Chapter Five #2
“That’s a little too wordy, even for me,” I managed. “Thanks for calling reception, though. I don’t know if I could have gotten through that call myself. I think … I might go get comfy if you don’t mind, before room service gets here.”
He gave me a nod, and I jumped off the bed, snatched a sleep shirt and shorts from my suitcase and headed for the ensuite. I came to a stop right by the threshold, realizing something. “Hey, Turner?”
“Yeah?”
“You forgot about the remote. In case you want to call again and ask while I wash up and change.”
There was a pause. Then he said, “I’ve missed a whole year of your life, Frankie. The last thing I want to do while sharing a room with you is watch tv.”
The Philly cheesesteaks were incredible.
Something else that was incredible? My capability to overthink all of this.
Because I’d spent the last hour—between the room service being delivered and us annihilating those sandwiches like goblins—in my head, running through all the scenarios in which this weekend could go sideways. Had gone sideways? There were too many either way.
Turner collected the empty container from my lap, snatching my attention back. “Pie was that good, huh?”
“Pie is always good. This one was excellent. Why do you ask?”
He stretched that long arm of his and placed both our food containers on the bedside table. Without moving from his spot on the queen bed. I was jealous. “You had a look on your face. It was cute.”
That heat I was getting acquainted with real fast popped back in my face. I wasn’t used to Turner saying those things to me. We’d always been close, but he’d never been … flirty. Was he flirting? “Vermont’s maple syrup might be my new favorite thing in the world. What did you think about the food?”
“I loved seeing you inhaling it. You’ve always eaten like no one’s looking.”
“Ha,” I deadpanned. “Funny. Way to avoid responding my question. That means you have thoughts on it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t.”
“You so do. It’s the foodie in you. I bet you’ve rated it in your head. You used to be big on reviews.”
He shrugged.
I braced myself on my hands, tilted my head. “So? How would you rate the pie? I gave it a million stars.”
“A solid four out five,” he answered with a snort. “Crust a little too moist for my taste.”
“And the sandwich?”
He exhaled. “It was alright. I don’t need to rate it.”
“Oh, so it was the bread then. Was it that bad?”
He huffed out a laugh, but didn’t deny or confirm.
“I thought it was delicious,” I said, taunting him. “The best I’ve had in a while, in fact. I really don’t know what you could ever find—”
“The hoagie rolls were frozen, too long, and toasted,” he interjected, exploding in the most adorable way a six-foot something guy in a mullet, tattoos and a mustache could ever explode in. “A fresh roll is the only way I would ever prepare it.”
My smile broke free, making me feel funny.
Like it was splitting my face and I was out of practice.
It’d been so long since we’d done this, or since I’d had someone to do this with.
The thought was depressing. We wouldn’t be here, sitting on top of the comforter, sharing this meal, if Turner didn’t know about the stalker.
And if Turner hadn’t showed up in Vermont, I wouldn’t be smiling at a friend’s outburst, or giving him shit for being a bread snob.
I’d be alone, watching a tv I wasn’t paying any attention to. I’d be … lonely.
“I’ve only made two friends,” I heard myself declaring. “In the year I’ve been in Boston. They’re twice my age, and my neighbors.”
“Does that make you feel lonely?” Turner said, easily voicing the inferno of feelings burning inside of me. “You always used to value quality over quantity.”
“I think they only befriended me because I live alone and I remind them of one of their daughters. They have two girls and a boy, and he’s the oldest. A journalist. From what Mrs. Flanagan tells me, he’s happily engaged to a girl from North Carolina, otherwise she’d introduce us.
” I snorted. “According to her, I’m too pretty to sit at home all the time.
She probably thinks it’s sad that I don’t have anyone to go out with. Even as friends.”
“She’s right.”
I sighed. “It is a little sad, yeah.”
“No,” he said with a shake. “You’re pretty. You shine so bright when you’re happy, that’s all you deserve to be.”
My lips parted, those two points of heat on my cheeks burning hotter.
“And her son?” He added. “Happy for him, but he’d be very fucking lucky to take you out if that’s what you wanted. He’d be lucky to sit with you at home if that’s what you wished to do, too. Anyone would.”
I … my heart was throttling, banging my chest in every possible direction.
“What?” Turner asked, way too smug for me to be imagining this. “You think I’ve never noticed you’re pretty? You’re goddamn stunning, Frankie. A knockout.”
“Pardon me?”
“You heard me.”
You heard me, he’d said. Like he was saying nothing.
“What are you doing?” I asked him weakly.
“Blowing up all the boundaries you built when you left and insist on keeping up.”
“That’s …” I trailed off. “That’s so wrong. All of it. You can’t just say I’m pretty. That you always thought so. That you … noticed. You can’t just say things like that.”
He seemed to take a moment to actually think about my words. Then he shrugged a big shoulder. “You’re probably right. But at least I’m getting you to talk about it. About this. About us.”
Thoughts—furious and incredulous, and yes, also foolish—started forming.
Swirling. Dizzying, almost. Questioning every single thing that he could possibly mean and getting nowhere that felt …
Real. “I—Me—” My voice broke with unrestrained frustration.
