I covered my face with my hands, not wanting him to see me cry, but I couldn’t stop the wail that warbled from my throat. The pitiful sound seemed to terrify him. He immediately stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets. He had never backed away from me before, especially when I was upset.
“Christ, don’t cry.” A hiccup in his breathing told me he was not unaffected.
As fresh tears rolled down my face, my head throbbed painfully. I felt him pulling at my elbow. I resisted halfheartedly, only to be engulfed in his arms. My body automatically curved into his.
“I fucked this up. I shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I came over to help you. I wanted to say something nice, something encouraging, like you’ve always done for me. But I’m not in a good place right now. The other day, how I treated you … it was wrong, and what I said just now, damn it, I’m sorry. I’m being terrible to you when all I really want to do is to take you home and hold you and kiss you until you stop crying.”
I slipped my arms around his waist, under his jacket, his body heat radiated up my arms, and for the first time, I was able to inhale a full breath. Pressing my face into his chest, I willed him to shut up, to do what he wanted. I would go. I’d willingly make the same mistake over and over. Despite it all, I wouldn’t think twice.
“I’ve been infatuated with you for a long, long time.” He rested his chin on my head, exhaling a slow, tight breath. “Every time I held you, there was a piece of me that wondered how I got so lucky. I knew keeping you was a long shot. I’ve tried so hard to hold onto you, but somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I’ve always known I would lose you.”
“No.” I fisted the hem of his leather jacket and shook my head against his chest.
“I don’t blame you, Claudia. I understand how I look in your eyes. I’m not the prince in anyone’s fairytale.” Letting out a strained burst of air, he freed me. I struggled to keep hold of him, but he pushed my arms away. Through my tears, I saw the crushed yet defiant set of his face. “If you want me to leave you alone, you can’t come to the house or watch my band play anymore. I can’t see you, at all.”
“But—”
“No!” His sharp edge jolted me. He dragged a hand through his hair. “Please, I need to do this my way.”
It took everything I had not to protest, but I couldn’t keep contradicting myself by holding onto him.
“I understand.” I stood up straighter and wiped my face, trying to put on a good show. I left him standing there and went into the house. From inside, I leaned my forehead against the glass storm door, an unbearable, crushing weight on my heart, as I watched Toby put Bernie in the Jeep and drive away.
Letting him walk away felt akin to carving my heart out of my chest, but the truth was the combination of Toby Faye and Claudia Chiametti was never going to be an easy fit. A future together meant forever compromising, bending and battling.
I had to let him go because love shouldn’t be this hard.
The shame of it all was that, when we worked at it, it had been beautiful. More than I had ever expected.
Chapter 28 • Toby
When I looked at my life—the places I’d been, the people I’ve known—it didn’t seem all that impossible to believe that I was supposed to be alone. Maybe I was meant to remain a single guy, hitting and pulling away like a bumper car, but for the most part, unattached. Unencumbered. Singular.
Throughout my life, I’d learned how to be alone. Learned to accept the stillness, the quiet, didn’t let it bother me. It’d been Claudia who’d taught me how to channel it to better myself, to focus on what needed to get done. For the two years she’d been away at college, I’d been in therapy, rebuilding myself from the inside out, smoothing the rough edges, or so I thought, all with a plan to show her how I’d changed.
But being alone was different now. It was different not having her as the pinnacle of my forward motion. Just as it had been after Julia died, the aloneness was challenging.
Hours dragged. Days were forever, weeks an eternity.
I’d fall into a mood, and then catching myself, leap into a project. I dragged Ray along with me. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind. The bathroom got finished, and I attacked the old mauve carpeting on the stairs, ripping it up to discover decent wood underneath. It only required sanding and staining, minor work that would transform the foyer.
Ray and I rolled up the carpet and put it out to the curbside for garbage pickup.
“Can you get Eddie out of bed and dressed by 8 a.m. tomorrow?” I asked.
