25. Natasha
25
NATASHA
“ L eave me alone!” I complained as the incessant pounding on my front door carried on. It sounded like a herd of bulls was attempting to break through. Stacy was deceptively strong.
“I’m not going to go away,” she yelled through the door. I flopped back over on the couch, stuffing a pillow against my head, hoping to drown her out. It didn’t work. She’d been going at it for five minutes straight, and I couldn’t tell if the pounding in my head was my own heartbeat or the echo of her knocking.
“C’mon, Tasha!”
“No!” I called.
“ Natashhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaa !”
“Ugh, god!” I got to my feet, wrapped in my comforter like I was about to brave a winter storm. I could feel the achy, sticky mess of mascara under my eyes from crying so hard, but I didn’t care enough to clean myself up. I stumbled to the door, heaving the comforter up over myself so I didn’t trip over it. “What do you want, Stacy?”
“You can’t wallow alone. You need the solidarity of female friendships right now.”
I rolled my eyes. What I really needed was to be left alone to wallow in a heap on the couch. I was good at wallowing.
“You need someone to talk to!” Stacy insisted. “Someone to bitch and complain to. I’m that person. Now let me in.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” It was bad enough when I’d texted her about what happened, reliving every nasty thing Trent had said.
“Are you really going to make me stand out here?” Stacy said, changing tactics. “It’s cold. And I’m small. So, so small, Natasha.”
I peered through the peephole. She wasn’t wearing her coat. It was almost November, for crying out loud. What was with her and Jimmy? “You have a perfectly nice, well-heated apartment to be in,” I said. “You don’t have to be cold.”
Stacy hammered on the door, and I jumped back. “Let me in,” she said. “I’m really not leaving until you do.”
“Stacy—”
“If you don’t, I’ll call the cops and get them to do a welfare check on you.”
I peeked out the peephole again. “You wouldn’t.”
Stacy put her hands on her hips. “Try me!”
She sounded serious. I unlocked the door and popped it open a crack, putting my foot behind it to stop Stacy from barreling inside. She looked miffed to be blocked. “You’re annoying, you know that?” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said. “I try. Now move.”
I held firm. “Look, you’re my best friend and I love you, but I can’t deal with your insane optimism right now.”
“Okay, I’ll dial it back.”
That got a chuckle out of me despite how wretched I felt. “I don’t know if that’s possible. But I mean it, Stace. I don’t want to hear that everything’s gonna work out in the end or that this is the journey I was meant to be on to make room for something better or whatever other motivational junk you’ve got on reserve. Okay? I can’t handle it today. So if you’re only here to tell me that everything’s going to be all right, could you just…not?”
For a second, Stacy looked like she was about to cry. But she swallowed it back. “I’m here to tell you exactly what you need to hear right now. Whatever you tell me that is.”
“Fine.” I pulled the door open to let her in. She came at me, arms wide. “No, don’t hug me,” I said, warding her off.
“You’re not going to combust if I hug you,” Stacy said, stomping past me, her flowery shawl billowing out behind her. “You look awful, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, following her to the couch. “I feel awful.”
“Crying really takes it out of you, huh?” She untangled one of my curls, tucking it behind my ear.
I nodded.
Stacy sighed. “I really can’t believe he did this to you.”
“I can,” I said, a bite to the words. I should have seen it coming like a train barreling straight for me. Stacy frowned. “Trent told me he didn’t do relationships. Why would I have been any different?”
“I saw the way you two were together. It was different,” Stacy insisted.
I shook my head. “No, it was only a matter of time before this blew up. I just never expected it to be because I was trying to do something nice. I’m so stupid.”
“He didn’t deserve you, Tash.” Stacy took my hands, squeezing. “I could kill him for you. I will kill him for you.”
I worked up a smile. Maybe I didn’t give Stacy enough credit. Sure, in many ways it was better to only rely on myself. Certainly, it was safer. And yet, here she was, like a barnacle, latching on and wedging herself into my life, refusing to let me deal with this alone. “I don’t know how Dominic would feel about that. And I wouldn’t want to ruin things for you with him.”
Stacy hummed. “We wouldn’t have to tell him. I can keep a secret.”
For some reason that caught me, and the weight behind my eyes released, a few stray tears escaping.
“Oh, Natasha,” Stacy said softly.
I wiped my eyes. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. Come here,” she said. She caught me in a hug, and this time, I didn’t fight her. The harder she squeezed, the harder the tears fell until I was sobbing into her shoulder. We collapsed on the couch, arms wrapped around each other as I left tearstains on Stacy’s pretty shirt. “This sucks,” she whispered, rubbing my back. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was really happy,” I managed to force out between the sobs. “Just yesterday I was really happy, and I’m pissed at him because he made me happy and then took it all away.”
“Good. You should be pissed at him,” Stacy said.
I pulled back, drying my face with the edge of the comforter. “And it’s not even just him I lost, but my job and my team and not having to worry about whether I’ll be able to make rent payments and Nana Dee and his friends and everything . In the blink of an eye, he made all that disappear, and I hate myself for getting used to having it all. For thinking I might actually be able to keep it.” If anyone could understand that, it was Stacy. She’d fallen for Dominic hard and fast, and I sincerely hoped things worked out better for her than they had for me. “It feels like I’ve got nothing left.”
“You’ve got me,” Stacy countered.
“And what if something happens to you?”
“Then I’ll come back as a ghost and haunt my costumes so I can keep you company,” she said, patting my leg. “You’ll be known far and wide as that weird girl who makes awesome furniture and who has a disembodied ball gown following her everywhere she goes.”
