He shook his head, his eyes focused on something in the middle distance as Trudy returned.
“Well, he was asleep.” She said this like this was a ridiculous thing for him to have been doing in the middle of the night on a Sunday. She sat, her head slowly turning to meet my eyes. “Thank you, Amy. I don’t know how you came to be with my daughter this evening…”
My adrenaline spiked. Does Trudy think I was at the party?
“I wasn’t with your daughter, Mrs. McNeil. I was at home.” I quickly told her about the X plan, and her face cleared with recognition.
“She did mention that. I think it was how she convinced you and Trent to come to the…engagement party.” She had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed as she said this.
I nodded confirmation and sat back, expecting this would be the end of my conversation with Trudy McNeil. I was wrong.
“Amy,” she said, her voice more tentative than I’d ever heard it. She cleared her throat and put a hand to it, as if she could strengthen her resolve with her fingers on her vocal cords. “Trent told us that you have ended things.”
What am I supposed to say? I lifted my mouth in a half smile and shrugged a confirmation.
“I have been thinking that perhaps I owe you an apology.”
My gaze slid to meet hers, and I was surprised to find sincerity there. I couldn’t speak, however. My anger and hurt over everything with Trent—my own hesitation to be honest with him, and the way this woman’s influence had resulted in my heart being torn and burned beyond recognition, wasn’t something I could easily forgive.
“I wondered if you might…if you’d just listen.” She turned her back fully on Hank, as if she didn’t want him to hear her confess to anything less than perfection. “Trent,” she began again. “Well, he’s my son.”
I fought an urge to say, “duh,” as Dani might have done to me.
“He’s my only son. And for a long time, he and I were a team. It was just us when Hank was building his company, and we depended on each other.” Her eyes misted, and she looked off into the corner of the room. I knew she wasn’t seeing the hospital anymore, but was looking backward, into her past. “He was a fat little boy. You might not imagine that now, looking at him. But he was this pudgy little bundle of energy, so open and affectionate.” She shot me a clear-eyed gaze then, and I could see the love she felt for him burning in her light blue eyes. “He was my whole world for so long,” she whispered. “And that’s very hard to let go of.
“I have spent my life these last twenty-six years imagining the best for him, wanting the best for him. The best schools, the best positions in life, the best job…”
“The best woman,” I supplied, my voice flat.
“The best,” she confirmed. “He is my world. And I want the best for him.”
“I get it,” I said. “And that’s not me.”
She lifted a shoulder in what seemed to be agreement, but then she surprised me. “I don’t know, Amy. That’s the problem.”
Where is she going with this? As much as I’d avoided conversation with Trudy in the past, I couldn’t help but be curious.
“You remind me so much of myself at your age. And I was not good enough for a man like Trent.” She looked around almost guilty. “I came from nothing,” she said in a disgusted whisper. “Less than nothing. My father was a raging alcoholic, and my mother worked so much I sometimes didn’t even recognize her when she was home. I tried to care for my siblings, but we had so little. More than anything, I wanted out. I worked hard, I studied, and I got myself into a position where I might be able to get there, find a better life. And I did it.” She swung a look at her husband. “Not the way I planned, but Hank rescued me just as effectively as a knight on a white horse.”
I fought the urge to let my bitterness dictate my response. I could channel all the hurt and anger over the way things had ended between Trent and me into this conversation, but the best part of me realized that this woman didn’t deserve that any more than I’d deserved to be the repository for her own feelings of inadequacy.
“I’m not you, Trudy.” Maybe I was stating the obvious. “I didn’t want Trent to rescue me. I wasn’t in it for his money, or his condo, or…” I trailed off. “I genuinely care about him.” It was as if I was becoming more comfortable with the admission. That night, standing in the driveway with Trent, telling him the truth about my feelings, had felt like an admission of weakness, of some failing I couldn’t control. But tonight, it felt like a victory. Saying these words to the woman before me felt like a declaration of strength, of the fact that I cared for him despite her, that she couldn’t stop me, couldn’t take away what I felt no matter how badly she treated me.
