Leaning on a table near us, I snagged a glass of ice water and took a long glug from it. “I can’t help you with a wedding planner, unfortunately.” Straightening, I forced regret into my voice. “I don’t run in those circles.”
“But you do run,” Victoria giggled, gesturing at my workout clothes.
I couldn’t figure out if she could sense that Six and I were not merely friends and felt threatened by it, or if she was just that dense—and that was why she was trying her hand at being funny, lightening the tension that steamed off of Six and me.
“Can’t get anything past you.” I smiled too widely at her and felt Six’s gaze hot on my face.
“Oh, where are my manners?” Victoria reached forward and clasped my arm with the hand that had just been on Six’s flesh. “Come, have a seat.”
What was I doing? By all accounts, I should be running madly away from this situation. A normal person would. A normal person wouldn’t engage with the fiancé of her former lover. A normal person would run away screaming, but me? I felt the reverberations of Dr. Brewer’s voice in my head, encouraging me to move on before I got sucked into the wind tunnel of rumination. I felt the tingle of the alcohol in my veins, felt the saliva pool in my mouth. And I felt the cushion of the chair under my ass as I sat down, next to Victoria, breathing in her perfume as my fingers traced the pattern of the tablecloth. Was she breathing in my sweat, being this close to me? I kind of hoped she was.
“What do you do, Mira?” Someone walked by, placed a hand on Victoria’s shoulder. It was only then that I realized I’d interrupted Victoria’s engagement party. Correction: Victoria and Six’s engagement party.
Six cautiously lowered himself to a seat across from us and a smile tugged my lips. I was a feral animal to him. Unpredictable. He knew who I’d been, both as an addict and sober. He knew that addict Mira was a danger to herself. Sober Mira was cunning; a danger to everyone else. And I knew he could sense that I’d targeted his betrothed as prey, simply because that’s who I was. Because it didn’t matter than he and I weren’t together anymore.
This was a very bad idea. I knew that, even as I leaned into Victoria, to listen to her blathering. This was why I’d avoided going back to Six’s house; why I’d avoided letting him come outside to talk to me. It was too easy to get roped back in. To get sucked into the thoughts that played on repeat, the questions that had remained unanswered, a persistent echo in my head.
But what I didn’t know was why he wasn’t stopping me. Why wasn’t he forcing me from this room, protecting the woman he wanted to marry, removing the wild animal, the danger to her perfectly orchestrated engagement party?
Victoria held her glass to Six, and he took it with great reluctance, easing up and moving away. They, too, had an unspoken language it seemed.
Victoria took advantage of his absence and leaned forward, eyes bright. “I’m so thrilled to meet you!” she exclaimed in a whisper. I looked around, noticed no lingering eyes or ears close enough to hear our conversation over the din of voices. So why had she whispered it, like it was a confession she couldn’t admit out loud?
“Oh yeah?” I asked, propping an elbow up on the table.
Victoria’s eyes watched me curiously before she spoke again. “Yes.” She nodded adamantly. “I hardly know any of William’s family or friends.”
I thought of Six’s mom. Looking around the room, I asked, “Is his family here?”
“Oh, no.” Victoria said it as if disappointed. “William doesn’t keep in contact with his family.”
It was as if one thousand Christmas lights lit up inside me at that. It was my first hint that Six was lying to her. I may not have seen Six in three years, but I knew that there was no way in that span of time that Six had stopped speaking to his mother. The news thrilled me.
“That’s interesting,” I said, fighting the smile that tickled my lips.
Six returned and handed the flute to Victoria. When her hand rose to grab it, I caught the glitter of the stone on her finger and wondered, in a detached way, if her delicate hand was even strong enough to carry around that rock.
Not that I cared about jewelry. I didn’t. I rarely wore any. Apart from the charm I wore around my neck, I didn’t bother—the charm he’d given me for our last Christmas together. The gold figure eight. Hoping he wasn’t paying attention, I double checked that the charm was tucked under my workout tank. It was.
