by Wolf, Alex
“What the…?” My brows knit together and the only other word that seems to make its way from my lips is just, “Huh?”
Donavan smiles the second he sees me, and I know he’s furious on the inside and doing everything he can to hold back. It’s so awkward he looks like one of those Stepford wives, faking their way through the day.
He stands up before I can embarrass myself any more and says, “You ready?”
What. The. Hell. Is. Happening. Here.
“Ready?”
“You forget about our date?”
“Our date?” I walk over and drop my keys on a side table.
“Yeah, I’m taking you to dinner.” He walks over, fake-grinning, and talks through his teeth. “Grab your jacket. It might get chilly later.”
Dad hasn’t said a word. I glance over at him and he’s still staring lasers at Donavan’s back, then his eyes shift to me and I know I’ll have to explain later, but I can’t right now. Not with Donavan in the room.
Donavan walks out the front door and I follow without grabbing my jacket. As he’s walking down the stoop, I reach for his forearm.
“Did Decker talk to you yet?”
His jaw clenches ever so slightly, telling me what I need to know, but I wait for him to respond anyway.
He nods, still smiling. “Yeah.” He turns and heads to the passenger side of his car. I didn’t even see it on the side of the road in front of the house when I pulled in. He reaches for the handle like he’s going to open the door for me.
“You still want to do this?”
He freezes, then turns back around and storms toward me. He doesn’t stop until he’s all up in my personal space, just like in the breakroom. My heart thumps against my rib cage and I hear it beating in my ears. My throat goes dry, palms clam up.
His eyes narrow on me, and the smile disappears. “Nice try, Pais.” He grits his teeth, even though he maintains a neutral expression. “Get your jacket and let’s go.”
Nothing good can come from this. I should tell him to fuck off, walk inside, and slam the door. It’s what I should do. If I go with him, he wins. He gets his way.
God, that kiss the other night, and his hand on my ass.
How, how, how for the love of all things holy does he do this to me? I make stupid decisions constantly when he’s in my vicinity. Why is the universe doing this to me? Why can’t all our problems go away and we could just be together like a normal couple?
My brain screams “No!” the entire time, as I walk inside the door, grab my jacket, and tell Dad I’ll be home later.
Donavan Collins has turned me into a damn zombie.
* * *
He makes the turn onto N State Street and I already know where we’re going, and he’s an asshole for doing it.
I look over and damn it, the bridge of my nose tingles. I swear to God…
Do not fucking cry in front of him. Get your shit together.
“Donavan, don’t.” I can’t even look at him while I say it.
His eyes dart over to mine, but he doesn’t respond. Just keeps on down the road.
Maybe this is payback for what I did to him at the office, but this is way over the line, and he knows it. I shouldn’t expect anything less from him. He’s always done whatever he wanted, no matter who he hurt in the process, and part of me is actually glad he’s still being himself. Maybe it’ll make it easier to get this shit over with and suppress all the old feelings filtering back up to the surface.
The closer the neon sign gets as we approach, the more my stomach turns, until it’s balled in a knot and I can barely breathe.
I reach for his arm and the fear and hurt has to be apparent in my eyes. I’d do anything to get him to end this right now, though. Anything else, I could handle. “Donavan, please…”
He glances over at me. “It’ll be fine. I promise.” He pulls in to the valet.
I just sit there as the valet opens my door, and I haven’t even unbuckled my seat belt yet. I just stare at the huge neon sign that reads Gibsons steak-fish.
Donavan walks around to my side of the car and leans down. He holds out his hand. “Come on.”
I shake my head. “Take me somewhere else or I’m going home.”
“She wouldn’t want…”
I point a finger at him and bare my teeth. “Don’t tell me what she would or wouldn’t have wanted.”
Donavan takes a step back, and glances around. “Please, Pais? I need this, for us.”
How the hell does he do that? Lighten the mood and look so vulnerable like that, in the blink of an eye. I think that’s part of his allure. He always looks so pissed off, like he hates the world, that it just softens you when he shows you who he really is, even if it’s for a split-second. It’s a manipulation tactic. I’m sure of it, but I fall for it every damn time.
I glance around, and a car honks behind us. The valet taps his foot, but he’s still trying to be polite, most likely because he wants a tip.
Reluctantly, I unbuckle the seat belt and climb out of the car.
We walk to the curb and I stand there, staring at the door. It’s like my shoes are cinder blocks and I can’t move.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I turn to him. “Is it because of what I did at the office? This some sort of sick retribution?”
He shakes his head and looks at me like I’m from outer space. “Of course not, Jesus, what do you think…” He stops himself. “Yeah, I’m not happy about that, but it has nothing to do with this.”
I square up in front of him. “Then can we be honest with each other, for at least two minutes? What is this?” I hold up a hand in front of the famous Chicago steakhouse. “You know it was her favorite, where she always made us come, even when we told her it was overrated and nothing but a tourist hotspot where celebrities eat. You don’t even like the food here.”
“I’m not here for the food.” His neck tenses and his eyes sear into mine.
