“I think she wants her daddy,” his mom said from the entry to the kitchen, frowning when she saw the glass of liquor in his hand. In her arms was a fussing Erin. Max put the glass down, feeling like he was getting scolded, though she hadn’t said a word.
He took his daughter, feeling her little arms snake around his neck. It had been a long day and she was tired. “She just needs her nap,” he said, leaning down to kiss his mom on the forehead. “Thanks for looking after her.”
She nodded, her eyes misting. “It’s been nice to have a distraction.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. He knew exactly how she felt. “I’m going to see if she’ll go down for a while.”
Max carried Erin away from the wake, away from the buzz of voices. He opened up the door of the room he and Erin had been staying in and closed it behind him. Blissful silence enveloped them both. Closing up the drapes, he rocked Erin for a while, feeling her getting more and more relaxed in his arms. When he was sure she was out, he gently placed her in the travel cot, tucking in the blankets around her. With any luck she would get a good couple of hours rest. Retreating quietly, he stepped back into the hall and closed the door. He just stood there for a moment, savouring the privacy.
When he felt ready, he turned back to the living room but stopped when someone stepped into the hall ahead of him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a hiss.
Chelsea gave him a sympathetic smile that he knew to be fake. That woman didn’t know the meaning of empathy. She was dressed in black, as the occasion had called for, but the cut of her dress was too tight to be appropriate. Her blonde hair was loose and falling over her shoulders. “I came to pay my respects to my father-in-law.”
“Ex father-in-law,” he reminded her. To distract himself from the terrible reality that his father had died, Max had seen his lawyer before flying to Seattle and set the divorce wheels in motion.
She pouted. “Yes, I received the papers yesterday. I wanted to talk to you about them, actually.”
“How about you get your lawyer to talk to mine. I’m not discussing anything with you, especially at my father’s wake.” He would have shoved past her, but he was the only thing standing between her and Erin. She obviously picked up on his anxiety.
“Is she sleeping?” she asked.
“You know she is.”
“Can I see her before I go?” Chelsea looked penitent as she spoke.
He shook his head. “I’m not letting you near her again.”
Her expression turned to rage. “She’s still my daughter, Max. You can’t keep her from me.”
“Actually, I can. You walked out on us. According to my lawyer, that gives me every right to keep her from you. And I’m sure you’ve already read the details of the divorce, but I’m getting full custody of her.”
Her lips thinned. “I’ll fight you on this.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure you will. Now, get out of my father’s house before I call the cops.”
She laughed at him, throwing her head back. “What are you going to tell them? I came to say goodbye to my father-in-law?” she challenged.
He gave her a sardonic smile. “How about trespassing? If you try to touch Erin, I’ll add attempted abduction to the list of complaints.”
Max could see the moment when Chelsea accepted defeat. She turned away from him, rolled her shoulders back and sauntered back the way she’d come. He stayed in the hallway for a few more minutes before re-emerging.
“Was that who I thought it was?” Sam asked, handing him a glass of scotch.
Max drained the glass before answering. “Yep.”
“What did she want?”
“To talk about the divorce.”
“So you’re going through with it?”
“Yes. I’ve forgiven her too many times before.”
Sam raised his glass to him. “About fucking time,” he said, taking a drink. “Do you want to go outside for a bit?”
He nodded. “Let me get a refill first.”
“I’ll meet you out there.” Sam walked towards the front door while Max headed in the direction of the kitchen. Using the same glass as before, he filled it up then joined his best friend outside.
“So, you’re back for good then?” Sam asked, his eyes on the street in front of the house, on the cars lined up on both sides.
“I was supposed to start work on Friday night.”
“Evangeline give you some time off?”
“I have to be in on Monday.”
“Tough, brother.” Max couldn’t agree more. “What happened to that New York girl you were seeing? Gigi, was it?”
Pain lanced through his heart. “She’s still there.” He could feel Sam studying him, but he didn’t turn his face.
“Things got serious, didn’t they?”
Max took a sip from his glass, balancing it on the armrest of the wooden deck chair he was sitting in. “More serious than I ever thought they would.”
“Is she going to come to LA, or are you doing long-distance?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “We didn’t get around to discussing it,” he said with a shrug. “We were supposed to have two more days together, but because I had to come home so quickly, we didn’t talk about it. I just said goodbye to her outside my apartment as I was getting into a cab.”
Sam shook his head.
“What?” Max demanded.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you torn up about a girl.”
“So?”
Sam put down his glass and turned his body to properly look at him. “She obviously means a lot more to you than you’re letting on. Let me ask you this: do you want to have a relationship with her?”
“Yes.”
“Then have one.”
He made it sound so easy. “It’s complicated,” Max replied.
“Uncomplicate it, Max. If you want her, tell her. She can’t read your mind.”