“You were engaged, Turner. To Mia. My friend. There’s no us. There never was.”
“What I’m about to say makes me a bastard,” he told me, calmly. Unaffected by the harshness of my words. “But I’d rather give you clarity, and grovel my way back to your good graces, than keep it from you any longer.”
I frowned at him.
“I should have never done it,” he said. Silence fell, and I swore I could hear my heart in my temples. Turner swallowed before continuing. “When I proposed to Mia things were complicated, but it doesn’t justify it.”
I wished I could say I didn’t remember the exact day he’d proposed, but I would be lying.
I remembered very vividly because they’d shared the news at a family dinner, on Thanksgiving.
“Complicated? I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary except that it was the Christmas before Mia’s dad—” I stopped myself.
“She didn’t tell anyone he was sick until after Christmas,” Turner conceded. “But she’d known for two months by then. She … It was pretty bad, Frankie. When she first found out about the diagnosis.”
Something inside me broke in two sharp-edged pieces. “I had no idea. She never told me, or gave me the impression something like that was happening. Does that mean that by the time we all knew—”
“She’d had some time to process it,” Turner finished. “During that time, only I knew. She avoided everyone so no one could suspect. Especially you.”
My chest constricted. “That must have been so hard. For her, to go through it. And for you, to see her navigate it.”
“It was,” he expelled with a breath. “You know how she is though. She tried to pretend it wasn’t affecting her at first. But she couldn’t keep that up forever.
When it finally hit that her dad had cancer, she …
She was in a dark place. It killed me to see her like that.
And it killed me that what upset her the most was her not being able to give her dad something they’d always talked about. ”
Turner fell quiet for an instant, and I held my breath, already knowing what that was.
“She’s always spoken so freely,” he continued with a bitter laugh.
“Like there’s no limit on the words, like she can’t run out of them.
Like there’s no harm in talking. And I’ve always been the opposite.
As much as I’m trying to be more vocal about what’s in my mind, I’d rather show than tell for the things that matter. ”
“Oh Turner,” I whispered.
“She told me how it would break her heart if her dad didn’t live to walk her down the aisle. How it would break his, too.”
I remained very still. Very quiet. It was as if something had come loose within me with a big crack. As if a piece of my heart had just gone missing.
He shook his head. “Don’t look at me like I did an honorable thing. Because look at all of us now. I broke her heart anyway. Her dad’s in remission, but his heart’s broken over this too. And I’m the only one responsible. I couldn’t keep my word. I always do, and I couldn’t this time. I didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make you the bad guy,” I told him, feeling overprotective of his heart. I hated seeing all of them broken, but Turner was forgetting he also got hurt. “No one is the bad guy. This is life, and you did a very human thing.”
“I’m not a good guy, either.”
“Did it feel good when you proposed, and she said yes? Did it feel right?”
“For a while, yes.” More pain flooded his voice.
Remorse. Guilt. I hated that life had handed these cards to them, but it wasn’t fair that Turner blamed himself for all of it.
We all made mistakes. “It felt good to make her happy. To help someone I loved, and was in a relationship with, come out of that kind of darkness. It was my job to take care of her, and it felt good doing that.”
My nurturing, beautiful man. “That was a big weight to carry. Maybe it didn’t work out in the end, but you tried to give her something only you could. You put her happiness before yours. You loved her that much.”
I, on the other hand, had been a selfish monster.
When they announced their engagement, and then weeks later told us about Mia’s dad, I’d almost changed my plans to leave.
But Mia had seemed so together, and so singlehandedly focused on talking about all the things she wanted in that wedding.
It had been too much. For the first time, I’d felt entitled to put myself first, unlike all the other times I’d remained quiet.
I chose to believe she didn’t need me, and if she ever did, then I’d be there for her.
Ric or Mom would tell me, and I’d leave everything to go back to Portland if her dad got worse.
Her dad hadn’t. And I continued to need the distance.
Until, after a certain point, I no longer knew how to talk to her.
“You think of me so highly,” Turner said. “I used to tell myself that was your biggest flaw.”
“I will never not think of you like you’re one of the best men I know, Turner. You are.”
“How did I push you away, then?”
His question caught me so off guard I flinched.
He pressed. “Why did you stop answering my texts and calls? Why did you leave without saying goodbye to me? Why didn’t you open that door when you were in pain? I was so sure you needed me.”
My chest hurt, and now it was for a barrage of completely different reasons. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try for me,” he demanded. “Do it so I can understand what I need to fix between us.”
That wave of overwhelming emotion rose up my esophagus. There was nothing to fix, though. Couldn’t he see that? There had never been anything between us and all this baggage we carried now made it impossible for that to ever happen.
“You’re not betraying Mia,” he told me. “By talking about us or being in this room with me. And I’m not either, Frankie. That’s why I broke things off with her.”
My whole body froze. My mind on the other hand? It was racing. It filled up the blanks, the spaces left by what Turner wasn’t saying.
Had I heard him correctly?
“I carry enough guilt for the both of us,” he continued. “Trust me. But don’t get it wrong, Baby. Because I’m glad it got me here. I’m going to marry the love of my life, and Mia is not that person.”