“No, not too hard.”
“Are you able to cancel the reservation?”
I twisted to look at her. “You don’t want to go?” The guy behind me started honking at me to go. The light had turned green. I pulled over and asked again. “You don’t want to go?”
She was barely looking at me. Now I was really nervous. I studied the Porsche emblem on my steering wheel, running my thumb up and down the raised edges.
“I’m just not in the mood to go out,” she said simply.
“Okay, yeah, I can cancel it,” I began. “Do you want me to leave?” My heart was beating so fast, I was afraid she could hear it from the passenger seat. Was she going to tell me to go? My palms were sweating. I didn’t know what to do.
“No, I just don’t want to go out. Maybe you can come in? Have a drink?” she suggested.
I suddenly felt a wave of relief. “Yeah, okay. I’ll drop you back off then find a spot.”
The door to the apartment was open. I walked in, and she was standing in the kitchen, pouring me a scotch. She was still really quiet. “That was fast, you found a spot?” she asked.
“Yes, I pulled into a lot—everything okay?” I asked again, afraid of the answer she was going to give.
She came over and handed me the drink. I took a sip; she was still silent.
“You just want me to taste like scotch,” I said, joking around, hoping to lighten the mood.
She finally smiled. “You’re right,” she said, and then kissed me. That kiss was just as passionate as our first. I melted into her lips. How did I survive without seeing her for so long?
“Where have you been?” she finally asked.
“I’ve just been busy, end of the year bullshit.” For the first time ever, I lied to her.
She pulled away and looked up at me, almost as if she was afraid to ask the next question. “Are you falling out of love with me?” she hesitantly asked.
My heart literally broke right there. I put my drink down and shook my head. “No, no, no,” I said, pulling her into me and kissing her. I lifted her chin with my hand. “It’s just the opposite, really. I am so in love with you. It gets stronger each day. I want to tell you…”
I stopped myself. I promised her I wouldn’t ever bring it up again. I couldn’t tell her, not yet. She couldn’t have any involvement. I had to end things with Samantha without Sarah knowing, and then I could tell her. Afterward, so she had no guilt.
“Tell me what?” she asked.
I kept my arms wrapped around her waist. “That. Just how much I love you.”
“I just thought we could, you know, be together tonight, here. I missed you,” she said.
I lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom. I made love to her that night. Slow, sensual, holding her hand the entire time. Brushing her hair out of her face so I could stare at her, telling her profusely how much I loved her. Telling her she was the most important thing in my life. Telling her how beautiful she was.
I fell asleep in her arms and woke up at 3 a.m. in a panic. “What time is it? Shit, I have to go,” I said.
She sat up abruptly, watching me frantically get dressed.
“I’m sorry baby, I have to go,” I explained. “I’m on vacation next week, so I won’t be here Monday, but I’ll see you on Christmas Eve. I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.” I kissed her and ran out.
I opened the door to my house very quietly, hoping Rocky wouldn’t start barking. He was sleeping on a pillow in the corner of the room. He made eye contact with me, but didn’t make a sound. Even the dog didn’t care that I was sneaking in. I crept up the stairs, trying not to wake anyone. The kids were already back for the holidays, and I wasn’t even sure who was home. As I made my way to the guest room, I couldn't help but stop at the master bedroom. I cracked open the door and peeked in. Samantha was sleeping peacefully, holding onto a pillow. I couldn’t stop staring at that pillow. It should have been a man she was holding. A man she loved, who loved her back. She looked so tiny in that king-sized bed.
As I watched her sleep, I wondered if she had any idea what was coming. I’d always been a man of my word. I may have lied, but I never went back on a promise. It killed me that I was going to leave her. I’d sworn to her that I would never hurt her, never leave her. I stood there for a long time before I quietly shut the door. When I turned to head back to the guest room, Nick was standing in the hallway behind me. He must have just gotten home.
“Hey, Buddy,” I whispered. “Just getting in?”
He looked me up and down. “Yes, you?” he asked, sounding surprised to see me still fully dressed.
“No,” I lied. I looked at my watch. “I was actually just leaving. I could use a drink, still have half an hour for last call, right? I was seeing if your Mom was awake, but she’s out cold.”
He smiled. “I know a club with a great after-hours party, come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.
“Oh, you’ll buy me a drink with my own money? How nice of you.” I laughed as we started back down the stairs and headed out.
The club was packed for four in the morning. Everyone was covered in sweat from dancing all night and loud music blared. Half the people drinking probably should have been cut off hours ago; I couldn’t believe they were still serving them. Everyone knew Nick, from the bouncer to the abundance of girls who approached him. One girl kissed him on the cheek and touched my arm. She looked like she was probably attractive, had her makeup not been smeared all over her face.
“Who’s your sexy friend?” she asked.
“That’s my father,” Nick answered, and she looked surprised. “Dad, this is Laura.”
“Wow, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh? Well, hello Mr. DeLuca.” The girl used a very seductive tone and began rubbing my forearm.
“Please don’t make me any older than I am. Vince will suffice,” I said.
She told Nick she’d catch up to us, winked at me, and then we walked over to the bar.
