Chapter 20 #2
“She didn’t want to stay.” The words scrape their way out of my throat.
The waitress returns with water for the table. We all stop talking. She turns away long enough to grab the cup of steaming hot coffee another waitress is bringing over and sets it down in front of Dom. A few more weird seconds pass until she walks away.
Diego leans forward, elbows crowding Dom, who surprisingly doesn’t seem to mind, and says, “Didn’t want to stay, or she couldn’t?”
“Same thing,” I mutter, gulping down all my water and wanting more.
“No, it’s not,” Holli counters, exchanging looks with Dom. As if they’re thinking the same thing but don’t want to tell us. “Not even close.”
Em shifts beside me, his knee bumping mine.
“She’s just scared.” His voice isn’t loud. It’s calm. Weirdly clear, and we all stop to stare at him. “You know it. I know it, and she knows it.”
Not willing to look anyone in the eye. I stare at a chunk missing from the top of the table.
“Doesn’t change what she asked for. Space. We gave it. End of story.”
“Was it the sharing?” I can feel Diego’s eyes on me, studying and judging me. “Maybe she wasn’t okay with that?”
Unwilling to share the details of Em and me having shared her twice already is none of their business.
“Doesn’t matter now. She told me what she wanted, and I’m giving it to her.”
Even if it makes me sick to my stomach.
“So, you’re just going to what? Wait? Hope she wanders back like a stray cat?” Holli’s too blunt with his questions.
Channeling Darko Dommy, and I don’t like it. Flashes of Sofia over the last five weeks assault me. Angry, sad, annoyed, happy, orgasmic, and blissed out. It’s painful and sad, carving a deeper ache into my chest.
“I’m not chasing her,” I say, more to myself than them. “Last time I chased someone who didn’t want me like that, it blew up in my face. I’m not . . . I’m not doing that again.”
Cecilia’s ghost flickers in the back of my mind.
Her pretty, empty words that never matched her actions.
The way she made me feel like I was always too much and not enough at the same time.
That whatever I did mattered only in the moment, but was gone the minute she got mad, frustrated, or irritated with me.
In hindsight, it’s so damn clear she never loved me.
Em even said as much, but who listens to him for relationship advice? Yeah, no one.
“That’s different, bro, and you know it.” Em defends me to myself. “You know that chick was trash. Hot trash, but still trash. She got what she deserved in the end.”
My jaw tightens. Not really. She got it all, and I got nothing. But they don’t get it. Not all of it. They didn’t watch me get played like that. Didn’t see my face when I got my heart broken by some girl who thought I was just a walking credit card with abs.
“You don’t understand, Em. I already tried to fix everything.
Tried to convince her not to go. Tried to be every answer she needed these last five weeks, but it obviously wasn’t good enough.
If it were, she wouldn’t have left. So, no.
I’m not trying again. I’m going to give in to what she wants.
You have to, also. No blowing up her phone because you want some stupid shit that Ryan, I, or you can do.
And for the love of your damn dick, don’t beg her to come back and suck it. You’ll just push her further away.”
No one says shit for a minute.
Then the food arrives, and everything shuts down. Good. We eat in mostly silence. It’s perfect timing to get everyone off my case and out of my business. It bothers me that Em isn’t as concerned as I am. Or at least showing that he’s affected. But he’s not, and it kind of pisses me off.
Dom demolishes his burger in measured bites.
Diego takes his time, chewing like he’s tasting every flavor.
Holli preps his pancakes like a five-year-old, drowning them in butter and syrup.
Em dips a fry into every sauce available.
Makes a mess. Drops crumbs everywhere. Noise and motion and life at full volume.
I shove fries in my mouth, swallow, and don’t taste a thing.
“So basically, you’re just going to pussy out because someone hurt your feelings once, is that right?” It’s Dom who speaks first and nails my ass to the wall. His dark gaze burns into me across the table. The fry in my hand falls back to my plate.
“It’s not just once. And I’m not being a pussy if I let her go.” I go on the defensive, wanting to lash out at him, waiting for him to call me nothing short of a fucking idiot. “You of all people should know with your woman. This shit I’ve heard—”
That glare intensifies, pinning me to the booth. I tense up. Wondering if he’ll try to round on me with the table in between us, the same way he’s gone after Em when he’s blabbering nonsense.
