by J. Saman
“Of course, come on,” I smile, waving my hand, indicating she should follow me. I beam at Levi, I can’t help it, but he’s giving me that look again. I’m unable to tell if he’s just being cautious with Tanya or if there is something that he’s actually bothered by. I would think he’d be happy that we’re getting along, but maybe not.
Maybe he was hoping she’d hate me.
“This place is so great,” she gushes, looking over everything she passes. “Oh my god, I love how open it is. Our place is nice, don’t get me wrong, but this place is a-maz-ing.” She’s talking a mile a minute and I have to wonder if I was this type of teenager. I don’t remember ever speaking the way she does. Doesn’t mean it’s bad, I’m just not used to hanging around with teenagers is all.
I remove the top of the soup, stirring it with the ladle. Then I do the same with the short ribs. Everything appears to be done. I put on my oven mitt and pull out the tray of brownies that Tom insisted I did not need to make, but did anyway. I make bomb brownies and can never say no to an excuse for a chocolate fix.
“He still loves you, you know.” That stops me in my tracks. I’d sort of forgotten that I had a shadow in the kitchen for a moment, because she was finally quiet. I look over my shoulder at her as I place the brownies on top of the cooling rack.
I have nothing to say to that, so I stay silent.
“He does,” she says firmly, in case I challenge her. “He doesn’t talk about it as much anymore, but he used to with my mom.” I turn to her now, trying to reign in everything that is swarming through my head. I want to look over at him, but I can’t.
I’m completely glued to this tiny girl who is fucking up my whole world.
She shifts her feet a little, but her eyes never waver from mine. “They would fight over you. He wanted to go after you and she told him to leave you alone and let you live your life.” I shake my head at that. Wow, that hurts to hear. “He still has your picture in his nightstand.”
“What picture?” I ask, which is almost comical because out of all of the things she just said to me, I pick the most innocuous to focus on. The second the words leave my mouth I know the answer. It’s the one I assumed he took from my dresser all those years back.
“It’s one of you two on a beach and you’re staring into each other’s eyes and smiling. Like someone caught you having a secret moment.” They had. We were on Cape Cod with a group of people and he was talking to me about sunsets. About how different they are on the East Coast versus the West Coast. About how we were going to watch the sunset together in as many places as we could all over the world. It was a perfect moment and I’d been sad that he’d taken that picture with him.
Now I’m devastated that he still has it.
Her words are devastating.
“You still love him, don’t you?” she challenges, but it’s not really a question. She can see the pain leaching from me in waves.
I nod once. “Yes.” I clear the frog in my throat. “I always will, Tanya.” She smiles, happy with this like she’s about to run over to him and yell, told ya so. So I stop her because it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. “But I love Tom too, and he’s the man I’m with now.”
She shakes her head. “Maybe, and I’m sure he’s great, but you don’t look at him the same way you look at Levi.” With that she turns and walks off—no, she skips—back towards her brother who is still sitting on the couch talking to Tom.
They’re laughing together. Having a moment that looks more genuine than I would have thought possible. I watch them, trying to understand what this teenager just said and how she managed to annihilate me in a matter of seconds.
She doesn’t even know me.
She has no idea how I look at Tom or what my looks at Levi mean. I don’t know how true her words really are either. Their mom died years ago and yeah, maybe he still harbored some feelings for me back then, but he’s made the whole friends thing clear as day. The picture is in his nightstand, not out in the open. Maybe it’s there because he doesn’t know how to throw it away.
He might not even remember it’s in there.
I take a deep, steadying breath, because I see too many flaws in her theory. “Dinner’s ready if you guys want to sit down,” I call out. I hear ‘thank yous’ and see the nodding of heads, but I don’t register much. This could quite possibly be the longest night of my life
.
23
“This is so good. I feel like it’s Passover or something,” Tanya says around a spoonful of soup. “It tastes just like Mom’s. Don’t you think, Levi?” She’s been chatting non-stop again. I’d say it was a nervous habit, but I don’t think so.