“I know,” she said. “I could see it, and it scared the hell out of me.”
“Because I’m not good enough.”
“Because…” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Because I think you are. And that means I’ll lose him for good.” A single tear dropped down her cheek, and I almost felt sorry for her.
“Mrs. and Mr. McNeil.” The doctor stepped before Trent’s parents, smiling. It was good news then. I was glad. “She’s going to be fine,” she assured them. “And you can see her in a moment. But first, she’s asking for Amy?”
They both looked at me, and I stood. “That’s me,” I said.
The doctor led me to Elyse’s room, and I moved tentatively to where she lay in the bed, the thin blankets tucked around her making her look like the child she was. Her makeup was smeared down her face, and tears shone on her cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” I said, pulling her thin shoulders into my arms. “It’s okay.”
“I’m so sorry,” she cried, sounding small and miserable. “I’m so sorry.” This last bit was muffled by my shoulder because I held her tightly as tears soaked my own cheeks.
Finally, she calmed down, and I turned to give her a chance to rest, finding a hulking shape looming in the doorway.
“Hell of a week, huh?”
I stood as Trent stepped forward and pulled me into his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Trent
When I walked into Elyse’s room to find Amy holding my little sister tightly in her arms, something inside me clicked. This. This is what it has to be about. There was no way I was walking away from this woman again. Not without telling her I loved her. Not without doing everything in my power to show her I meant it, that no matter what else might come at us, we could weather it together.
Of course, that didn’t change the small fact that she’d walked away from me.
But as long as she was in my arms, I wasn’t questioning it.
Her frame shook and pressed into me, more collapse than desire, I realized as I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was four o’clock in the morning, and the text I’d missed from my sister had come in at eleven. If Amy had been dealing with this situation since then, I wasn’t surprised she was on the verge of falling down. I’d also noticed my parents in the waiting area, so it was difficult to know what kind of hardship she’d endured since arriving here at the hospital.
I sat Amy in the chair by the bed and gave my sister a hug, finishing up by brushing the hair back from her face and then taking a Kleenex off the bedside table to wipe her face clean.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer, Sis,” I said, but Elyse’s eyes were sliding shut. I watched her for a moment, feeling all the ways I’d failed her hammering inside me so acutely. I stared at my little sister, wondering how she’d gotten to a point where this could happen with no one noticing. I was angry with her for being irresponsible, angry with her friends for dragging her into a situation where she could have died. But mostly, I was angry with myself. Seeing my little sister lying there was a dagger-sharp reminder that I hadn’t been there for her. I’d failed a lot lately, but I knew that more than anything, I’d failed myself. And that’s what I needed to tell Amy.
“Can we talk?” I asked, turning to the beautiful girl crying in
the chair behind me.
She wiped at her tears just as my parents arrived in the doorway, my mother’s face echoing every feeling of guilt and failure I was experiencing as she moved to take Elyse’s small hand in her own. I rubbed a hand over my mother’s back, sharing a quick hug with my dad as Amy and I left the room.
“I should have been here earlier, but I left my phone downstairs when I went to bed.” I knew it was a pointless statement, but I wanted to be the first to throw a blow at myself. I thought it might lessen some of what Amy would have for me.
“It was late,” Amy said, her voice soft and forgiving. It twisted something inside me.
We walked together to a bank of uncomfortable and cold-looking plastic chairs in the waiting room.
Amy sat and looked at me expectantly, waiting for whatever gems of wisdom I could share at four o’clock in the morning that would make all of this okay.
“I owe you an apology,” I told her.
“I’m collecting those tonight,” she said, a smile on her lips that did not light her eyes.