Being spoken to so bluntly made him realize he hadn’t really ever tried to have a serious conversation with Gigi about what would happen when he left. All he had ever done was predict what would happen. He looked at his watch. It was three p.m., which made it six p.m. in New York. Leaving his glass where it was, Max reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. There was a text there he hadn’t seen; it was from Gigi.
Just letting you know I’m thinking about you today. I hope you get to say good bye to your father comforted by family and friends. Call me if you need to talk. I love you. xxx
He got up, took a few steps away from Sam, and dialed Gigi’s number.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hey.”
“How are you? How was today?”
“It was nice—sad, but nice.”
“How was the wake?”
He turned around and looked through the front window, seeing all his family recounting different stories about his dad. The scene made him smile. “It’s still going.”
“Oh…We can talk later—”
“No. It’s fine. I wanted to speak to you about something.”
There was a squeak in the background, and he could picture her sitting down on the end of her bed. “Okay.”
He breathed in deeply and let it out. “I left pretty quickly, huh?”
“You had a good reason,” she replied cautiously.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Gigi. As that cab was driving away, all I was thinking about was how I wanted you sitting next to me on the backseat.”
“Max, you don’t have to say that.”
“I want to. I said I couldn’t live in the same city without touching you. The truth is, I can’t live in the same country without touching you.” He heard her sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “I know I have no right to ask you, but would you consider moving to California to be with me?”
The beat of silence that followed his question made him sweat. He knew he was asking a lot of her, but his life was on the west coast.
/> “Max,” she started. “I heard back from the AMNH. I got a place on the internship program.”
“That’s great.” He only just managed to cough up the congratulations within the socially acceptable timeline. The truth was, he saw the announcement as another huge wedge being driven between them.
“I didn’t want to tell you like this. I should have waited until you’d had a bit more time to grieve.”
“Believe me, the distraction is good, but...”
“Where does this leave us?”
“Yeah,” he said on a sigh. “I mean, I know what I want...”
“I want you, Max, just like I always have. The thing is I’ve wanted to get a job at AMNH since I started studying. Now I actually have a chance of getting one. I can’t give it all up to move across to the other side of the country.”
“And I’m not asking you to.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You won’t come here, and I can’t leave,” Max reiterated. He tried not to sound contrite, but he heard it in his voice.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
I want you to say, “I choose you, Max”. Chelsea had never done that. It was all about what she wanted and what she needed. That was the reason they had moved to LA in the first place. That was the reason they got married. “Then I can’t tell you, either,” he eventually said, his words clipped. “Perhaps our relationship only worked in New York because we knew there was an end date.”
“You can’t mean that,” she replied. He heard the hurt, could almost see the way tears trembled on her lashes, threatening to fall. “We can try having a long-distance relationship,” she reasoned.
“I’m not sure that could work,” he murmured, realizing what he was saying—what he was doing—but being powerless to stop it. “Maybe we should just part as friends and leave it at that. I still love you, Gigi. I doubt I’ll ever stop. But we both know it’s not going to work out how we want it to.”
He expected to hear her fight for them, instead she simply said, “You’re right. We just met at the wrong time.”
Remorse flooded him, mingling with the sorrow of the loss of his father. Together, they were a potent mix of emotions that he felt were trying to drown him. He sucked in a breath. “All right. Well, I guess this is goodbye then.”
“No, not goodbye—just talk to you later.”
Max smiled despite himself. “Talk to you later, Gigi. I love you.”
“I…” she hesitated, the sound of a click ending the call. He pocketed his phone and turned back to Sam.
“By the look on your face, things didn’t go as you’d planned.”
Collapsing back into the chair, he picked up his glass and drained it. “It’s over.”
His best friend arched a brow. “I thought you were going to tell her you wanted her.”
“I did. But she got an internship at the museum that could lead to a job when she finishes studying. It would be selfish of me to want her to come here and give up on her dreams. Maybe it’s just like I said to her—we worked in New York because we knew there was an end date. Here in the real world, things don’t always work out how we want them to.”
Sam was studying him. He was sure he was going to tell him he was a fucking idiot, but instead he said nothing—he just stared. “I know you can’t just walk away from her, so for your sake I hope you sort it out before you lose her for good.” And with that, his best friend got up and disappeared back into the house.
32
Gigi stared down at her phone, tears blurring her vision until her wallpaper screen became a smear of indiscernible colors. She had wanted to tell Max she loved him, too, but the words had become stuck to her tongue, refusing to leave it. She’d known that their relationship had been over the moment he drove off in the cab, but still, hearing it and acknowledging it made it seem more real.
He hadn’t been willing to try long-distance, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she’d suggested it because if he had been willing, she would have given it her all. She knew that you only got a chance at a love like theirs once in a lifetime, and walking away from it was one of the most difficult things to do. But she had to. So many times before, her mother had told her never to pass up her dreams because of a boy…
Except he wasn’t a boy, was he? He was the first man to take her seriously, to see her for her. Had she just made the biggest mistake of her life?