She’s just this chatty.
The second we sat down she started commenting on the silverware and the plates and the glasses. Tom, being the strategic man that he is, placed her next to Levi across the table from us. He’s been mostly silent, seeming to take everything in, but he’s doing that playing with my ring finger thing again.
In front of Levi who hasn’t missed the gesture.
“It’s your mom’s recipe actually,” I say, taking another bite of the matzo ball. “She taught me how to make it one time and emailed me the recipe after.” My eyes go from her shocked ones to Levi who looks…bored. Why does he look bored?
“That’s so awesome,” Tanya squeals. “Will you email it to me?” She holds up her hand. “No wait, do you still have the original email she sent you?” I nod. “That is so boss. Can you forward that to me?”
I laugh. “Sure. It also has her brisket recipe in it. I was going to make that tonight too, but I thought it might be overkill,” I say it before I even realize and then I stiffen. She doesn’t seem aware of what I said though, because she just continues like nothing happened.
“Cool. I like to cook, and it’s a good thing too because Levi is the worst.” This makes me laugh. I know from firsthand experience on that one.
“I’ve gotten better,” he defends himself, but there isn’t much light in his eyes when he says it.
“You couldn’t have gotten any worse,” Tanya teases. I love how they interact with each other. It makes me wish I had siblings.
“I almost poisoned poor Lara once,” Levi chuckles, turning his hazel eyes on me with that expression again. The one that says he knows something I don’t. Or maybe it says watch what I can do to you. “Do you remember?”
I snort. “Um. Yes. Hard to forget.” I feel Tom next to me and I realize that he’s as still as a statue. I turn and look at him with a smile. “This is the reason I don’t let you help in the kitchen.” I get a small smile for that, but it’s guarded. Whatever, he invited them over. What did he expect? Looking over at Tanya, I start to laugh at the memory. “He’d made salmon, or at least tried to. It was completely inedible. I have no idea what he did to it, but it was beyond awful.” I take a sip of my wine trying to hold back my overwhelming smile. Despite the food being so awful, it’s a really nice memory.
“Did you get sick?” she asks, horrified, her small hands up to her mouth, her elbows on the table.
“No. Thank god, but I’m sure if I had eaten more of it I would have. We both had the worst stomach aches all night.” Tanya and I are laughing, but both Tom and Levi are very quiet.
“I made it up to her,” he cuts in, looking at me now and it’s my turn to freeze like a statue. He cannot be going there in front of Tom. He wouldn’t. Right? “Do you remember that night?” he asks me softly, eyes boring into mine, and all I can do is stare back, slightly horrified. My heart rate has suddenly spiked and I’m sure my hands are clammy. I’m definitely blushing.
Tom has to see that.
Fuck. Levi, don’t go there. I want to scream.
“What did you do?” Tanya prompts when we’ve both gone quiet. I shift in my seat, but then steady myself so I don’t seem too obvious.
I can’t speak. I’m completely frozen and I’m trying so hard to think of something to say that will change the subject or ma
ke it seem casual, but for the life me, I can’t. Levi chuckles softly, looking over to Tanya and then back to me like he’s picturing that night in his head. He runs his index finger back and forth over his bottom lip. “I took her out to a nice dinner in Boston the following night.” That’s all he says and it takes everything I have in me not to blow out my relieved breath.
He did take me out for a nice dinner in Boston, but that was the least memorable part of it. That was the first night he told me he loved me. “I love you, chicky,” he’d said. It was the first time he’d ever called me chicky, and combined with his profession of love, I’d laughed.
It was also the first night we had sex. We’d been dating about two months and I snuck him into my room that night. It had been the best night of my life. Amazing dinner at the Top of the Hub at the Prudential Tower, him telling me he loved me, and then a night of incredible sex at my house.
Just thinking about that night clogs my throat and I have to swallow past it to stave off the tears I feel creeping up.