My heart ached just looking at the girl sitting before me, the awareness that this might be the moment I’d lose her completely lodged against my chest, no less threatening than a spear or a gun positioned there would have been. I wanted to fast forward, to find a way to explain everything so that I could just gather her in my arms and hold her against me again. I wanted to feel this girl with me, truly aligned with me, to escape once again into the bubble of togetherness we’d had for so short a time, where it seemed it was her and me against the world.
“Amy,” I began. “I know I fucked it all up.”
She shook her head sadly, but it felt like she was just agreeing with me.
“I was comfortable. I’d been comfortable for so long I didn’t ever really think about it. My parents took care of me, took care of everything,” I admitted to Amy. “And I let them. Being a fireman felt like enough. Like if I did that, it was a rebellion because it wasn’t what they wanted me to do. That made it okay that I let my mother steamroll me, that I lived in the house they owned.”
Amy nodded, and my shame deepened.
“I didn’t even think about it,” I admitted. “Until you made me.”
“You were comfortable,” she repeated.
“Yeah. But I was stuck.” I dropped my hands to my knees and forced myself to look at her, knowing I risked toppling over the edge of the mountain of the love I felt for her. “Until I met you. And then I wanted so much more. I wanted you to see me as a man, fully formed, totally independent. I thought of myself that way, but I wasn’t, and I needed you to show me that.
“Now I just wonder if you’ll ever be able to see me as anything but a spoiled kid…” I couldn’t meet her eyes again. How could a woman like Amy—a soon-to-be doctor, for fuck’s sake—ever find a way to be with a guy who’d basically spent his life under his parents’ thumb?
“Hey.” Her voice was soft. “You’re not the only one struggling to get things right.”
I looked up at her, hoping to find a way to have another chance with this girl. She took my hand in hers and held it, and I let the warmth flood through me.
“Everyone’s got their issues, their…demons.” Her voice faltered slightly, and she wrapped my hand in both of hers. “I don’t trust people. I wait for them to leave me. I give them reasons to leave.”
I waited, but she wouldn’t meet my eye. “I’m not going anywhere,” I told her, wishing I could just bury my head in her hair, wrap my arms around her, and show her I’d be there forever.
She shook her head, her cheeks still shining with tears, and squinted up at me, one eye closed. It would have been comical if everything around us hadn’t been so serious and sad. “I will always worry that I’m not good enough.”
“For who?” I was stunned. Amy was one of the most genuinely good people I’d ever met.
“For anyone.” She glanced at the hallway leading to Elyse’s room. “For your family. For you.”
“Hey,” I said, tilting her chin up to catch her eyes. “You’re too good for me. That’s the problem. I’ve been pretending to be a grown-up while you’re busy actually being one. But not anymore.”
“Why not?” she asked.
It was a fair question.
“I’m buying a house,” I said. “On my own. It won’t be anything fancy. I can’t afford a lot right now, but I want that. I want it to be mine.”
Amy nodded encouragingly.
“And I’m telling my dad I can’t take on his role at work.”
Her eyebrows shot up at that. “Seriously?”
“I don’t deserve it. I can’t do what he did. But I can be half of a partnership.”
“Rebecca.” Her voice dropped lower, sounding sad.
I turned to face her then, looking right into those eyes that threatened to undo me, to end me. “She’s shrewd and smart, Amy. I respect her. I respect her a lot,” I said. “But I don’t love her. I never did.”
Amy was watching me, uncertainty on her face, her lips trembling.
“And the thing is, I know there’s no chance of loving her now—or loving anyone really.”
Amy’s eyes dropped shut, and her chin fell to her chest. I reached out a hand and tipped it back up, forcing her to look at me. To hear me.
“There’s no chance of me falling in love with anyone because my heart’s already taken.” I smiled, taking a breath to fortify me to continue. “It’s yours, Amy. Maybe since I met you. Maybe I wanted to pretend to be engaged to you because I knew I didn’t have a shot with a girl like you in the real world…maybe I was just being immature. Either way, I think it was just a way to buy more time. Because even before we were ‘engaged,’ I felt things for you that I’ve never felt before for anyone. And it was fucking terrifying.”
