by Shawn Lane
A Thankful Heart
By Shawn Lane
Published by JMS Books LLC
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Copyright 2019 Shawn Lane
ISBN 9781646561568
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Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
A Thankful Heart
By Shawn Lane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Michael still had Halloween decorations up. That was the first thing I noticed. Bats, cats, and jack-o’-lanterns. Not that crazy, I supposed, given that it was just the first week of November.
They were stuck to the walls of his office with push pins and tape. Some looked like the kind of decorations you’d get at the dollar store while others maybe were handmade. Not by Michael, of course. But he did have little nieces and nephews. He didn’t mention getting them to me, but then, over the last month or so, he’d been pretty distant.
I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed the décor the last time I’d been there, but then again, that had been in early October, so maybe he hadn’t had them up yet.
Michael was a lawyer. In fact, I had heard non-stop for weeks that he was working on a big case. It kept things pretty unstable between us.
He barely looked up when I stood in the doorway.
“Fabian, I don’t have a lot of time.”
And sure, anyone else probably would have turned and left, tail between their legs at his cold, business-like tone. But I wasn’t just anyone else. And I wouldn’t let him intimidate me.
“I don’t need a lot of time,” I said, easily. “Shouldn’t you be replacing those with turkeys and pilgrims or something?”
His gaze rose to mine, his dark eyes narrowing. “Huh?”
“All that Halloween stuff on your walls.”
Michael grimaced and tossed down the pen he’d been clutching. “Please tell me that’s not why you interrupted me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get real.”
“Anyway, I have nothing to do with those. Annette put those up.”
Annette was his admin assistant.
“She’s on vacation this week. She’ll take them off when she’s back. What do you want, Fabian? This case is kicking my ass and really I don’t like to be bothered at work.”
“I was in the area, and since you’ve been ignoring calls and texts, I figured I’d just stop by.”
“I haven’t been ignoring them. I’ve been working. What is it?”
Though he was hardly in the mood to discuss this, I forged ahead. I was already committed at this point, and not telling him what I wanted was probably worse.
“Thanksgiving.”
Michael frowned. “What about it?”
“I’m making plans to go up north to see my family for the weekend. I plan to leave the Tuesday before and return Sunday.”
His gaze went to the calendar on his desk. “It’s November the sixth.”
“Yes. Thanksgiving is the twenty-eighth. I’m driving up there on the twenty-sixth. It’s about a six-hour drive and leaving Wednesday after work will be a nightmare.”
For a long time, he just stared at me, but finally said, “Why are you telling me all this?”
With extreme patience, I replied, “Because, I need to know if you’re coming with me. They’d like to meet you, Michael, and it seems like the perfect opportunity. There’s no room for us to stay at their place, so I’m going to get a room at a local inn. Are you coming along?”
Michael didn’t have any living family in California. And since he hadn’t mentioned flying off to see his brother in Toronto where he lived, I figured it would be a safe bet that Michael would stay here.
“I can’t believe you’re bothering me about this right now. Jesus, Fabian. That fucking holiday is weeks away. It could definitely have waited. God, sometimes, you’re just…”
I stiffened and straightened away from my relaxed stance by the doorway. “I’m what?”
“The amount of attention you demand out of me is taxing,” he said after a long pause. “Draining, even. Right now, the only thing I can focus on is this case.”
Jaw tightening, I nodded. “So that’s a no?”
“Yes, it’s a no. Until this case is over, I can’t be bothered by trivial stuff.”
“And when will that be, Michael?”
“Not until that first week in December I mentioned before. When you move in.”
I shook my head. “No.”
The frown was back. “What do you mean no?”
“I’m not moving in with you.”
“But you agreed.”
“I’ve changed my mind. But you should be really happy about that, because it means I won’t be bothering you with my trivial time-consuming shit anymore. You won’t be drained or taxed.”
Michael sighed heavily. “Cut out the dramatics. Seriously. This is a big fucking case, and I just need to be able to focus on it, not whether or not I should be meeting your family over Thanksgiving.”
“Sure. No problem.” I turned to leave.
“Are you coming over—”
I laughed then, not even turning back toward him. “No, Michael. I hope you have great success with your case. I’m sure you will. You’re a great lawyer. But I’m moving on.”
“Moving on?”
Then I did look at him and he was gazing back at me plainly bewildered.
“Breaking up. It’s what couples do when it no longer works for them. And this—” I gestured to the two of us “—it’s not working for me. Goodbye, Michael. I hope you find what and who you’re looking for.”