“Look at that, you can still pick up,” Nick said, like he was proud. He made eye contact with the bartender, who also seemed to know him well. “Two glasses of Johnnie Walker Black, neat please,” he ordered.
“Eh, if we’re using my money, go straight to Blue,” I said.
“Well, now we’re definitely using your money, if we’re getting Blue,” he said, laughing.
We took our drinks and toasted. “It certainly goes down smooth. Whether or not it’s worth eighty-five dollars a drink, that is debatable,” I said.
Nick was twisted in his seat and watching a group of girls, seemingly unamused by my comment.
“Look at them,” he began. “One gets better looking than the next.”
I turned around and looked at the girls he was referring to. He was right; they were all really hot.
“You know that girl Ashley I’m seeing? She wants to get serious,” he said.
“Like marriage?” I asked.
“Eventually. I mean, she knows I’m going to finish getting my master’s before actually getting married, but I think she wants a ring.”
“Do you love her?” I asked.
“Yeah, I do. But I’m young, so many other girls out there. What if she’s not the right one? I don’t want to end up twenty years from now sleeping in the guest room, no offense,” he said.
That comment went right through me. I felt like I’d just been kicked in the balls.
“What made you marry Mom?”
I guzzled the rest of my drink and ordered another.
“I mean, I know she got pregnant and all, but what actually made you marry her? You didn’t have to,” he said, once the bartender slid a fresh scotch to me.
I gazed into the glass. No one had ever asked me that question before. I took a deep breath and another sip of my drink. “You know, I’ve never told anyone this story before,” I began. “Your mother doesn’t even know.”
He looked up at me,
listening intensely.
“I found out she was pregnant and sixteen all in the same breath. Naturally, I freaked out, panicked—didn’t know what to do. It was statutory rape. All I could think about was that I was going to get arrested. My whole life was about to fall apart. I went to my baseball coach, told him I was in trouble. Asked him for help. All of a sudden, I’m sitting in this fancy attorney's office in Los Angeles. They were walking me through what to say, what to do. Told me to cut off all contact with her. Don’t see her, don’t pick up her calls, wait until I got arrested.” I took another sip of my drink. I could picture being in that conference room, feeling so far from the attorneys across that huge table. My coach sitting next to me, offering me moral support. Nick had a look of horror on his face.
“They told me to start recording everything she said on my answering machine, hoping she’d admit on the machine that she lied about her age,” I said. “They wanted to paint the picture that she was a slut, trying to hold on to an aspiring baseball player for the money. Except she wasn’t a slut, at all—she was far from it. It took over a month for her to sleep with me. She was just a stupid kid who liked me, so much that she lied about her age. When I tried to argue, they wouldn’t hear it, kept asking me if I wanted to spend the next ten years in jail. They went into explicit detail of what they do to ‘rapists’ in prison.”
Nick ordered another drink. “Wow, that’s fucked up,” he said, sitting very stiff in his chair.
“I ignored her calls for a week,” I continued. “Finally, after about the fifteenth call, she started leaving me a message. She was crying, so hysterically, I could barely make out what she was saying. Begging for me to pick up the phone, she had no one to talk to. Then she began saying it. I can still hear her voice in my head. ‘Vinny, I’m so sorry I,’ she said. I picked up the phone and stopped recording. I just couldn’t do it. I went to get her and brought her back to my place. She said a friend of hers knew someone who could fix her problem, but it cost nine hundred dollars that she didn’t have. She asked me if I had the money.”
“By ‘fix’ I assume she meant an abortion?” Nick asked.
“That’s word for word what I asked, except she couldn’t get the word abortion out, just made her cry more. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. I couldn’t be responsible for making her do something that she would regret for the rest of her life. I just couldn’t do it. Nor could I walk out on the child I had just made. I told her it wasn’t her problem, it was our problem, and I had another idea of how to ‘fix’ it. We would pretend like we were in love, and I was going to ask her father for permission to marry her. Well, you know the rest of that story and how it ended; so, here we are. Me and you, at a nightclub, drinking Johnnie Walker Blue—which never would have happened had I not married her.”
We both sat there, silent for a few minutes. “If you love this girl Nick, hold on to it,” I finally said. “There’s always going to be a better-looking girl or a younger girl. Another girl who will do something she won’t—don’t put yourself in a situation where you’re always asking, what if?”
“If Mom didn’t get pregnant, do you think you’d be married to her now?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that question; I have no idea. It’s like asking me if I’d be a retired baseball player now if I didn’t get into that accident. Everything happens for a reason. We were put together for some reason, what that reason is, I still have no clue.”
I couldn’t explain why, but it felt good to finally tell someone that story. Like I’d been carrying extra weight around with me for twenty four years. “Nick, I have something else to tell you that I haven’t told anybody.”
He leaned in closer, as if he were afraid of what might come out of my mouth next. “What is it?”
I studied my scotch. It was hard to formulate the words, but once I did, they came straight out. “I’m going to be asking your mother for a divorce.” I was so afraid to look up at him, to see what his reaction would be. When I finally did, though, he didn’t seem upset, or even surprised. “Do you think I’m a dick?” I asked.