Amy smiled, probably at my inability to avoid cursing even when I was pouring my heart out.
“It was terrifying to realize that I was falling in love with you.” I let it hang there, an amorphous cloud between us, twisting and reforming as we both absorbed the meaning of the words.
Amy nodded vaguely, an almost imperceptible motion of her head that sent my heart stuttering. Was she accepting my statement, or just acknowledging it? Was she agreeing with me? Just ask her.
“Do you think there’s any chance for us?” I asked, throwing it all out there, knowing I could end up in a puddle on the floor. “Maybe we could just…do it normally? Date? Go get coffee?” I tried one more silver bullet I still held. “Hot-air balloon ride?”
Amy looked more tired than I’d ever seen her, dark circles beneath her eyes and her shoulders slumped at angles from her graceful neck. But her face glowed as she met my eyes. Her lips pressed together into a grim line, and my heart sank. Amy wasn’t a girl who put up with bullshit, and I knew she’d had enough of it from me. But then her mouth pulled up on one side into the tiniest of smiles.
She didn’t say anything. Just closed her eyes and leaned in to my shoulder. I inhaled her sweet, sexy scent and pushed my emotions back into a box inside me. We would handle this later. For tonight, a smile was all the hope I needed. We sat leaning together, Amy in my arms on the hard plastic chairs, both of us relaxing into each other and into the knowledge that even if we hadn’t figured anything out, at least we had agreed that maybe there was more time. Maybe we could work things out.
…
In the light of day, Elyse was fine. Or at least she recovered from the overdose that had led to her losing consciousness, and would be fine soon. The rest of us were less than what I’d describe as fine, and more toward completely freaked out and rightly chastened. We—my parents and I—had let this happen. We’d been absorbed in our own shit, and Elyse had been left to her own devices and had been asking for help for a long time.
Mom took it harder than anyone. That shiny exterior she wore most of the time had cracked at the hospital, and parts of it had slid away. We were together a lot in the two weeks that followed—I even slept at
the house as the condo was shown and sold, a process that happened pretty fast. But the house I’d bought was closing quickly, too, so I had just one more week of staying with my parents before I could move in.
It was nice being home, which also surprised me. The recent scares we’d had as a family—both of them of the life or death variety—had pushed us together and forced us to think about what really mattered.
And as I sat at the dinner table one night, I looked at the faces of my parents and my little sister and realized that in my efforts to get away and prove myself to everyone, I’d managed only to create space and distance. Now I felt a bond growing at home that was very different—I was becoming reliant on them for something harder to name and define, but it filled some of the aching space inside me and created a warmth I hadn’t realized I missed from childhood. From a time when my mom was much more than an annoyance—she was my best friend. I’d begun to realize that her desire to control my life might actually stem from a desire to simply be a part of my life.
“How was therapy today?” I asked Elyse as I passed her a bowl of peas.
“It’s therapy, Trent. It’s not supposed to be fun.” Elyse wasn’t particularly excited about the doctor’s recommendation that we get her into a drug and alcohol awareness program. It wasn’t rehab, exactly—she didn’t need that, but she did need some help, and that’s what this was supposed to be. I was pretty sure we all knew what she really needed was for the people closest to her to pay better attention, to stay close and set some boundaries, so that was also happening.
“How’s Amy doing, son?” Dad asked toward the end of dinner. It had been two weeks since that night in the hospital when we’d decided to date again. Since then we’d had coffee twice and dinner twice. Our dates had been great—but short and chaste. My body was finding it hard to read the memo my heart had sent, the one that read: Dear libido, calm the hell down. We’re taking it slow.
“She’s good,” I said, pausing with the fork at my lips. “She started school this week, so I know she’s crazy busy and pretty stressed out.”
Without Promises (Under the Pier) Page 18