“Why then?”
“I just…” He sighs and looks up at the sky before returning his gaze to mine.
Why is it so hard for him to just say what he’s thinking? It’s always a big dramatic event, trying to get the words out of him.
“I know you’ll never go on another date with me again, and I… I just want a small piece of what I threw away. Just one more time, for an hour, I want to remember what it felt like, being with you.”
Fuck me. Did he really just do that? Am I actually swooning on the inside? Who is this guy in front of me?
The Donavan you were with for three years, before he crushed you.
This whole thing feels so awkward and forced, but finally, I sigh. I think about what Mom would’ve wanted, because it’s really not about me. She would’ve wanted Dad and me to still come here, talk about her, laugh. It’s the one thing we haven’t been able to do. Dad will kill me if he finds out I came here again, with Donavan of all people. I need to just go in. Maybe, a part of me, wants a small piece of what we had too. Just one more time.
I nod, and Donavan leads the way to the door.
He checks us in for our reservation and they lead us back to a two-top in the middle of everything, but there aren’t many people around. It’s kind of slow, actually.
We have a seat and order drinks, and surprisingly, it’s not as bad as I thought it’d be. It’s actually kind of nice, and it’s so weird, but it’s almost like I feel my mom smiling at us. Then again, she never knew what Donavan did, so of course she’d be smiling.
Dad thinks she still looks down on us, and I love going to her grave every year and remembering her, but when you’re dead you’re dead. I know she’s not really with us, and yet this whole thing still feels very spiritual. I’ve never experienced anything like it. My brain tells me it’s just chemicals firing in my body, years of evolution focused on survival, passed down from my great grandparents a thousand times over.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Huh?” My eyes fly up to meet Donavan�
�s.
“You were smiling, and I’m positive it wasn’t for me.”
I can’t stop the laugh that parts my lips, because he delivers the line so dry. “You’re still as blunt as ever.” I narrow my gaze on his. “And don’t ask stupid questions you already know the answer to.”
“Yeah, I…” He stops for a moment, gauging my reaction to what he’s about to say, proceeding with caution. “I think about her a lot still.”
I expect hurt, anger, sadness, all of them to overwhelm me, like back in the car, but it doesn’t. My limbs relax, and I think it was just getting through the door that was the hard part. It seems so silly now.
We always came here for big occasions, celebrations. My brain tells me I should scream at him to stop talking about her, but I can’t. Despite the absolute bullshit he pulled, I know in my heart he loved her. You can’t fake something like that for three years. “I’m sure you do.”
His eyebrows rise.
“I’m being serious, D. I know how you felt about her and how she felt about you, okay?”
“Thanks for that, Pais. I mean it.”
I nod.
“So, your brother talked to you?” I can’t look up at him, so I pretend to peruse the menu I know by heart and mumble, “How’d that go?”
“I imagine you know exactly how it went.”
I can’t help but smile at the way he says it, but I keep my eyes down. “The picture in my head is pretty clear.”
The waiter stops by the table and drops off two rocks glasses full of Glenlivet, neat. I wait for him to leave and take a sip. It tastes amazing and the warm liquid heats up my chest on the way down.
“I probably could’ve pictured it even clearer if I’d known anything about them before I came to work there.”
Donavan stares back at me like we’re really gonna go there?
Yes, we are. You wanted this date, remember?
He grins. “Doesn’t the mystery make the story better?”
I shake my head. “Not. One. Bit.”
He takes a sip of his own scotch and sighs. “Yeah, I’m sure it doesn’t.”
“I just want to know why? Did you have another girlfriend or something back in Chicago? The one who got to actually meet your family?”
“God no, you were enough to put up with.”
“Hey!” I reach over and flick his arm, harder than I intend to. My eyes widen. “Shit, sorry, it was just supposed…”
“Damn, woman.” He mocks me, shaking his arm like I might’ve broken a bone.
I know he’s using humor to deflect the conversation, which means I need to make him even more uncomfortable and press harder. I have no earthly clue why, but this is just how we’ve always operated. It comes natural to us.
“Well, maybe you should tell me why.”
The vein on his neck bulges and he tugs at his tie, loosening it a little. “I just… I told you a lot of stuff about me, and it was all true, but there was a reason I never really talked about or took you to meet my family, okay?”
“Which is?”
“Fuck, this feels like a counseling session.”
“You owe me the truth, Donavan. I deserve it, don’t I?”
He stares for a long moment that feels like an eternity. “Yeah.” He exhales a breath. “Yeah. You do.”
I wave an arm forward like continue.
“My brothers and I, it’s complicated. It’s like I love them and hate them at the same time. And I don’t like to complain about it, because I don’t like to complain about shit I can’t change.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yeah it is. It just lacks the details you want.”
“Then give me the details.”
“Look, I didn’t introduce you to them, because… Fuck… I didn’t want to see you measuring me against them. I already got that shit my whole childhood, I didn’t want the woman I love doing it too.”