Ray assured me he could, and I swung by their house on my way into work the next morning. Ray told Eddie to shut it when he whined about how early it was. Leaving them on the outskirts of the construction site, I squared my shoulders and went inside the company’s worksite trailer. Sal Delfino, Joe’s older brother and business partner in Delfino Brothers Construction, stared out the dirt speckled trailer window at Ray and Eddie. Compared to Joe’s tolerant and agreeable personality, Sal was the more serious, no-nonsense brother.
He turned to me. “We don’t have a ‘bring your kid brothers to work’ program, so what’s with your scrubby little friends?”
“They need jobs.” I took off my baseball hat and ran a hand through my hair.
Sal twisted round to look at them again and put his hands on his hips. “No offense, but by my estimations, they don’t look all that reliable.”
Though I enjoyed Joe’s easy nature, I respected Sal. He was the brother I most wanted to impress, but Ray and Eddie needed this. More than anything, I wanted to do this for them.
“They will be,” I said, folding and refolding the brim of my hat.
He looked back out the window and turned a hard gaze on me. “They get one shot. If you’re vouching for them, it’s on your shoulders if they fuck up. Capisce?”
I left the trailer with a hardhats and work gloves and handed them to Ray and Eddie.
“It’s your lucky day, guys,” I told them. “You’ve just been hired by Delfino Brothers Construction. You’re our new maintenance guys.”
“For real, man?” Ray smiled. “What does a maintenance guy do?”
“Clean up the worksites, bag the debris, sweep and stuff. It’s only minimum wage, but if you do a decent job, you’ll move up the line and get a raise.”
“Whoop-te-fucking-do,” Eddie mumbled. Ray shot him a silencing look.
“Look, it isn’t anyone’s dream job, but it’s cash in your pocket. Besides, the guys on crew are all cool,” I said.
“That’s great.” Ray said. “Everyday?”
“Everyday, eight-thirty to four-thirty, Monday through Friday. A reason to get up in the morning. And everyone needs that.”
“Oh.” Ray absently scratched his elbow. “I d-don’t know how we’ll get here.”
“Until we get your car back on the road, you can ride with me.”
The week went by pretty quick, and I only had to shake Eddie out of bed twice.
It was lunchtime Friday, and as usual, instead of eating, Eddie was curled on a pallet of cement bags, napping.
“What’s up with you today?” Ray asked, unpacking his bagged lunch. I’d been short, snapping at anyone who had the misfortune of working in my vicinity.
“It’s her birthday,” I told him. I’d wanted to text Claudia, to send her a birthday message, but I didn’t want to cross the line I’d drawn. My coworkers suffered the brunt of my inner conflict.
Ray took a bite of his bologna and cheese sandwich, chewing it thoughtfully before he said, “Let’s g-grab Bones and go out and get hammered after work.”
It didn’t surprise me that Ray wanted to include Bones. At work, the two of them hit it off, and Bones had even given the brothers a lift when I had to work late.
That night, Ray and Bones came to my house, and after a few beers, we went up to Black Crows, reinstituting our long-dormant ritual—Friday night happy hour.
I was bullshitting with a guy I’d graduated with when Le
ah bounded in next to me with, that girl Amy I’d met once before behind her. Leah put her arm around me and kissed me.
I bought a round of shots and knocked mine back. That’s when I saw her. Claudia—standing across the bar. She gave me a small, tight smile, and the noise of the crowd became a dull vibration and the shot, a golf ball in my throat. I swallowed hard, forcing it down, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. What were the chances she would end up at the very place where I was trying to drink her out of my head, especially since she’d never before stepped through the door of Black Crows? And yet, there she was, crippling my plans to free myself from her memory.
My gaze fastened to her. I felt a bit unsteady as emotions rushed at me from every direction—the rough way I had last loved her, her wrecked expression when I told her to leave me alone.
She was dressed like she’d come from work, in a black blouse, dark gray skirt, and heeled boots. The only indication of her compliance to the social outing was that her hair was not in its routine, restrained ponytail. She had it brushed out, the way I liked it, wavy and free flowing, and the bar's spotlights reflected off the dark glossy strands. My gaze shifted over her shoulder to the people she was with. Office crew, and as I suspected, Berger.
