Mic, Rory’s military nickname. “Says you.” Although she had to admit, he had a lot of fine qualities. He just wasn’t the man for her.
“Brooke’s in the middle. You’re important to her. And Mic getting the treatment he needs for his PTSD is important to me.” Shane let out a breath. “Leaving you…wasn’t easy for him.”
Neve would not feel bad for him, would not show concern, did not care. Only she did. “Is he…okay?”
“He will be. My therapist is going to hook him up with someone in Boston once he’s feeling more stable and ready to return home.” Shane repositioned himself in the chair, knocking his cane to the ground in the process. They both looked down the hallway, waiting to see if anyone appeared. “He’s not here.”
Thank God for that. Both sneakers on, she stood. “Tell Brooke I love her and I’ll be in touch.” At some point.
“Where you headed?”
Neve grabbed her purse, the only thing she’d brought in with her, walked to the front door, and opened it. “I have absolutely no idea.” As far as exits went, that one felt pretty damn good. Goodbye, old life.
—
Of course Neve hadn’t been totally honest when she’d told Shane she had no idea where she’d be headed. While spending hours alone in the darkness of Brooke’s bedroom she’d come to a decision. After driving through the early morning hours, with a couple of breaks after the sun came up, she pulled into Little Crimpton, Rhode Island, a few minutes before noon.
If her birth-mother could turn her life around there, then Neve could too.
By dinnertime she was well on her way, with a new cellphone and a new carrier that blocked her new number whenever she made a call, a new bank account, and a very flowery new bedroom at Adele’s Bed-and-Breakfast on Main Street, the name making the street sound busier than it was.
Not bad for the first day of her fresh start.
Over the next two weeks Neve kept to herself, spending Christmas alone, eating boxed macaroni and cheese, drinking homemade margaritas, and missing Nate and Brooke. And Rory.
So as not to seem totally pathetic, on New Year’s Eve she left the bed-and-breakfast, pretending to be meeting up with friends, only to wait until Adele left for a party at her sister’s house to sneak back inside. Then she grabbed some leftovers from the refrigerator and retreated to the twin bed in her small room on the top floor, where she spent the night picking at cold lasagna, chugging warm mimosas, and watching other people having fun in Times Square, on television, until she passed out…before the ball dropped. The next morning, hungover, depressed, and close to running back to Brooke, Neve decided the time had come to venture out, to make some new friends and find a job and really give this new life a chance.
—
Rory returned to Boston before Christmas, as promised. But he wasn’t the same man who’d been home on leave five months earlier, and everyone noticed.
“The girls over there are taking bets on which one can get you to smile,” Kev said, both of them working the bar, the pub Saturday-night packed, even though it was only Wednesday. Seemed half the town had off the week between Christmas and New Year’s. While he had no idea where they spent their days, he knew exactly where they spent their evenings and nights.
Mom and Dad loved it.
Rory couldn’t care less. “I’m not here for their entertainment.” He pointed to one of the many guys trying to get his attention. “What can I getcha?”
He filled the order on autopilot, like he’d filled the dozens of orders before it, like he would fill the dozens of orders that came after it, counting the minutes until he could return upstairs, to lock out the world and be by himself. Neve had disconnected her cellphone. She’d closed her Facebook and Instagram accounts, taken down all of her YouTube videos, and he could no longer find the website she and Luca had. All gone, as if they’d never existed, as if she’d never existed. Letters and a few pictures on his phone were all he had left of her.
That, and the constant ache of loss and remorse, accompanied by the heartbreaking memory of that night in her condo, her words seared into his brain, Forget about me, because as of this moment, in my mind, you’re as good as dead. And the last time he’d seen her, at Shane’s, when Neve, who loved to fight, stood there, emotionless, wouldn’t look at him, or talk to him, or even acknowledge his presence. That was exactly how she’d treated him, as if he were dead. Some days he wished he was. For a lot of reasons, one of them being that he’d never told Neve he was falling in love with her. Maybe if he had, everything would have turned out differently and she’d be here with him right now.
“You doing okay?” his mother asked while she stood waiting for him to fill an order of drinks.
“Fine.” That’d become his standard answer to most questions.
“Hey.” His mother grabbed his hand. “Look at me,” she said loudly, but only to be heard over the crowd. “You doing okay?” she asked again, looking at him with genuine motherly concern.
“I’m doing fine,” he told her honestly. As good as could be expected considering all he’d been through, his therapist assured him. In truth, the nightmares were coming less often—the ones involving the war, and the ones involving Neve. And he hadn’t attacked anyone lately, although pretty much all he did was work at the pub or work at fixing up the apartment his parents had given him upon his return home. On the same floor as the rest of his family, but on the far corner, across from Kev’s.
His life had become very small. Except for therapy appointments, he rarely left this building. Rarely smiled. Rarely found joy in…anything.
“You look tired,” she said.
He felt tired. So tired.
Chapter 19
The second weekend in January Neve sat on her bed in her third-floor room staring at her phone. Since she’d left town, without sharing too much information she’d kept in contact with Nate. Otherwise he no doubt would have hunted her down. Plus she didn’t want him to worry. But four weeks without talking to Brooke had been torture.
In theory, leaving all of her friends behind made sense. In reality, however, Brooke was more than a friend. And Neve missed her something awful.
So she dialed the phone.
Brooke answered on the second ring. “Neve?”
That brought a smile to her face. “How did you know?” Her number should have come up as “blocked.”
“I called Nate to find out how to get in touch with you. He told me he didn’t know, that when you call your number comes up on his phone as ‘blocked.’ How are you? Where are you? When can I come to visit? I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Rory being here. Honestly, I worried if I did you would have turned right around and left, and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do to stop you.”