It’s not lost on me that he just said “love” in the present tense. It’s also not lost on me that my heart just redlined in my chest as he said it, and at the fact I know he’s aware he said it and he didn’t correct himself.
What the hell is happening right now?
“So, you just thought, I love this woman, she’s the one I want to marry and have kids with one day, and maybe I can just keep her a secret from my family and they’ll never have to interact?”
He shakes his head. “It was just the timing. I planned to do it all one day, I just… It was all supposed to happen different than what it did.”
“Okay, so tell me the utopian version of how your life should’ve played out.”
He shrugs. “That’s easy. My plan was all mapped out in my head. I graduate number one in my class from Columbia, and stroll back home to Chicago the best, with the best girl in the world, and shove it in all their faces for picking on me, talking down to me, treating me like I was just an annoyance, like they were all better than me and I’d never live up to the Collins name.”
My face heats up. “So that was your big master plan? Graduate number one from an Ivy League school and walk me into your parents’ house with a shit-eating grin, and rub in their faces how much better you were? That you were the best?”
He traces the rim of his rocks glass with an index finger. “Look, I have regrets, a lot of them. I was twenty-four.”
“So you can give yourself a pass at twenty-four, but you can’t forgive your brothers for picking on you when you were actual children?”
He sighs. “Can we not…”
I shake my head. “You wanted a date with me. You got one.” I pause for a quick moment, shaking my head. “I just, it still blows my mind. Is that why you left? Abandoned me and my family? Because I was number one in our class? Because your fucking plan didn’t work out?” I lower my voice when I drop the f-bomb and glance around, but I feel like I might come out of my skin.
He looks at me and doesn’t respond, just nods slightly.
I grind my teeth and bite back everything I want to unleash. I thought I’d be even madder than I am, but just the shock of something so petty seems to be taking center stage. “Couldn’t you have come back home without being first in your class, without being the best and still had everything you wanted? Couldn’t you have not broken my heart and shattered my life? You left me with nothing. I would’ve supported you through anything.”
He can’t even look at me and finally his eyes move to me. “I’m sorry, Pais. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
I clench my fingers around the fork on the table. I’m damn near shaking, but I know how hard it is for Donavan to apologize for anything. I really just need to let it all go. That doesn’t mean I have to stick around and give in to whatever else he has planned with this little date of his. Finally, after the initial anger passes, I look down and mumble, “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all you have to say?”
I start to get up and he reaches for my arm.
I yank it away from him. “Don’t.”
“Please, don’t leave.” His eyes drift up to mine.
“Why?” I talk to him through my teeth. “You did it to me. I got what I came here for.”
“It’s the biggest regret of my life and always will be. Just, please. I told you I’d tell you and I just did. I’m not proud of it. I just… I don’t do well with this.” He glances around, like someone might be listening. “Talking about things. But, I’m here and I’m doing it.”
I sit down and lean back against my chair, shaking my head, putting as much distance as I can between us because I just don’t understand him. Finally, I sigh, and manage to compose myself. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, Donavan, but maybe you should go see someone and get help with that.”
His lips twitch, like he might lash out, a natural reaction, but then he stops himself and nods. “Maybe I should.” He looks away when he says it, then his eyes fall back on mine. “I know I’m fucked up inside. I just see you and I… It hurts. Everything hurts all
the time. I don’t like who I am.”
“You could’ve changed that. I would’ve done anything for you.” I pause for a moment to collect my thoughts. As much as I want to pile it on him, he looks so sincere right now. At the same time, what does he expect me to do? Just forgive him? Like, hey, here’s a get out of jail free card for turning your back on me and my family with no explanation whatsoever. “I’m just trying to picture the Donavan I knew. Yeah, you were driven, but I thought we knew everything about each other. I didn’t realize you were fixated on fantasies in your head with such specific goals. You never told me number one in the class meant that much to you. I mean, yeah, I knew you wanted it. But I never thought if you didn’t get it, you would seriously throw me and my family away like garbage. What was going through your head? I want to know. Did you picture us rolling down Michigan Avenue in a convertible, me on your side, but sitting just lower than you while you waved to the crowd with confetti blasting all around? Maybe a big banner that said ‘Congratulations, Donavan. Number one in his Ivy League law class!’, while your brothers stood on the side of the road, mouths agape, applauding you?”
“I don’t know what else I can say at this point.”
The waiter walks up, and I’m almost relieved because as much as I want answers, my blood is starting to boil again.
We both order bone-in ribeyes, medium rare. Same as we always did before.
After the waiter leaves, an awkward silence stretches between us. I turn my rocks glass in circles with my hand, over and over. It lasts until they bring out salad. Thank God my hands have something to do now.
“I told my mom about you.”
He says it right as I take a bite and my eyes widen. I think maybe he did it to make me feel awkward. He knows I won’t speak with food in my mouth. It’s a huge pet peeve of mine. It feels like it takes me twenty minutes to chew and swallow, and it also feels like Donavan smirks right at me for the entire twenty minutes that’s probably no more than five seconds.
I finally swallow. “Since I came back to work?”