A year ago today we’d been in Carlsbad, California, with April and Dario. We’d celebrated her birthday with drinks, dancing, and a late night dip in the pool. She’d tasted her first piña colada, drank several, and feeling no pain, became a flirty little vixen. That night, we crossed over the thin line of friendship we’d been dancing around.
“Uh, oh,” Ray muttered when he saw her.
“Fuck me.” I turned my back and sighed. “What time is it?”
“Time to go to another bar,” Bones said. “Ladies?”
Amy and Leah were agreeable.
I craned my neck, my eyes unwittingly traveling back to Claudia’s direction. The crowd at the bar had shifted, and she disappeared behind a few bodies.
“It’s her birthday, Bones,” I said. “Can you—?”
“On it, Ace,” he said and pushed through the crowd.
I flagged down the bearded bartender.
“There’s a painfully beautiful woman on the other side of the bar I want to buy a piña colada for.” I pointed in her direction. “Her name is Claudia.”
“Who should I say it’s from?” he asked.
“She’ll know,” I said and threw down some cash.
We waited outside in the parking lot for Bones to deliver my message. Leah was complaining about the cold, but Leah’s friend, Amy, and Ray were talking. It was looking good for him. With those two deep in conversation, Leah pressed up against me, her face close enough for me to smell her breath, a mixture of cigarettes and beer mingled with the scent of bubblegum.
“It’s friggin’ cold out here. How about we go back to your place and keep warm?” She grabbed me roughly and rubbed up against me, reinforcing her intent.
“What about Dan?” I asked.
“What about him? We’re not exclusive.” She trapped her tongue between her teeth, her eyes never leaving mine as her hand dove down the front of my jeans. I didn’t stop her, just let myself feel what I was feeling. She kissed the underside of my jaw, and I thought about taking her home and fucking her everywhere I had made love to Claudia—the couch, the stairs, the bathroom, the kitchen, our bed, the one I bought for us. I could easily burn over those memories and purge myself of her. Leah, with her taller, thicker body and pale, tatted skin would not make me think of Claudia.
My dick was hard, and Leah was willing. I had a bumper car for the night if I wanted it.
It would be easy to take what Leah was offering. I’d done it before. Before Claudia, I was a guy who didn’t hesitate to fight, a guy who would willingly take what some girl offered to make him feel better, to subsist only on what I could have with my hands.
But damn it to hell, Claudia was still inside my head. More vivid since I’d just seen her inside the bar. The present day me understood what’d been missing in that old life. I knew what it was to have my heart as tangled in the sheets as my body.
A mouthful of crumbs was not a feast.
With the inner amendment, I grabbed Leah’s wrists and stopped her.
“Don’t you ever crave more than a hookup? Don’t you want the real thing?”
“Yes. I want that with you.” She strained against my grip, her brown eyes latching onto mine. “I want you to want me, all of me. Only me.”
I freed her and drew back. It wasn’t surprising. I might’ve always known she felt that way, though I’d never implied or promised her anything.
“I can’t give you that.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” She twisted away from me, rubbing her wrists. “You’re still hung up on her. Why I can’t possibly imagine.”
The words pierced me like an arrow. Would that ever not be true?
“I’m sorry,” I offered.
“Fuck you,” she tossed over her shoulder and walked away. “Your loss.”
Amy ran to catch up with her. Ray and I watched the two of them get into a car, and without protest, he silently plopped into the Jeep, along with me, to wait for Bones.
“Amy t-told me something in-interesting. Said l-last time she was in the Monkey, P-Pace was paying a lot of attention to her, f-feeding her free drinks before he lured her into his office. She went, but sh-she said he was creepy and g-got scared.” Ray’s words tripped over his tongue in his rush to tell me the story. “She wanted to g-go back outside, but he, he wouldn’t let her leave. She scratched him and screamed b-before he finally let her go.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “Tell me she reported it.”
