Claiming Cari

by Megyn Ward

  That was the plan.

  Mingle. Pictures. Cut check. Leave.

  At some point, I’m going to have to accept the fact that when it comes to Cari, there is no plan. At least not one I’m able to follow with any degree of success.

  I wasn’t there five minutes before I found Miranda, standing in front of a painting of me eating a bowl of cereal, talking to a well-heeled couple about the artist’s motivations.

  It was a total Twin Peaks moment. So surreal that for a moment, I forgot why I was there.

  “I want them,” I blurt out, cutting into their conversation, Miranda looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “All of them.”

  Miranda gave me a look that was part sympathy, part pity, and part annoyance. “Patrick, I was just telling Mr. and Mrs. Stegson about—”

  “One million dollars,” I said, causing the guy standing next to me to choke on his mushroom cap.

  Miranda gave me a small smile while laying a hand on my arm. “Patrick, I—”

  “I’m dead serious, Miranda,” I said, shrugging off her hand. “I’ll give you one million dollars for every single one of them.”

  I know what this looks like. Like I’m making some sad, desperate bid to get Cari back but that’s not what this is. This is about me and the fact that whether she knew it or not, Cari wasn’t painting me. She was painting the way she feels about me. And no one gets to own a piece of that.

  Of us.

  “Will you excuse us for a moment,” Miranda said, flashing the couple a thin smile while hooking her arm through mine to drag me to her office.

  As soon as she shuts the door behind us, she turns on me with a scowl. “Look, Patrick,” she says, her face softening a bit. “I understand how hard this must be for you, but—”

  I pull out my wallet and flip my Amex black card onto her desk. “Call my office in the morning and make delivery arrangements with my assistant.”

  That shut her up.

  Remembering the look on Miranda’s face when the word APPROVED flashed across her credit card terminal makes me smile, but it fades quickly.

  Buying those paintings didn’t change anything.

  Turning my face toward the ceiling, I watch the night sky framed by the skylight. Cari sleeps beside me, her cheek pressed against my shoulder. Her breath on my neck. Hand on my chest. Legs tangled around mine.

  Laying with her like this makes it easy to believe she meant what she said earlier. What I made her say. That she’s mine. That she belongs to me.

  With me.

  Which might be the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself.

  Fifty-five

  Cari

  When I wake up, Patrick is sitting on the side of the bed, fitting his watch around his wrist. He’s taken a shower and put on one of the clean dress shirts I found in one of the guest room closets.

  Sitting up, I watch his shoulders stiffen under his shirt when he realizes I’m awake. It can’t be more than 8 AM. “You’re leaving?” I say, watching him stand. He’s wearing his suit again. The pants and jacket look like they’ve been ironed, making me wonder how long he’s been awake.

  “Yeah,” he says, fitting one of his cufflinks through the loops in his cuff. “I have a ten o’clock meeting with some potential investors, and then I have back-to-back walk-throughs with building inspectors on two different projects.” He adjusts his cuff before focusing on the other. “Declan was supposed to handle it, but he texted me this morning and told me he’s taking the day.” Both cufflinks on, he finally looks at me, his gaze hitting my cheekbone. “Coffee’s made. Breakfast is in the warming drawer—”

  “You didn’t have to make me breakfast.” I sound ungrateful. Sullen.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he says, automatically throwing up his defenses.

  “Nothing is a big deal to you these days,” I tell him, thinking about all the ways he’s changed since I’ve been gone. The apartment and the car. The suits and famous friends.

  He lets out a sigh. “It’s just eggs, Cari,” he says, pulling his suit jacket on and fastening the button. “I don’t want to fight.” He leans over the bed to drop a quick, haphazard kiss that lands somewhere between my mouth and my cheek. “I’ll try to call later.”

  “Will I see you tonight?” I don’t sound sullen anymore. I sound clingy. Spineless. I hate it.