“Want to go out and get drunk, Borello?” Jen asked from her bedroom door.
Swiping at the tears on her cheeks, Gigi looked at her roommate. “Umm, no, thanks.”
Jen’s brow furrowed. “Hey, what’s up? Something happen with lover boy?”
The tears she had denied dripped from her eyes, opening up the floodgates.
“Whoa, hey, what’s up, girl?” Jen asked, wrapping her arms around Gigi and pulling her against her chest.
“It’s Max. He’s gone and he’s not coming back.”
“I thought you were okay with him leaving.”
“I thought I was,” she replied, “until he actually left.” Pulling back, she looked into Jen’s blue eyes. “He asked me to go to California.”
“And you said…?”
“I said I couldn’t.”
“Why the fuck not?” Jen blurted out. “Sorry.”
“I got a call from AMNH today. I made the second-round acceptance. I got a position on the internship program.”
Jen whistled through her teeth. “Congrats, Borello.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, not feeling at all excited about her news.
“Do you want to know what I think you should do?” Jen asked her, holding Gigi at arm’s length.
“What?”
“I think you should forget about Max. He was just something fun for you to do while he was here, but now you have to get serious. You graduate at the end of this year. You need to get the best grades you can, and work hard at the museum to make sure you get the job. You don’t need to worry about a guy.”
Jen’s logic struck a chord with Gigi. What she’d said was all true. Before Max had come along, Gigi had been focused on her studies, on getting the perfect job and establishing her career. Somehow he had distracted her completely. She’d skipped classes because of him, but she was going to stop that now. Pre-max, her priority had been school. She was going to make it a priority again post-Max.
“You know what, Jen? You’re right. I just need to get through the end of this year and make sure I get the job at the AMNH.”
“Damn straight,” her roommate agreed. “Now, get dressed. We’re going out to celebrate your success.”
Finals week came and went for Gigi. She’d poured all her efforts into studying before starting work at the museum over the summer. Although she was spending more time with Alex, he didn’t try to make another pass at her. In fact, Alex met another girl while they were working—Lisa Woo was from Yale and they’d immediately hit it off. Gigi had been invited to go have lunch with them on more than one occasion. After the first time, though, she politely declined; being a third wheel was too depressing.
The weeks passed quickly, until finally it was the end of summer and the announcement for who would secure the permanent position at the museum was only days away. Alex didn’t think he’d gotten it, but he was already making plans to move to Connecticut to be closer to Lisa. Gigi also wasn’t as confident as she’d been at the beginning of the summer. All the people on the internship were smart and incredibly competitive. After Max, she seemed to have lost some of her motivation and drive even though she’d tried really hard to get it back.
Without Max, her life had drained of color. Without Max, Gigi had lost some of her spirit. Jen constantly told her to stop moping, but Gigi thought she wasn’t—she was just living like the love of her life was across the other side of the country. She hadn’t called him since the day of his father’s wake. She wanted to, but she wasn’t sure what she would say. Sometimes in her moments of weakness, she’d block her
number and call his phone just to hear his voice. On more than one occasion he had whispered her name into the phone, causing her to hang up abruptly. It was better this way.
She wondered if he’d moved on. She wondered if he’d taken his wife back. They had a long history together, and because of Erin, she thought he might have tried to make it work. Deep down she hoped that wasn’t true.
Sometimes she would find herself looking for anthropology jobs in Los Angeles, or at least California. She’d actually applied for one at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles but knew it was a long-shot. They wanted someone with actual experience, not some college graduate still wet behind the ears.
Still, it was worth a try. She couldn’t pin all her hopes on AMNH.
Her final day at the museum arrived with a crisp New York morning. It was just a taste of the autumn to come, and she found herself smiling to herself. She’d always loved the cooler weather. Finding her only winter coat in her closet, she slid it on and walked into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee.
“Last day, Borello?” Jen asked, biting into a slice of toast.
“Yeah,” she smiled. “It is. What have you got planned for today?”
Jen waved her hand casually through the air. “A little of this, a little of that.”
She laughed. “Right. So nothing at all.”
Her roommate shrugged and sauntered off in the direction of her bedroom. “I need a little time to recuperate before classes start again.”
Taking her travel mug from the cupboard, Gigi filled it up and grabbed one of the muffins Jen had bought home the day before. “I’ll see you tonight,” she called. Jen didn’t reply.
She arrived at the museum at the same time as Alex. He smiled and waved, his bubbly personality strangely infectious. Bumping her on the shoulder as he sidled up beside her, he asked, “Are you ready for the announcement today?”
“I am. What time are they doing it again?”
“At the morning tea at around ten. Do you think you have a chance?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. You’ve seen the competition. One of the others will get it—Inga, maybe. Or perhaps Dave will.”
Then There Was You: A Single Parent Collection Page 148