I looked at Six again, lost myself in his mossy green eyes as I thought about the million things we never voiced, the million memories suspended in the air between us. I was pulled from thought number fourteen when Victoria’s voice invaded.
“We need a caterer,” she lamented. “The one we had fell ill, leaving us in such a lurch.”
Blinking, I turned to her. “I know one.” My heart beat hard in my chest, knocking against my ribs.
“Oh! Who is it? A colleague recommended this chef she knows from college, but I want someone…”
I interrupted her. “Me.”
7
“You’re a caterer?” Six’s voice resonated louder than I’d expected.
I turned to him. Yes, I wanted to say. And a painter and a self-defense instructor and nowadays I keep Henry alive, too, and I’m still in love with you and why can’t I let you go? I cleared my throat. “Technically, I bake for a restaurant that caters events.”
“Oh, this is perfect!” Victoria squealed.
“What company?” Six asked.
“Il Tavolino.”
“The Italian restaurant?”
I nodded. “And caterer.”
I was met with silence from both Six and Victoria as they exchanged glances. Her face was hopeful; his was anything but. And then it sank in, what I’d just offered. If I were the Mira of years ago, I would’ve asked myself, aloud, what the fuck?!
“I’ve been there for three years. I go in at two in the morning and start baking.” I didn’t want to persuade them. Why was I saying this? For some inexplicable reason, my tongue was running faster than my brain.
Well, I suppose the reason wasn’t all that inexplicable. Six was making me nervous. It was as if I’d suddenly just woken up, with no clue to how I’d gotten here, seated at a table with my former boyfriend and his fiancée. And further still, why I’d agreed to have my work cater their wedding. My lips formed the what the fuck admonishment, but I didn’t make a sound.
Part of it was also because the Six I’d met years before was not the same Six that sat across from me in his black, long-sleeved dress shirt. I knew I didn’t look much different from when he’d last seen me, but he looked completely transformed. I’d been dropped into the alternate universe—the one where Six and I had never been a we.
“Do you have a card?” Victoria asked.
I patted my hands over my tank top. “Nope, don’t seem to have one on me.”
“I have her number,” Six said softly.
“Actually, you don’t,” I bit out. But the challenge in my eyes reminded me that he could figure it out if he made a few clicks on his keyboard.
Victoria adjusted herself in her seat, looking back and forth between the two of us. “How do you two know one another?”
“We don’t,” I replied flatly, looking at Six. Because we didn’t. He was William, wearer of dress clothes and hair. The Six I remembered wore leather, had shaved his head bald, and looked at me as if he understood me. This Six was polished—with cuff links even—and enough hair to style in a way that accentuated the little bit of gray at his temples. And he looked at me like he wanted to throw me in a cage.
“Give me your phone,” I gestured to Victoria, my hand out.
“Oh!” She grabbed my arm and pulled it towards her, my palm up.
Silence. That’s what resonated more than anything at that moment. Six stilled, looking at what Victoria held out for the world to see.
On my wrist, on top of straight white scars, were words.
“No one saves us but ourselves,” Victoria re
ad aloud. The words didn’t sound right with her voice, trilling and musical, unaffected. Six’s eyes were burning a hole into my face, but I didn’t, I couldn’t look at him.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling my hand back when she’d placed her phone in my palm. I opened up her contacts and moved my fingers deftly over her screen. I told myself that I was giving her my work number so she could speak to the restaurant people—not to me specifically.
“That’s from a song, isn’t it?”
A sting. I felt the sting from how she made something powerful into something trivial. “Yep,” I muttered, while thinking, It’s from Buddha. I dropped her phone on the table abruptly. I stood, nodding at her. “I put my work number in your phone. And I actually should get going; I have a long run home.”
Victoria stood and reached her hand out again. This time, I clasped it with mine. “It was great to meet you.”