  If he notices the change in my tone, he ignores it. “Probably not,” he says, giving his watch a quick look, like he’s running late. “I have a dinner thing at seven and then I’ll probably go home and crash—I’ve been running on empty for weeks now.”

  A dinner thing.

  I want to ask what that means. Offer to go with him, but after the way I behaved at his friend’s restaurant last night, I doubt he’d want me to. “Okay,” I whisper, nodding my head.

  “Okay,” he says, flashing me a quick, flat smile before turning. He’s halfway to the door before he stops. “Listen...” He turns and looks at me. Again, his gaze lands on my face. “I’ve done some thinking, and you’re right. The paintings don’t belong to me. They belong to you—you should have them back.”

  My skin goes cold. “You don’t want them anymore?”

  “That’s not what I said,” he says, jaw clenching for a second before relaxing. “I said they don’t belong to me.”

  “But you...” I say, my voice thin and brittle. “I thought you wanted to keep them.” I don’t know what I’m saying. Why I’m fighting him when only a few hours ago I was demanding that he give them back to me. All I know is that we’re not talking about the paintings.

  Not really.

  He finally looks me in the eye. What I see in them tightens my chest, makes it hard to breathe. “Just because I want something, doesn’t make it mine.”

  And then he’s gone.

  After Patrick leaves, I lay in bed for nearly an hour before I forced myself to get up. Opening the top drawer of my dresser, I find a pair of boy shorts on top of one of his old T-shirts, splattered with paint. Both are neatly folded. Put away nicely.

  It reminds me of that rainy day we stood at the pool table downstairs and folded laundry together. The way he purposely picked my clothes from the pile so he could fold them for me.

  Pulling them on, I head for the kitchen. As promised, breakfast is in the warming drawer. Just eggs turned out to be a veggie omelet, bacon and sourdough toast. Extra butter. No mushrooms.

  Fighting back tears, I scrape it into the trash.

  After that I shower, needing to do something normal to ground myself. Push away everything that happened last night. Things were good. Not great, but better than they had been before I left and in the space of a few hours it all spiraled out of control. That’s all it took for the two of us to realize just how much we’ve changed over the past year. Maybe too much.

  When I get out of the shower, I have a text from Tess.

  Tess: Lunch?

  It’s not even 10 AM, but that hardly matters to Tess.

  Me: Sure. 30 minutes?

  Tess: Cool

  When I get to the garage, I can hear Tess’s music as I walk across the tarmac in front of the garage. Above the music, I can hear her yelling. Conner yelling back. Not their usual old couple bickering, peppered with sexual innuendo.

  They’re fighting for real.

  “It’s none of your business, that’s why,” Tess shouts, her angry tone followed by a loud metal clang.

  “It is my business,” Con shoots back. “You’re my business.”

  I step into the shadows of the garage. Tess is standing next to a late model pick-up, rubbing her hands clean with her bandana, feet braced apart like she’s ready to fight. “You’re being ridiculous,” she says, face tipped down, shaking her head. “I’m not a child, Conner.”

  “Then stop acting like one, Tesla.”

  Her head snaps up, gaze narrowed slightly. “I’m not the one tantruming because he didn’t get his way.”

  “I don’t have to ask, you know,” he tells her, a tight
look on his face. “I can—”

  “If you trace my cell phone, you and I are done,” she says quietly, her tone barely audible above the music. “I mean it Con—I’ll ignore you so fucking hard you’ll start to question your own existence.”

  Con, shakes his head and laughs. “Sweets, you couldn’t ignore me if you tried.”

  “Don’t bet on it.” Tess squares her tiny shoulders and stares at him coldly. “I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring Gilroys over the years.”

  He just laughs. “Not good enough, apparently.”

  Tess’s whole body seems to vibrate with rage, hands clenched into fists like she’s ready to start swinging. “Fuck. You.”

  Con folds his tattooed arms over his chest. “Wrong brother, sweetheart.”