“Yeah, young aspiring baseball player marries a sixteen-year-old girl he knocks up to save her reputation, gives her and their kids an amazing life—you’re definitely a dick,” he said. “Do you think I’m a dick for saying that about my mother? I love her, and I love you, I just want both of you to be happy. Do you want to live the rest of your life saying, what if?” he threw back at me.
I stared at him, so proud of the man he’d become. Of the way he was able to see past the fact that we were his parents and look at me like no one else seemed to, like I was just a regular guy.
“I still have no idea how you got so smart. You know, if you weren’t so damn good looking, I’d question whether or not you’re really my son,” I said, laughing.
We bonded that night in a way unlike any other night. We stayed at the bar talking for another hour, didn’t even get home until six in the morning. For the first time since he’d been born, I felt like I was talking to my friend, not my son.
SARAH
I couldn’t get the image of Vincent running out of my apartment out of my head—running back home to her. Even if I told him to leave her and he did, he would eventually cheat on me too, right? I didn’t care how rich he was; I couldn’t give him a license to cheat. I couldn’t be one of those wives who was okay with her husband sleeping around. I loved him too much. I was too jealous. I wasn’t okay with any of that. With the situation we were in now, even if he slept with someone else, I wouldn’t be the one he was cheating on; he’d still be cheating on her. But he’d been acting so weird those past few weeks, so distant, that I knew something was wrong. Something was really wrong. I had so many questions running through my head. Had he met someone else? Had my show become a reality, with our affair somehow ultimately making his marriage stronger?
I knew there was no future for Vincent and me. So, when Brendon asked me to marry him that Friday night, I had no good reason to say no. Isabel was right. Brendon had everything I wanted. Sex was never on my list of requirements, so why should it be now? I was going to turn thirty. My friends had all started getting married. I was in love with someone who wasn’t available. Someone who couldn’t give me what Brendon could, no matter how much he wanted to.
We walked up to the rooftop together that Christmas Eve. Our fifth Christmas Eve together. Our three-year anniversary. It was a routine now—also, the warmest Christmas Eve in New York City history, warmer than the year before. Temperatures had reached into the seventies, and it was strange not to be wearing jackets at the end of December.
We drank the first glass of wine, and then he put our song on, and we started dancing. He passed a joke that the song wasn’t appropriate this year, and we should be singing “Baby, It’s Warm Outside.” I half-smiled. I held on to him so tight. I knew it would be the last time we did this.
As I held him, I kept thinking of what to say—how I was going to tell him. I was taking in his whole aura. The smell of him, and the way my fingers felt, running through his hair. The way my hand slid down his neck to his chest, and how I felt so secure and safe in his arms. These were all the things I knew I was never going to experience with him again.
The song stopped, and we just kind of stood there; his arms around my waist, mine around his shoulders. He lifted my chin and kissed me. I didn’t want him to stop. I felt the same about that kiss as I had about our first, back when he’d asked me permission. He walked over to the nook to pour us another glass of wine. I didn’t move, just stood in the same spot. I was so nervous. My heart was beating so fast.
“Vincent, I need to tell you something,” I said.
He brought the wine over, smiling at me—gazing really, how he always did. I could tell he had no idea what was coming. He handed me the wine.
“Tell me,” he said.
I couldn’t stop looking at his dimple. That perfect smile that I was never going to see ag
ain. I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. I tried again. Still nothing. His face went from awe to concern.
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Vincent, I’m… I am…” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t get the words out.
Now he looked distraught. He put his wine down on the ground, and came closer to me.
“You’re what?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t even look at him when I said it.
“I’m getting married,” I blurted out. There was silence. I opened my eyes as he stood there for a few seconds, speechless, his mouth dropped open.
Finally, he started shooting out questions, a mile a minute. “You’re what? To who? How long have you been dating him for? What does he do? Do you love him?”
I’d never seen him like this. He was upset, mad, nervous. Heartbroken. “A year. I’ve been seeing him for a year.”
“A year? So, when we were in Puerto Rico, you were seeing him?” His voice grew louder as he backed away from me.
“Yes, you told me not to tell you until absolutely necessary. At this point, it’s pretty necessary. He’s a gamer,” I said, answering his second question.
“A gamer? What the fuck is a gamer?” he asked.
“I don’t know, he does something with video games.”
He picked the wine up from the floor and downed the whole glass. Then he started laughing. “This is a joke, right? You’re fucking with me—you’re getting married to a guy who plays video games for a living?”
He had to stop talking because he was laughing so hard that he almost sounded insane. He returned to the bottle to refill his glass again.
“Tell me, Sarah—this is a fucking joke, right?”
I didn’t have to answer the question. My expression told him I wasn’t kidding. He stood there staring at me, still in shock.
“Do you love him?” he asked again.
“He’s a good guy; I’ll learn to.”
“No…no, no, have you learned anything from my marriage at all? That doesn’t work!” he yelled. After finishing the second glass of wine just as quickly as the first, he got this crazy look in his face. “No. Nope. I am not allowing it! You’re not marrying him!”
Wounds of Time Page 19