“No. She said s-she liked him at first, that she’d willingly gone to his office. She acted all embarrassed about it, l-like it was her fault.” Ray, in an unusual fit of anger, punched the door. “All I want to do right now is smash his d-damn face in.”
“Fucking dirt bag,” I said, pissed at myself all over again that I’d hurt Lacie so badly somehow Rob Pace had seemed like a better alternative. I remembered how she’d cried that one night, like she’d lost a piece of herself. I wasn’t innocent by any stretch of the imagination, but what if that slimly bastard had done something, that last thing, the one that pushed her over the edge?
Chapter 29 • Claudia
It was Andrew’s idea to celebrate my birthday at Black Crows. He’d even rounded up Liz along with two nurses, Donna and Danielle, to join us. The pub was fairly busy, packed with a local crowd, and surprisingly, I didn’t much mind.
“The residents were so enthusiastic about Claudia’s class, I had to start a waiting list.” Liz raised her drink in a salute. The dance flyer I’d hung in the recreation room had gained a lot of attention. My class was filled. I clinked my glass to hers, proud.
I don’t know how it was possible, how I heard his voice it the noisy room, but it carried louder to my ear than all the others. I looked across the bar, and there he was—Toby, a head taller than the general crowd, in dark jeans and a blue button-up shirt, sleeves rolled—smiling, a shot glass raised in salutation to his company. Those wide shoulders, that angular chin, scruffy with a few days growth. I watched his Adam's apple slide up and down as he swallowed the liquor until he brought the empty glass from his lips and his eyes strayed across the crowded space, finding me.
My legs were unsteady. I felt the distance of every day we’d been apart, the marking of time etched in my heart.
A group of women passed by, interrupting our staring match, as Liz swayed into me. “Oh, my, our Dr. Berger is quite besotted with you. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since you got here.”
I glanced at Andrew and found him looking at me.
“To Claudia!” He lifted his glass, his eyes meeting mine, in an attempt to toast me, but the bartender shouted, “Are you Claudia?”
When I nodded and stepped forward, he pushed a white frothy drink at me. “Guy down the bar ordered this
for you. Said you’d know who.”
The glass was adorned with a chunk of pineapple and a cherry. A piña colada.
The sight of it sent me back to California, to my twenty-second birthday when I’d had my first piña colada. So sweet and easy to drink, I’d knocked several of them back like fruit juice, one after the other. I’d never been so drunk nor had so much fun. The memory of the night’s end flushed warmly over my body.
I swung around to find Toby across the bar, but he was gone. So were his friends.
Through a wave of sharp disappointment, I fought to stop thinking about whether or not he and Leah were hooking up again. It wasn’t like I had the right to be jealous anyway. I had made my bed and now had to lie in it, but it was difficult to accept he’d moved on so fast.
I swiveled around at a tap on my shoulder, and Bones lugged me into his huge tatted arms.
“Heard someone’s celebrating a birthday!”
“Bones, it’s so good to see you.” I readily accepted the hug, relieved at the amiableness between us. “I assume Toby sent me this drink. Where is he? I want to say thanks.”
“He’s outside.” He shrugged. “He thought it would be awkward to come over with you being on a date and all.”
“It’s not a date. They’re my coworkers,” I said, making sure he understood.
“Well, either way, he couldn’t, but he wanted me to find out how you were doing.” Bones’ expression turned serious. “How’re you doing, kid? You okay?”
“Disappointed Toby didn’t feel he could come over to me himself,” I said, honestly.
“It’s not easy,” he explained.
“I know, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling sad about it.” I squeezed Bones’ big hand and smiled. “Please thank him for asking and for the drink, and tell him I’m fine. I really am.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear that, and I’ll tell him.” He let go my hand and turned to leave, but I stopped him.
“Bones, how is he?” I asked.
“He’s been one helluva a moody bastard since someone moved his cheese. But he’ll figure it out.” He winked at me. “We all do eventually.”
Keeping Claudia (Toby & Claudia Book 2) Page 26