“No one talks about Marlowe, or they get my boot print on their face, got it?”
He’s coiled like an animal.
Diego, who crowded him once, does it again.
Those brown daggers turn to him, ready to pounce on his ass first before getting to me.
Not that I’m scared of him, I’ve got probably an extra thirty pounds of muscles, but I’ve seen the dude workout, and he’s a relentless beast. But Diego is skinny with a bad back, and Dom could break him in two if any of us let him get that far.
“Calm your tits, Darko Dommy. No one is talking about your hot Asian chick,” Em is bold as fuck for saying this to Dominic, and even Hollister tenses, ready to jump into action. “Although I’d love a go with her or your mom. Either cougar is fine with me.”
It takes less than a second for both to snap, shoving the table into Em as they lunge for his ass.
I haul Holli back against me, forearm across his chest. The booth is rocking violently.
Diego has a harder time. Arms wrapped around Dom, using the table against his body to trap him in place.
Diego’s boots squeak on the old floor, slipping on years of grease and grime.
“THE FUCK, EM?!” Holli roars, straining against me.
Dom doesn’t roar.
He goes quiet.
That’s worse. His jaw is locked. Eyes black and flat, tendons standing out in his neck as he strains toward my brother like he’s about to murder him.
Em just blinks. His cast prevents him from jumping to his feet and running across the diner. Drinks spill across the table. Plates of half-eaten food slide to our side, collecting in front of my brother. French fries land in his lap, which he’s steadily eating.
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down, bro.”
Diego grunts, getting dragged half out of the booth by Dom. His bad back pops. I can hear it in the catch of his breath and the clench of his teeth. His arms strain holding back the raging bull of Dom. Even my forearms are tight, holding back Holli.
The rest of the diner freezes. The waitress, with her half-ash cigarette, saunters over as if this is an everyday occurrence. Maybe it is.
“Boys,” she warns, hand on hips. The bulky cook waddling up behind her as reinforcement. “Knock it off, or I’ll throw you out.”
“Chill,” I snarl at both Dom and Holli. Neither look at me. “He’s not fucking serious.”
“The hell he’s not,” Holli snaps, breath sawing through his teeth. “He doesn’t get to talk about Barbara that way.”
“Neither of them,” Dom adds, sounding more deadly than his mom’s boyfriend fighting in my arms. He’s not as big as us, but still strong from all the gym hours. It’s like trying to hold a pissed off bear.
“EM,” I bark, cutting through the noise. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
My brother’s cocky grin is gone now. His eyes flick between Diego’s, Dom’s, Holli’s, and mine. He swallows. Adam’s apple bobs around the French fry trapped in his throat.
“What’d I say? It’s their fault for having fuckable—”
Dom surges again. Diego swears in Hawaiian. The table legs scrape. Nugget basket finally tips. One bounces off Em’s chest and lands on the floor. Wrong move. Wrong joke. We all know it. The cook moves quickly, slapping his palms on the table, and everyone freezes.
“Get out! All of you!”
Em drags in a shaky breath.
“Okay,” he mutters, hands up, palms out. “Okay. My bad. Bad joke. No fucking cougars for me. Your women are off-limits. My big dumb mouth. I get it. I’m sorry. And I want my angel. Sof would know how to handle this. She makes me behave.”
He means it.
I know when he’s bullshitting. This isn’t that. Holli still snarls. Dom’s stare doesn’t soften. Diego hitches him back another inch, muscles in his arms trembling.
“He apologized, bro,” Diego grits, jaw clenched. “Let it go before my spine snaps, and you have to wheel my ass to the ICU that Em just got out of.”
That does it. Dom’s eyes glint at Diego’s.
A silent understanding, even with his breathing ragged now.
Not loud, just like every inhale is a fight.
He’s not looking at Em anymore. He’s somewhere else.
In another room or another night. Some other moment that ripped him open.
I’ve seen that look on him before. It’s never about the thing in front of him.
It’s about all the shit stacked behind it.
“Dom,” I say, dropping my grip on Holli long enough to lean past him. “Hey. Look at me.”
Those black eyes snap to mine.
“You heard him,” I say, keeping my voice low. Steady. “He’s done. No more jokes. No more comments. You don’t want Marlowe or your mom in our mouths again? Fine. Line’s drawn. You got my word. But you’re not going to break Diego’s back over a bad joke. We clear?”