* * * *
I had been named after Fabian, the singer-actor dude. My mother had allowed my grandmother to name me. I can’t tell you how many times I’d get people calling me Fabio, after the guy with the hair. Nope, not that one.
Anyway, as I left Michael’s office building and stepped into the overcast day, I already had out my cell phone to call my sister.
“Wait. What?” Denise exclaimed. “You mean he’s not coming with you?”
I snorted a laugh. “There is no him. Didn’t you get what I said? We broke up.”
“That lughead dumped you?”
“I kind of dumped him. I think.” I paused at my car to unlock it with the electronic fob. “I’m screwed, though.”
“Why?”
“I’m about to have no place to live. My lease on the dump I’m at now is up at the end of the month and I was supposed to be moving in with the lughead. I could barely afford that place, which was why Michael asking me to move in was like a godsend.”
And it was, too. Michael had said he would pay
the rent and utilities; all I had to do was pay my own expenses. A dream come true. Or I’d thought.
I should have realized it was too soon to be calling us “happily ever after.” We’d met last February, both having been stood up by Valentine’s dates. We’d moved quickly and pretty happily into couplehood.
In September, two things had happened. Michael asked me to move in with him when my lease was up, and he’d gotten the big case. Everything had pretty much gone downhill from there.
“You could move back up north,” Denise said, trying to sound casual.
It was a thing with my family. They didn’t want to come right out and say they thought my choice to become an actor was doomed to fail and I should come back home, but they all thought it. I knew they did.
And maybe they were right. The parts did seem to be drying up. I was working as a part-time waiter to struggle to pay the rent on my apartment. Hell, maybe somebody had even been talking to Michael, trying to convince him I was using him. It was possible. I knew his friend, Dave, didn’t like me.
But I wasn’t ready yet to give up on absolutely everything.
“I could,” I said, keeping the commitment from my voice.
“But you aren’t going to.” Denise sighed.
“Not yet. Give me another year to make it work before the family starts freaking out.”
“The family is hardly freaking out. We’re just…concerned.”
“There’s no need. I am not currently in danger of starving or becoming homeless.”
“Where will you live now that Mister Dreamboat didn’t work out?”
First “lughead” and now “Dreamboat”? I shook my head as I started my car.
“I’ll figure something out. I have a friend at the restaurant who had a room to rent. I’ll check with her. And now I have to go. I’m about to drive.”
“Okay. Can’t wait for Thanksgiving and to see you. Love you!”
“Love you, too.” I ended the call and stared at my quiet cell. No messages, no missed calls, no texts. Michael had made no attempts to chase after me. Even by electronic means.
How depressing.
I put away my phone and drove from the area, heading to my job at the restaurant.
* * * *
It wasn’t until the end of my shift that I could ask my co-worker about the room to rent.
Mary was removing her apron and clocking out when I approached her.
“Hey, Mary, you know that room you and your husband were trying to rent out?”
She glanced at me while untying the strings behind her back. “Sure. What about it?”
“Still available? Because I know someone who is interested.”
“It is. Who?”
“Me,” I admitted. I grinned sheepishly.
Mary frowned. Like everyone around me, which made me think I was an over-sharer, she knew I had planned to move in with Michael. “You? What about Mister Hot Shot Lawyer?”
I definitely talked too much. And embellished too much, also. I felt myself blush.
“We, um, we broke up.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. And right before the holidays.” She tsked. “It’s available. It has a private bathroom. Kitchen privileges. Nothing fancy.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“When do you want to move in?”
“I have my place until December fifth. I got an extension since I was going to visit family over Thanksgiving. With an extra cost, of course.’
She snorted. “Of course. That works. The room is yours. You want to see it first?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I trust you. A room’s a room. And right now it will suit my needs. Thanks, Mary. And thank your hubby for me, too.”
With that trouble off my mind for the moment, I went home. I checked my phone again, and nothing. My still hold-over landline had no calls or messages either.
I began to wonder if maybe Michael was honestly grateful to be rid of me. Maybe he’d regretted inviting me to move in with him. He was a pretty smart guy who made a decent living and was rather ridiculously good-looking. He could have any guy out there in the world. Why would he want skinny, scrawny, down-on-his-luck, out-of-work-actor me?
* * * *
That of course had been the beginning of November, and Thanksgiving was the twenty-eighth this year. Pretty late in the month.
By the time the Tuesday before rolled around, there still had been nary a peep out of Michael. That spoke volumes to me.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, is what Michael must have thought.
I had spent those weeks packing my stuff so that when I returned from visiting my family, I could move out of my apartment and into Mary’s rented room. Some of it was just going to have to go to storage as I had an old couch and a dining room table that weren’t going to fit in a single room.