  Tess’s eyes go round and wide, her face pale like he just slapped her. A look passes over his face—half regret, half self-loathing before he reins it in, covering it all with a mask of indifference. Catching sight of me in his peripheral, he shoots me a withering glare. “What are you doing here?”

  Seeing her and Conner fight—something they never do—reminds me of something Con said to me yesterday, right before he stormed out.

  Shit got fucked up, all the way around.

  “I—” I look at Tess for help.

  “This is a place of business,” Con glowers at us both. Being dismissed isn’t something he’s used to. “Not a goddamn social club.”

  “Really?” Tess lets out a hoot. “That’s rich, coming from someone who had his gir—”

  “You’re fired,” Con says, turning away from us both to slam a drawer on his tool chest closed. “Get the fuck out.” Before either of us can react, he storms off, heading upstairs to the converted office space he calls an apartment. Seconds later, he slams the door.

  I stand there, staring after him, stunned by his reaction. When I finally manage to focus my attention on Tess, she’s peeling off her coveralls, like she’s leaving.

  I shake my head, mouth open. I’m not sure what to say. I’ve never seen either of them so angry at each other before.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, wadding her coveralls into a ball and tossing them on the work bench. “That surly fuck’s fired me five times this week.”

  Patrick is a completely different person. Conner has turned into an angry, confrontational nightmare. Declan is putting his mouth where it definitely doesn’t belong, and Tess is keeping secrets.

  Feeling fresh tears prickle the back of my eyelids. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on around here?”

  After Tess and I leave the garage, we walk. While we walk, we talk. She tells me everything that’s happened while I was gone and I listen, stunned and silent.

  Conner fell in love.

  Declan fell into seclusion.

  Patrick fell apart.

  You happened to me. And then you left.

  “Con told you, didn’t he?” Tess says, hands shoved into the pockets of her overalls.

  “Told me what?” I say carefully, treading lightly. She and Con are barely hanging on right now and I have no intention of being the reason they fall apart.

  “About the baby.” She looks at me, shaking her head when I open my mouth to make excuses for him. “It’s okay,” she says. “I can tell—people always look at you different when they know.”

  “I’m sorry, Tess.” I stop walking and reach out to put a hand on her arm. “And please, please don’t be mad at Con. He—” I didn’t know how to explain what I saw the other night. The way he looked when he told me.

  “Mad?” She gives me a wobbly smile and shakes her head. “I’m not mad. I should’ve told you.” She reaches up to squeeze her hand around my wrist. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  I shake my head. “I was such an asshole yesterday. Running my mouth about Grace and Molly—”

  “He doesn’t know. About any of it,” Tess says. “Declan—he doesn’t know about the baby or that I lost it.”

  I feel my hand go loose on her arm a second before it falls away completely.

  “I couldn’t tell him,” she says, offering me an explanation before I have a chance to ask for one. “He’d just broken things off and I—”

  I understood.

  “You didn’t want that to be the reason he stayed,” I say and she nods her head.

  “Actually, I’m surprised Con’s been able to keep his mouth shut this long,” she tells me, turning away from me to start walking again. “He’s always been his brother’s keeper which means he never misses an opportunity to call him out on his bullshit.”

  I think about the Conner I know—careless, bordering on irresponsible. His life a seemingly endless parade of women and parties. It doesn’t match up to what the picture Tess is painting me now. Before I can ask, Tess smiles. “Let’s talk about something else,” she says. “How did your dinner go last night?”

  I tell her what happened. the suit and the car. How badly it went. How quickly it all went south. “I don’t know, Tess...” I tilt my head, shooting her a quick look to gage her reaction to what I told her. “Con’s right—Patrick’s different. The suit and the car. The fancy restaurants and magazine photoshoots. He—”

  “Reminded you of James.”

  She doesn’t look at me when she says it but it doesn’t matter. The truth of what she just said hits me hard. So hard, that for a moment, I can’t breathe.