“Boring,” Tanya says, bringing me back to the dinner table where I’m sitting next to my boyfriend and across from my ex and his little sister.
Jesus, I don’t know how to handle this.
I stand up abruptly with an overwhelming need to run away, but I can’t so I pick up my soup bowl instead. “Are you done Tom?” I ask as sweetly as I can. He nods and hands me his bowl without making eye contact with me or saying a word.
Shit. He’s pissed.
Not that I blame him, but just what the absolute fuck?
“Here, I’ll help you clear.” Levi stands up, taking both his and Tanya’s bowls and following me into the kitchen. I’m breathing heavily. This is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Levi shouldn’t be helping me in Tom’s kitchen. I’m trying to think up a million excuses to kick them out, but I can’t. I’d never do that to Tanya. Levi yes, Tanya no.
“That was really good,” Levi says as he puts the bowls into the sink on top of the other two that I just put in there. “Thank you for making that for us, it means a lot.” His voice is so sincere, but instead of defusing my ire, it enrages me further.
“Why did you bring up that story?” I hiss under my breath as I take the top off of the short ribs. I pick up a plate shoving it into his hands for him to hold as I fill it with food.
“I didn’t say anything other than I took you to dinner. It’s not my fault if you’re thinking about other things related to that night.” There it is. That freaking expression again. The one that tells me that this was all a plan.
“What you’re doing is so wrong Levi, I can’t even tell you.” I scoop mashed potatoes and spinach onto the second plate, followed by short ribs. “You’re eating in Tom’s house and it is out of line to bring up things like that in front of him.”
“Oh stop it Lara.” He’s smiling now. “He doesn’t know what I was talking about unless you’ve told him about our first time together.” I want to shove the plate of food I’m making in his face.
Both of us are holding two full plates of food as we head back to the table. I place Tom’s in front of him and then lean down to plant a kiss to the top of his head.
“Thanks, love. This looks scrummy.” Tom finally smiles at me, leaning in to kiss my cheek. I can’t help it. I blow out a breath. We settle into eating before we get to the topic of school. Having Tanya here makes it easier. She’s a talker and it somehow ebbs the tension I’m feeling.
“I know I should be thinking about colleges,” she continues as I come in halfway through her rant, “but my brain is totally not there yet. I have no idea what I want to do with my life or where I want to go. Levi was lucky, he always knew he wanted to be a doctor and Mom knew she wanted to be a teacher, but I just don’t know. Ya know?”
“I understand,” Tom says as he sips at his scotch. “It’s a difficult thing to figure out. I was also one of the lucky ones. My father and grandfather were both investment bankers so it was expected that I follow in that.”
“Oh my god. That’s awful!” Tanya exclaims.
Tom laughs as he places his fork down in favor of my ring finger. “No, it’s rather common for sons to follow in their father’s paths where I come from. I love what I do, so it wasn’t a hardship for me.”
“You’re lucky,” she smiles brightly at him before turning to me. “What about you, Lara? You went right into nursing school, right?”
I nod. “My mom is a nurse and I always thought what she did was incredible. She’s a labor and delivery nurse, which means she helps deliver babies.”
“But you’re going to be a nurse practitioner and you work in the ED?” she says this like she’s confused.
“Yes,” I nod with a smile that cannot be helped where this girl is concerned. “I don’t love L&D. I like the variety of the ED and I plan to continue there when I start practicing as a NP.”
“So you graduate with Levi?”
“Lara and I go to different schools, but yeah, we both graduate this spring.”
“Will you two still see each other even though you’ll be doing surgery and she’ll be in the ED?”
“Lara is coming to England with me,” Tom cuts in before Levi can answer her. There is an unmistakable edge to his voice, and I know I’m not the only one that notices. “She won’t be working there after May.”
“What?” Tanya and Levi say in unison, but I’m thinking it’s for different reasons.
“Well, not until next February anyway,” I clarify with a casual wave of my hand. “I have a contract to start then.”