Because I couldn’t say the same in return, I just smiled tightly and nodded, before turning around and making my way out of the restaurant. I didn’t look at Six again.
8
Engaged. Six was engaged. The man who’d told me he’d never marry me, after ten years together, was engaged.
Even the four hours of sleep I’d gotten before going in to work hadn’t eliminated that spiral of thought.
My hands pushed hard into the dough, manipulating it before I balled it up again and dropped it on the counter, sending flour flying everywhere. My hands pounded into it, kneading it over and over, until it had the right elasticity. I dropped it into a greased bowl and covered it before I grabbed the next ball of dough and worked it until it too was elastic. Over and over I did that, feeling the fatigue in my muscles as I repeated the process eighteen times.
I may or may not have imagined Victoria’s face as the dough each time I slapped, punched, and dug my entire upper body into it. I placed the bowls by the warmer and washed my hands, using a brush to scrub the flour from under my nails. The flour clumped with the water as it drained out of the sink, much like the paint I had washed from my hands the night before.
I jumped at the feel of a hand on my shoulder, and I whirled around, brush in hand, fists dripping water.
His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what Marco was saying over the heavy music blasting from the speakers.
I grabbed the towel from the counter and hastily dried my hands. Pointing the remote at the speakers, I turned the volume down a few decibels. I yelled, “What?”
He huffed a little and yanked the remote from my hand. I waited while he turned the volume down even more, drying my other hand as I watched his jaw tick.
“You’re here earlier than usual,” he said, his voice thick like he’d just woken up.
I rolled my shoulders. “Couldn’t sleep.” Which was precisely the reason I could do this job.
He squinted. When I stared back stoically, he huffed a little and moved to the loaves I’d done.
Poking a finger into one of the loaves, he tsked. “No.”
“It’s fine. I’ve worked it over for the last hour.”
“No.”
He was displeased. I knew that much. I was still learning dough and how temperamental it could be, at least in order for it to live up to Marco’s standards. He’d started me on cookies and shit that had been a cakewalk compared to this.
“What?”
He picked up the bowl and brought it over to me. “Not ready,” he said. He poked a finger into the dough. “Look,” he said, as if I wasn’t paying attention. “This should fill back up. It is not,” he enunciated in short words. “Again.” He dumped the loaf back on the counter.
I sighed, annoyed, and stalked over to the island, tossing down some flour and plopping the loaf onto the slight pile of flour. “Marco,” I whined, drawing his name out.
“Figliuole e frittelle, quante piu se ne fa, piu vegon belle.”
Marco didn’t speak Italian, but that was his favorite saying and he used it often, much to the pain of my ears.
“That saying makes zero sense,” I mumbled, flicking flour at his face.
“It makes perfect sense,” he disagreed, dodging the flour.
“’Kids and fried food: the more you make, the better they come out,’” I translated, giving him a raised eyebrow. “What if you don’t want to make kids?” The thought made my throat tighten, images of Six flashing.
He frowned at me. “Well,” he raised up a hand, “then you don’t get to enjoy the fun of practicing.” He winked, and I rolled my eyes.
“This isn’t fried food.” I flicked more flour at him.
“Practice makes perfect—that’s what it means.” He wiggled his fingers, eyebrows raised. He was like a cartoon character with his thick, unruly eyebrows, giant nose, and hair that stuck up in a hundred directions.
“Hey,” I said, remembering that even though I’d just run into the one man who could bring me to my knees, for the first time in three years, that I had a life outside of the bakery. “I’ve got my showing.” I winced. It’d only been a week since I’d signed the agreement, but the idea of a showing still made me feel stupid. Jacob had set it up, and it wasn’t a real showing. The gallery was a co-op that I paid a membership to showcase my work and supplemented that with a couple shifts in between everything else I did. “In two weeks. Is it okay if I take off early the next few mornings so I can prepare?”
“What time does the gallery open?” Marco knew very little about my painting side hobby but hadn’t actually seen anything I’d done before.