  “You’re both different, you know?” She keeps talking, like she has no idea she just sucker-punched me. “The girl you were before you left would’ve swooned at the thought of her guy dropping that kind of money on her paintings.”

  “There was yelling and screaming and a lot of swearing—mostly by me.” I shake my head. “but no swooning.”

  “He didn’t buy those painting to save you,” Tess says. “He bought them for himself. Because deep down, he wasn’t sure you were coming back and buying those paintings was the only way he could keep you—even a part of you.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Besides, he would’ve dropped some serious dough at that benefit, either way.”

  “Huh?”

  “The benefit. It was for Sojourn Center—our friend Ryan is a resident.”

  Ryan. The Army Ranger. The friend I’ve never met.

  “He’s home?”

  “For a while now. He stepped on an IED.” Tess goes a little pale. “He won’t talk about it—keeping him together has fallen to Patrick these days. Everything has.”

  Why wouldn’t Patrick tell me?

  Why would he?

  I haven’t really painted myself as the picture of reliability over the past year. I feel my shoulder slump. “I’ve made a huge mess.”

  “Yeah, you have... but you had help.” Tess offers me a commiserating half-smile. “Are you sorry?”

  I nod my answer, not sure I trust my voice.

  She shrugs. “Then apologize.”

  I think of the way Patrick looked at me when he left. What he said. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.” I know I’m not ready. I can’t face him yet. Not without making things worse.

  “Then start small.” She laughs and shakes her head. “You can borrow my car.”

  Fifty-six

  Patrick

  The meeting with the investors is just a formality. I don’t really need them for the project I’m undertaking but if I can get some fat cats to pony up a few million bucks each to fund my community center then great. If not, I’ll do it myself.

  The fact that I’m obviously indifferent to them and their money seems to have peaked their interest. They’re wandering around the building I appropriated for the project, cell phones stuck to their ears. With the numbers they’re throwing around, I can imagine half of Boston’s accountants are having hot flashes right now.

  It’s been a year since my uncle gave me control of the family money and it still chaffs. Besides renovations to the apartment, buying Cari’s paintings has been my biggest purchase so far, and that was completely different. It was m
y money I bought them with—well, the money Con squeezed out of Jackson Howard as retribution for the hell his daughter and James put us through.

  It’d worked out perfectly. I was going to give the money to charity anyway.

  Other than my slight Tom Ford addiction, I’ve managed to keep a lid on my spending. It helps that I still don’t see the money as mine—well, not entirely mine. Con and Declan are taking their share, as soon as they can stand in the same room for longer than fifteen minutes without killing each other.

  I know. I’m an optimist.

  The fat cats wander back into the main space and whaddya know, they want to invest. I pretend to be excited, shaking hands and setting appointments to meet with their money people. I don’t hear any of it. I don’t really care either.

  All I can think about is Cari. The way she looked when I left this morning. Like I’d just punched her in the gut. Like she saw it coming from a mile away. Like I turned out to be exactly who she thought I was, all along.

  It makes me feel like shit. I hurt her and that was never my intention. I said I’d wait for her and I did. I waited and I hoped and I kept on loving her. But I meant what I said—despite my behavior to the contrary, I can’t force Cari into a relationship. No matter how much I want to.

  So, I’m giving the paintings back. Hiring another bartender to take over my shifts so I can make a clean break from her and take some time to get my head on straight. I’ll concentrate on Boston Batters and growing the literacy program at the library, along with the other projects I’ve sworn to see through. I’ll focus on getting my life back. Moving on. Moving forward.

  And I’ll be completely fucking miserable.

  Shaking hands and making half-hearted promises to call, I slide into the driver’s seat of my Audi and head for my next stop. I’m not in my car more than five minutes before the phone rings.

  Hoping it’s Jane, telling me that the inspections were pushed back, I hit a button on my steering wheel. “This is Patrick,” I say.