Tom doesn’t say anything to that, but he scowls like he wants to.
“Okay,” Tanya says, cautiously looking back and forth between Tom and myself. I’m a bit thrown off by the emphatic way he said that, but it’s not the time to call him out on it. This dinner is just going from bad to worse as the seconds tick by.
“The answer to your question, Tanya, is yes,” Levi says looking at her and then Tom. “When Lara returns, I’ll see her from time to time if I match at this hospital, but hopefully we’ll see her more than just there.” I feel his foot brush against my calf, but I’m still reeling from Tom’s declaration that I’m not going to work here after May to do much about it.
“Oh, I hope so. Do you like to shop?” Tanya asks me excitedly and in this moment, I absolutely love this girl. She just took something so awful and awkward and made it easy. I want to hug her.
“I do. We could go together sometime if you’d like?”
“I’d love,” she says, poking Levi in the shoulder. “He’s so strict when it comes to shopping. It really takes the fun out of it.” I laugh because I can absolutely see that.
“Are you dating, Levi?” Tom asks out of nowhere, and three pairs of eyes turn on him, including mine. What the hell is his problem? Tom is not normally this insecure and needing to play the one-up game.
“Jesus, Tom. That’s kind of a personal question,” I say. I’m starting to get annoyed, and not only by the prospect of hearing Levi talk about the women in his life. Tom isn’t put off by my admonishment, his eyes are firmly fixed on Levi.
Levi clears his throat, placing his napkin down next to his plate. “Not too much right now. It’s kind of difficult to date with my schedule.” He doesn’t look at me when he says this, but the foot that’s still resting against my calf moves against me.
“You just focus on work, your sister and old friends then?” Wow. That is so far out of line I don’t even know where to begin.
“Tom,” I snap.
“I’m just asking, love. I find it surprising that he has no time to chat up girls. He obviously makes time for you.” I’m on fire. I can feel the flames all over my cheeks. I’m mortified. I’m staring at Tom in total shock. I don’t know this person.
The Tom I know would never ever be so rude to a guest. Would never call someone out in front of me and their little sister like this. I had no idea he was so threatened by Levi being back in my life. He never indicated anything even
remotely close until last night.
“I have time for the important things,” Levi smiles like he’s enjoying this and my stomach rolls. The longer I sit here, the more bile rises up in my throat. Tanya seems to be loving this as much as her brother is. Her eyes are darting back and forth between Tom and Levi like she’s watching a tennis match.
“So you’re saying my girlfriend is important to you?” Tom’s cheeks are turning ruddy, his eyes are blazing. I’ve never seen him worked up like this before.
“Of course she is,” Levi counters, cool as ever.
“Tom?” I stand so abruptly that my chair scrapes against the dark hardwood. “Can you help me clear the plates and serve dessert, please?” I walk away, not really giving him time to answer. I’m fuming and I’d be pacing the shit out of the kitchen if it wasn’t freaking open concept and both Tanya and Levi would be able to witness it.
I start cutting the brownies into squares with more force than required. I hear the clinking of plates on the counter before I feel his hands on my hips. “That was so fucking out of line, Tom,” I snap quietly at him so Levi and Tanya don’t hear. They’re talking to each other so I doubt they can, but still.
“I don’t believe it was. I was merely pointing out to you the reality of this situation you’ve placed yourself in.” He’s his normal collected and calculating self again, but it does nothing to abate my exasperation.
I turn on him, looking up into his pale blue eyes. There is no remorse in them. Only pure conviction. “I don’t need you to point anything out to me about them. You’re being rude and it’s not like you. You have no idea what that family has been through. What both of them have been through, so do me a favor and be the gentleman I know you’re capable of being.” I shrug off his hands and grab the whole damn tray of brownies before walking back over to the table with them.
I don’t care if Tom follows me, but he does, sitting down with easy confidence. I scoop each of them a brownie and sit down with one of my own before I pour myself a refill of my wine.