“It’s not for that…” I tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say: that I was totally fucking afraid that the fourteen paintings I had ready to display weren’t good enough and I needed another dozen to choose from. “I just have to get things in order.”
“That’s fine. We’ve got the baby shower next week—lots of cookies and muffins—but otherwise, we don’t have much on the schedule.”
“Okay,” I blew out a breath, “thanks, Marco.”
Nodding, he said, “Do it again,” then turned the stereo back up and walked out of the bakery.
I finished kneading the loaf, exhaustion finally settling into my bones. I rolled my neck and washed my hands once more, using the brush to scrub my skin until it was red and raw, angry from my assault.
The best thing Six had taught me was that I needed to keep my hands as occupied as my mind. To not sit idly by. So, I kneaded dough until my shoulders ached, and then I ran the half-mile home, fast and furious through the dark.
By the time I let myself into Brooke’s house, my legs and arms hurt enough that it was all I could do to drag myself to bed. I forced myself to shower first, to remove the scent of dry yeast and the powdered flour that clung stubbornly to my skin. With the rest of the house still sleeping, I hummed the song I’d been listening to as I rubbed my shoulders and soaped my limbs.
And when I crawled in between cool sheets, my skin was still on fire, and my brain was running on a loop.
Six seeing me in the lobby.
Six following me outside.
Six’s eyes when he’d brought me inside, into the light.
Six’s expression when I’d realized he was engaged.
Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six.
Squeezing my eyes tighter, I remembered all the times Six had helped me when I’d fallen. Had patched me when I’d broken. He’d told me I was in love with tragedy. He’d held me in the dark, carried me through to the other side.
But he’d looked at Victoria as if she held his light. And I didn’t have that.
9
Four hours after getting home and falling asleep, I was awake and splashing paint onto canvas, using a combination of fingers and brushes and pens to achieve the look I was after. Which was an illustration of the state of my mind. I had a brush in my mouth as I smacked the canvas with my palm, sending paint all over. The sky was beginning to light, the sun spearing light through my broken blinds, making parts of the canvas look bright.
The house was quiet. Brooke was at the restaurant—not in the bakery side anymore. And Norah was at school. The only other breathing, beating body in the house was Griffin, who did little more than lie around these days.
But when I stepped back to admire my creation, there was absolutely nothing bright about the mixture of purple, blue, and black. The painting was a bruise, something I hit with my fist repeatedly instead of smearing the paint with delicate fingers. The explosion of color was better, more realistic.
Six, same man who’d told me to keep my hands occupied had encouraged my painting hobby. Dr. Brewer had once said that I needed to transfer my feelings to another object to keep myself from physically hurting myself. Hurting canvas was better, but he’d cautioned me to do it in a way that was still productive. Meaning, I couldn’t take a knife and slice the canvas apart when I had the itch to do it to my skin.
Painting was therapy for me. I never knew where I began and it ended. Often, my paintings ended when my pain hurt less. And once they were done, there was nothing left for me to feel.
In the years after Six, I used paint over blood to spill my hurt. While I painted, I kept a few sheets of notebook paper beside me, jotting down my thoughts so I could carve them into my creation later. I didn’t need a voice when my paintings could speak for me. And sometimes, the words I wrote on the canvas were even better than the paintings themselves.
It’d been a long time since I’d painted like this, bleeding sharp thoughts onto canvas
When there was more black than blue on the painting, I knew I’d done too much. My arms wanted to fall off of my body and the painting looked like I’d let my emotions get the best of me. Instead of trying to understand them, to feel them, I’d forced them onto canvas without translating them into actual, coherent thought.
With paint drying on my fingers, I inhaled, feeling my lungs expand in my chest for the first time since I’d seen Six the day before. A weight was lifted. My phone beeped painfully loud and I picked it up.
Pieces of Eight (Mad Love Duet Book 2) Page 8