in the ass to share custody if I lived in the suburbs and Lucie still lived in the city. What about when the kid was old enough to go to school? Would Lucie let her live with me, or would I be a weekends-only dad?
That thought left me cold. As loving as my mom was, I’d watched her struggle on her own. I’d always wished I had two parents. That’s what I wanted for my kid.
A little girl ran to one of the swings, and her dad followed. She clambered into the seat, and he pulled her back and let her fly forward. Tucking her feet, she swung back, and he pushed her. “Higher!” she squealed, kicking her feet out in front and leaning back.
“Not too high,” her mother called from the bench behind them.
Could that be us someday, Lucie, me, and our daughter? Lucie’d be the one pushing, of course, and I’d be the one worrying about her flying too high and falling. But could we be a family?
She might not admit it to herself, but Lucie needed me. That trip had been a bad idea, like I’d said. And who had she needed after? Me. She had to see that. We were stronger together.
Jesus Christ. Was she waiting for me to say it? To tell her I loved her and that we belonged together as a family?
To propose for real this time?