Silence.
The whole table is holding its breath. Dom stares at me for a second. Two, then three, until his jaw finally unclenches. He drags in a long breath through his nose and shuts his eyes for half a second.
“Fucking shithead,” he finally grumbles as if that explains everything.
Diego sighs with relief, one hand flying automatically to his lower back.
“Fuck, man,” he mutters, half-laughing, half-wincing. “You’re built like a bulldozer.”
Dom doesn’t answer.
He just scrubs both hands over his face, then falls back into the booth and reaches for his coffee as if nothing had happened. Holli shoves away from my chest, palms braced on the table. He’s still breathing hard, but some of the wildness has drained out of his eyes.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he tells Em, pointing a fork at him, voice shaking more than he wants it to. “You know that? Your brother’s always saving your ass. One day, he won’t, and you’ll get murdered. So grow the fuck up.”
Em nods. He doesn’t try to joke it off this time.
“Charlene? I’m still throwing their asses out, right?”
All heads turn to the waitress, sizing each one of us up in the longest minute possible.
“No, Hal, we’ll give them one more chance.
” She grabs the cig from her mouth, flicks the ashes to the floor, and then stabs each one of us with her finger.
Dom’s staring at the cig still burning in between two fingers.
He looks like an addict wanting a hit before he drags out his vape and sucks heavily from it.
“‘Cuz they owe me a heavy tip and better pay up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” three of us answer, except Em and Dom, who continue staring.
Em salutes with a fry.
She snatches it out of his hand, eats it, and walks away.
“You punks got lucky. Good thing Charlene likes you.” No idea the waitress even cared we had been back here before. Honestly, why didn’t I even think she had a name? Doesn’t matter. “Try that stunt again and you’re out. Let the cops deal with you rich pricks.”
The tension leaks out of the moldy restaurant.
Conversations resume around us except our booth.
It’s all weird and raw, thanks again to Em’s idiotic ways.
I shove my plate a little to the side. Appetites took a hit all around, except maybe Diego’s.
He’s already back to working through his burger like the diner fight burned calories he needs.
“Fuck this, I’m out. Move, Diego.” Dom’s a ticking time bomb about to burst. Diego’s mouth is stuffed, mid-bite, when he side eyes Dom. “Dickhead always has to fuck shit up with that fucking running mouth. Fucking moron.”
Dom’s pushing against Diego so hard that he almost falls out of the booth. Usually, Holli begs him to stay, but not this time.
“Yeah, I’m gone too. I’m glad you’re doing better, Emilio, but talking shit about those we care about is bullshit, and you know it. You already did it at the hospital, and now, all this time later, youare saying the same shit. Dom’s right. Do better.”
Em’s eyes are wide, so are Diego’s.
All of us are surprised as they stomp out of here together.
They were enemies the night of the crash.
Frenemies in Em’s ICU room that Sofia had to handle.
Now friends again, having each other’s backs.
I’d say I’m offended they stormed out when I needed their advice with Sofia, but honestly, I’m happy.
I begin to laugh.
Loosening something in my chest. Some weight lifting, because if Dom can forgive Holli’s ass for banging his mom, then there’s still hope for Sofia and me to work out after all.
“What the fuck?” Em stares at me like I have lost my mind. The air that got sucked out with the three of them fighting is walking out the door. I roll my shoulders and spread out more in the booth with them gone. “Why are you laughing?”
I shake my head. Diego’s back to sitting, burger in hand, and cautiously watching the exchange.
“I don’t know, but it feels good.”
I drag my plate in front of me, ignoring the spilled drinks. My appetite creeps back in, slow and stubborn. I reach out and take a bite of the golden onion rings. They actually taste like something this time.
“That’s fucking weird,” Em mutters, shoving all the food plates away from him.
Diego hums in agreement. Then we’re fine.
Em goes back to being an idiot, talking nonsense.
Diego talks about his professor girlfriend and about him and her going motorbiking through Italy this summer while taking her father back to their family home there.
It feels almost normal. Almost like I’m not counting the clock to see when this so-called space ends.
When Diego gets up to hit the can, Em turns to me.
“Hey, brother. For the record? I’m not okay with her leaving either. Like I’m just out here vibing, you know? I’m not. I miss her too.”