Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brody
Ihoped I wouldn’t get thrown in jail for this.
But honestly, a night in a cell might be the exact thing I needed to clear my head. Get some peace of mind.
I couldn’t stand spending another night in Liam and Cassie’s guest room. Not when I knew I was supposed to be home with Maggie.
In fact, I’d been pathetically chained to my phone waiting for the text to come in from her telling me to come home.
What I got instead was a whole lot of silence.
And coming from Maggie, silence was a very, very bad thing.
Which led me to my last desperate attempt at reconciliation with her. A face-to-face conversation.
I wasn’t going to bombard her before work, and I definitely wasn’t going to show up at our apartment.
So, I contented myself with trying to catch her when she was leaving the office. Trying to avoid the risk of looking like a creepy stalker ex-boyfriend, I found myself knocking on the door of the man whose shit list I was already on.
Hence why I was contemplating the very real possibility of jail time.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” The old man’s voice called from behind the closed door as the thuds of his footsteps drew closer.
I shifted on my feet, suddenly nervous.
The door opened, revealing Mr. Waterman in all his elderly glory, and I looked him up and down as I took in the sight of him up close.
“You’re taller than I imagined,” I said, staring at the cardigan-clad man.
“How the hell did you find my apartment?” he practically growled.
“I counted the levels of windows and did the math. It wasn’t hard. Can I come in?”
“Why would I let you in?” His eyes bugged out.
I smiled. I liked Mr. Waterman. Found him endearing in a way. He was the only person as grumpy as Liam, and it was a comfort to play off of his crankiness.
“Because I’m heartbroken and need advice from a wise, old man.”
“What makes you think I’m qualified to give a punk like you advice?” he scowled. “And what makes you think it’s okay to show up at my door?”
“You’ve been alive a long time. You pick stuff up over the years.” I peered into the apartment. “So, can I come in?”
“If I say no, are you going to leave me alone?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go, so probably not.”
He groaned, turning on his heel to wobble back into his apartment. The lack of door slamming in my face gave me enough encouragement to follow him inside.
Shutting the door behind me, I peeked around at his place. Simply decorated, sparse furniture, but pictures on every wall I looked.
The smell of cigarette smoke filled my nose, and I turned to see him lighting one up as he stared out the window. The same window he so often had looked down at me from.
“You’re going to kill yourself with that habit,” I told him, moving awkwardly around his apartment.
“Good,” he muttered.
Sarcastic old man, I shook my head.
“Now, tell me, now that you’re here in my house instead of on my steps—what do you propose we do?”
“Ugh, don’t say propose.” I groaned.
He narrowed his eyes in irritation.
“I don’t know,” I exclaimed helplessly when he kept looking at me expectantly, “should we trim bonsai trees or something?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Lots, I guess,” I muttered, sliding down into an armchair across from him. “But that was a movie reference.”
“Tell me why you’re here,” he grumbled. “Or I’m sending you back out the door.”
“I proposed to my girlfriend,” I started with a sigh. “You know, the one that I’m usually on your steps waiting for?”
“And that leads you to me because—?”
“She said no,” I finished flatly, turning my attention out his window where the sight of her law office taunted me.
“Hm,” he muttered, putting the cigarette out.
“Well, aren’t you going to tell me that was a stupid thing to do? Proposing?”
“No,” he said. “But I’ll tell you it’s not the end of the world that it didn’t work out.”
“Then you don’t know Maggie.” I shook my head. “Because it quite actually is.”
The end of my world, at least.
“Don’t be dramatic, kid.”
“I’m thirty,” I responded. “Not a kid.”
“Yeah, well, I was your age almost fifty years ago, so to me—you’re a kid.”
His words fell on deaf ears because I was leaping to my feet and barging toward the window.
There was Maggie, walking out of the law office with some man.
“That’s her,” I gestured wildly, looking back to Mr. Waterman to confirm he was seeing what I was seeing.
He rose to his feet, making his way to stand beside me as my eyes widened in a way that probably made me look like some disturbed insect.
“Who is she walking in with?” I asked frantically. “Who the hell is that?”
“Relax, boy,” he responded, staring out with equal intrigue. “Maybe it’s her coworker.”
“Well, why is she talking to him like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like with so many words!” I groaned, unable to tear my eyes away from the sight of my beautiful Maggie in her black pantsuit and tidy updo walking beside a man who wasn’t me.
“Maybe it’s her boss and she has to talk to him,” Mr. Waterman offered.
“I don’t care if he’s the patron saint of law, if he doesn’t stop talking to my girlfriend I’m going to—” I deflated.
“You’re going to what?” Mr. Waterman snorted as I tore my gaze away from the window.
Stepping aside, I paced in the center of his living room trying to get my head straight.
“Well, I guess there’s nothing I can do, is there? Because Maggie isn’t my girlfriend anymore.” The words tasted like poison to get out.
“Is that so?”
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “Isn’t that what happens when someone says they don’t want to marry you?”
“Well, I suppose usually, but that depends on whether you and your Maggie are made out of the real stuff or not.”
“Who have you known to survive a rejected proposal and still have a happy relationship?”
“My wife and I.”
“What?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Your wife?”
He nodded, and suddenly I took notice of the woman’s face featured in so many of the pictures on the wall.
From what looked like her twenties up until what seemed to be a few years ago by the quality of the photographs.
Looking around, it was clear that there was no Mrs. Waterman living here, and I knew enough to connect the dots of what must’ve happened. Apparently, Mr. Waterman was no stranger to heartache.
I couldn’t imagine losing a partner to something as permanent as death. The thought of it made me sick to even think of.
I was sure he didn’t want my condolences, or to tell the tale of heartbreak of losing her, so instead I settled on a more uplifting topic, asking about the start of their story, rather than the end.
“Did she really reject you at first?” I asked.
A soft smile touched his lips as his eyes glazed over in memory.
“She certainly did,” he said. “I chased after that girl for years; she never as much agreed to a date with me.”
“So what changed?”
“I pursued her relentlessly. She rejected me relentlessly. I went off to Vietnam. She thought I died. When I got back, she was mine.”
He shrugged, as if it was simple as that.
“She said losing me nearly killed her. Made her realize there wasn’t another man around she wanted to waste her breath on.” He chuckled, staring at a picture of the two of them on the wall, directly across from his chair.
“Well, I can’t fake my death to win Maggie back.”
“Are you an idiot, son?” He glared at me, snapping out of his reverie. “That’s not what I was suggesting at all.”
“So what—”
“She just needs to feel what it’s like to lose you. Then, if the love is real, she might come around to her senses.”
“So, to get Maggie back? I need to… stay away from her?”
“Let her come to you,” Mr. Waterman corrected. “If she really loves you, she will.”
I chewed my lip.
“Will she?”
“Maybe not.” He stood up, gesturing me toward the door.
“Hey!” I protested, sending him a frown over my shoulder as I made my way toward the exit.
“Haven’t you heard that saying… if you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.”
“I hate that saying.” I frowned. “And we are meant to be.”
“Then just trust her,” Mr. Waterman offered. “And in the meantime, live your life. It’s not like you can do anything else, anyway.”
Live my life, huh?
How could I do that when she was it?
“Thanks for the advice, Mr. Miyagi,” I said with a humorless laugh, walking out of his apartment.
Mr. Waterman muttered, shaking his head as he reached for the door.
“Goddamn kid shows up at my doorstep and doesn’t even know my name,” he muttered before shutting the door and locking it behind him.