I chuckled a bit at that idiotic image. “I told you not to try and cheer me up.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “I’m just trying to assure you that I’m not going anywhere. Tonight or any other night. So, I suggest we make ourselves comfy. We could watch a movie or something to distract us. No rom-coms, of course. I’m thinking Michael Bay. Action. Car crashes. Explosions.”
I hummed, unmoved by the idea.
“Or…we can go to your workshop so you can channel your feelings into your work?” she suggested. I just shook my head. “Okay, then. The other option is that we could sit here for a bit and just be sad.”
“I kind of just want to sit and be sad,” I admitted. “At least for right now. I’ll rally tomorrow.”
“That’s fair,” Stacy said. “Then I suggest we at least eat our feelings.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Pizza?” she suggested.
“As long as it’s the cheesiest, greasiest pie in New York.”
“Of course. You’ll need the calories to fuel your big sads.” Stacy leaned over and hugged me again. “One heartbreak, men-suck, let’s-burn-the-world pie coming right up.”
Trent
We’d been moved from the main waiting room to a small family room on the cardiology floor once Dee was transferred from the emergency department. I hated waiting in hospitals. All it did was remind me of all the hours I’d spent here with Papa Davis while he underwent his treatments, and then later as we waited for him to pass.
It was too warm, and the chairs were too hard, and the guys still shot me concerned looks every two seconds as we waited for an update from the doctor that had taken Dee’s case. Worse than all of that was that I could feel the heat of Jimmy’s stare from across the room. Every time I looked up, he glanced away hurriedly, but I could tell by the way his brow furrowed that he was frustrated.
“Hey,” I whispered to Aiden slumped in the chair next to mine. “Can you come grab me if the doctor comes back? I’m just gonna go talk to Jimmy.”
He sat up, nodding. “Sure thing. Where are you gonna be?”
“Just down the hall,” I said, inclining my head toward the door. “We won’t go far.”
I got to my feet. As soon as Jimmy turned my way, I caught his eye and flicked my head toward the hall. He stood, stalking past me like a sullen teenager. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that he was still a teenager. And with his grandmother in the hospital, his wallet god only knew where, and his cheek swelled up to twice its usual size, he maybe had good reason to be a little sullen. But he seemed to be twisting himself into knots over something, and I wasn’t going to let that slide. Whatever was upsetting him, bottling it up wouldn’t help.
But it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about getting him to open up. We walked through a set of automatic glass doors, and as soon as they closed behind us, Jimmy whirled around, his face crumpled in anger. “What’s your problem, man?”
“Okay, calm down,” I said. “I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about Natasha!” he said, his voice rising. “You’re screwing up everything!”
A bud of irritation bloomed inside me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grumbled, defensive.
“I do so. Natasha told me what happened between the two of you on the drive over here. After she came all the way out there to get me,” he said pointedly.
I gritted my teeth. I was grateful she’d been there for Jimmy at that moment. I owed her one, but I didn’t have time to dwell on the status of my relationship—or lack thereof—with Natasha right now. “Look, Jimmy. You’re young. You don’t quite get everything that’s going on. But right now, my focus has to be on Dee. I don’t have time to deal with this Natasha situation.”
“Well, make time,” Jimmy snapped, surprising me. “And, sure, I may be young, but I’m not stupid, Trent. I have eyes and ears. You treated Natasha like absolute crap.”
“She wasn’t exactly a saint in return,” I muttered.
“She explained what her intentions were!” he cried. “She didn’t deliberately set out to hurt you! How could you even think that? What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, what the hell was I supposed to think?” I growled. “Mom had information that only Natasha could have known. And Natasha never said anything to me about meeting up with her.”
“You were supposed to think that you were jumping to conclusions like a dummy.”
I scowled. “She did it all behind my back, Jimmy.”
“She was trying to help! And you blew up at her like she’d killed your dog or something.”
I shook my head. This was getting ridiculous. “Okay, maybe I went a little?—”
“A lot!”
“—a lot overboard with what I said.”
Jimmy sneered, crossing his arms. “You think?”
“But what did she expect?”
“What did you expect?” he countered. “Why would you just assume she’d tried to sell you out?”
“Because that’s what people do ,” I argued back. I’d been through this over and over with my parents, my exes… “People are always looking for a way to upgrade or get a payoff or step on some necks to get to whatever it is they want.”
“That’s what all people do?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes!”
“So that’s what I do?” he said. “And Paul? Dominic? Vincent? Aiden? All the guys who are currently sitting in that waiting room to support you? What about Nana Dee, is she always using people?”
I went to respond, only I had nothing to say, the words dying in my throat.
“And, hey, I don’t really remember Papa Davis—but if you’re right, then he must have gone around selling people out, too!”
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, my chest aching at the memory of Papa Davis. Jimmy kept talking. “But you know that’s a load of bullshit! Of course Papa Davis didn’t do that because he was a good person. Like your friends. Like me…more or less. I guess I’m a pretty useless brother these days, but I’d like to think I’m a good person anyway.”
“You are,” I insisted. “And you’re not useless.”
“Great,” he said. “So we’re agreed that good people do exist. People you can trust. People you can love without worrying about getting screwed over by them.”
I grunted, crossing my arms. “You’ve made your point.”
“No I haven’t. Not yet,” he said, getting in my face, looking into my eyes. The anger that had been there moments ago slipped away, replaced by that disappointment I’d seen earlier. “You found one of those good people in Natasha, Trent. And then you threw it all away.”
His words rang true, and I hated it. “So you think I’m a bad person?”
Jimmy stepped away, looking sad. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, Trent. But I do think you’re pretty dumb. You had something great, and you broke it. And now I don’t know if it can ever be fixed.”