It was mid-morning on November twenty-sixth before I set out. I checked messages again like a fool.
Because it ended up being only me, I decided to save the expense of an inn, and beg my folks to find room for me at their house. I’d sleep on the floor. Didn’t matter. My mother found a spot for me in one of the spare rooms.
Normally it wouldn’t have been an issue, but their house was in the middle of revisions to one of the bedrooms. My sister and her family would be in another. The room I was staying in was their exercise room. They’d bring in a cot for me.
And so I left Los Angeles behind, temporarily, though I knew the family unit would attempt to convince me to stay, and headed up north for their San Jose home.
On the way, I got a little Dionne Warwick in me and belted out “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Fortunately there were no dogs around to torture with my terrible singing. But it did improve my mood.
Chapter 2
The thing about being part of an Italian family was that they were, well…boisterous.
As soon as I pulled up in front of my parents’ house close to eight that Tuesday night, the door opened. I was pretty sure that meant my mother had been watching for me.
This was not the home I had grown up in, which had also been in San Jose, but one that my parents had bought as an “upgrade.” My sister was a real estate agent and had helped them with the purchase.
“Fabian! There you are!”
I was enveloped in a hug guaranteed to knock you off your feet if you weren’t prepared for it. I was, fortunately.
“Mama.”
“I thought you’d be here much earlier!” She stepped back, but still clutched at my arm as I made my way to the trunk of the car to take out my bag. “I thought you were leaving in the morning.”
“Not early morning. And you know how traffic is. Had to stop for gas and something to eat along the way, too.”
“Eat? I have food waiting for you.”
“I know, I know. This was lunch. I’m hungry, don’t worry.”
Mama practically dragged me inside the house. There, my father gave me another hug, this one like a bear had hugged me.
Then I went through my sister, her husband, and the two kids. By the time I sat at the table with a plate of pasta in front of me, I was already exhausted. I was the introvert of the family.
I wasn’t surprised, not really anyway, when the three of them, Mama, Pop, and Denise, all sat at the dining room table while I ate. Denise’s family had disappeared into the room they were staying in. I couldn’t blame them. I wanted to do the same.
“So.” This from Pop.
I ignored the subtle approach and put another bite of pasta in my mouth.
“How was the drive?” Denise asked.
“Long.”
“I bet. All that driving and traffic. And LA. Crazy.” Mama paused. “Which is what we want to talk to you about.”
“Uh-huh. Got any garlic bread?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do I? Didn’t you grow up with me as your mother?” She rose and went into the kitchen, then brought back a basket filled to the brim with garlic bread.
“Denise told us about th
at boy.”
“Man, Mama. Michael’s no boy.”
“Eh.” She shrugged. “You divide us all into girls and boys, he’s a boy. A stupid one, if you ask me.”
Nobody did, and I wasn’t about to point that out or she’d box my ears.
“The point is, Fabian, now that you have no man and no job—”
“I have a job.”
“Working at a restaurant,” Pop said.
“You trained to be a nurse. An RN. You were almost finished when you quit. There wouldn’t be much you’d have to do to get started on it and finish it this time,” Mama pointed out. “With no boyfriend, no acting job, and no real place to live, there’s nothing keeping you in Los Angeles. It’s time for you to move back home.”
“Back home?”
She nodded. “The room where you’re staying. We can get rid of all the exercise equipment. Your father isn’t using it anyway. We’ll turn it back into a room. A room for you. There’s a bathroom right next door. And, unlike that room you’re going to rent, we won’t charge you anything. It’s all for free.”
“Mama.”
“Just until you get settled and back on your feet. Then you can get your own place. Find a new boy here. It will all work out perfectly.”
I sighed. “I want to be an actor.”
“There’s local theater. You can do that on the side.”
I didn’t say anything as I was counting to ten.
“Mama, Pop, Fabian’s young and single. Maybe he wants more privacy.”
Mama eyed my sister. “We’ll give him privacy. We know he’s single and looking. In fact, he’d have more privacy here than in a room rented from a stranger.”
“She’s not a stranger,” I protested. “She’s a co-worker.”
“Not family. It’s at times like this, you need family.”
“Times like this?”
“You’re broken-hearted and down on your luck,” Pop spoke up.
Okay, not that it wasn’t true, but still—
“We don’t want you to become depressed and suicidal.”
“What? Mama—”
“There’s a high percentage of that among—”
“Don’t go there,” I cut in quickly. “And anyway, I’m not.”