“You’re probably right.” Brooke knew her so well. “Apology accepted.” Moving on. “So how’ve you been?” She lay back on the bed, resting her head on one of Adele’s overly stuffed pillows, getting comfortable for what she knew would be a long chat.
“Worried.”
“I’m sorry I made you worry. This is just something I had to do…on my own.”
“Where are you?”
“A small town.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be.”
Neve smiled. “Yup.”
“Will you tell me what you’re doing?”
Since Neve could do that without disclosing her location, she said, “Sure. I’m working at a preschool five days a week.” And occasionally babysitting in the evenings or on weekends when desperate parents came begging, offering huge sums of money. It gave her something to do and some extra cash, which always came in handy.
“That’s wonderful.”
“It’s no big deal. A teacher needed to take an emergency early maternity leave. They were desperate. I was available.” Who knew if they would have hired her otherwise? Although according to her new boss, Lil had given Neve the best recommendation she’d ever gotten on a prospective employee. Maybe she sho
uld call Lil too.
“You always do that,” Brooke said.
“Do what?”
“Downplay all the good stuff that happens to you.” Rory had said the same thing. “Like the only reason they hired you was because they were desperate. That’s not true, and you know it. You’re smart, dependable, and children love you. That school is lucky to have you, and if they didn’t realize it when they hired you, I’m sure they did within your first week on the job.”
“It’s run out of the local church. And the woman who hired me strongly encouraged me to attend mass every Sunday, which I’ve been doing.” Not mandatory per se…but mandatory nonetheless.
“Good Lord.” Brooke laughed.
“Yup.” Neve laughed too. It felt good. “I was a little worried about what might happen the first time I entered the sanctuary. But I’m happy to report the building is still standing and I did not burst into flames.” And you know what? Attending mass and making confession also felt good.
“So how are you?”
Bored. Lonely. “I’ve been eating sticky buns for breakfast. I don’t own a scale. And when my size one clothes got uncomfortably tight I went out and bought size twos.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my health-conscious, weight-obsessed friend? This sounds like a classic example of an alien body invasion. Fight, Neve!” Brooke yelled. “Take back control. Return to me.”
Neve laughed. “What type of movies does Shane have you watching?”
“Science fiction stuff. It’s awful.”
Shane’s voice came through the phone. “But I watch her crappy movies too.”
“Yes, he does,” Brooke said. “We take turns choosing.”
She sounded so happy. Neve hated that it made her jealous, that it made her think of the time she and Rory had spent together, that it made her miss him even more. “Anyway, my larger size aside, I’ve got the respectable life I wanted. I’ve made some friends. Last week the grandmother of one of my students actually asked if I was single because she wanted to fix me up with one of her sons. Me. Can you believe it?”
“Yes, I can believe it. You’re a wonderful person.”
“You’re biased because you love me.”
“While it’s true that I love you and always will, and maybe that does make me a smidge biased, it’s also true that you’re a caring, generous, hardworking, and thoughtful person who has always been much too hard on herself. I hope you plan to change that much-too-hard-on-herself part with this transformation you’re working on.”
“That’s the point I was trying to make before you interrupted me.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Would you let me speak?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“Brooke!” Neve laughed.
Then silence.
“Brooke?”
“You want to speak, so I’m letting you speak. Get on with it already.”
“I’ve got the life I thought I wanted. I’ve got a respectable job and respectable friends, and I’m still not happy. Last Friday night I went to happy hour with one of the women I work with. We drank wine spritzers. Wine spritzers! And I was home by seven…in the evening. I don’t know what to do with myself in this town. I’ve actually started reading to fill my time, full novels, from start to finish in one night.” Entire sexy, erotic novels.
“You can always move here. I’d love it if you lived close by. It’d be like old times.”
Unfortunately, “old times” was what Neve was trying to put behind her. But since Brooke opened the door, Neve walked through it. “Is Rory still there?”
Silence. Not good.
“Is he?” Neve asked again.
“No. He returned to Boston a week before Christmas.” Brooke hesitated. “Shane’s worried about him, says he doesn’t sound good and he’s having a rough time.”
So used to caring and worrying about Rory, Neve immediately said, “Maybe I should…” But then she caught herself. No, that’d be a terrible idea.
“Maybe you should what?”
“I don’t know.” Sure, she’d been angry and hurt—still was, but not as much. And maybe at first she would have enjoyed knowing Rory was suffering. But now, after having time to think back about everything that’d happened, about her own role in it all, and how she could have handled things differently…
“Maybe I should send him a letter or something.” Neve wasn’t ready to hear his voice and that accent she’d grown so fond of teasing him about. “Let him know I’m here if he needs me. He said that really helped him while he was overseas.” And helping Rory, being needed by Rory, felt good.
“I think he’d really appreciate that,” Brooke said. “And your willingness to write him, after everything that happened, proves my point that you are a wonderful person who routinely puts others ahead of herself, even if you refuse to acknowledge it.”
“I love you, Brooke.”
“I love you too. And you are always welcome to visit, anytime, for as long as you want.”
“Thank you.”
“So you’ll call me again soon?” Brooke asked hopefully.
“I’ll call you again soon.”
After ending the conversation, Neve went in search of paper to write Rory a letter. Tomorrow, during her lunch hour, she’d run to the post office to send it out to McRoy’s Pub in South Boston via overnight mail. Hopefully, she still had the address in her emails.
Chapter 20
“I don’t need your help to paint my apartment,” Rory told his dad.
“You spend too much time in here alone.”
Yes, he did. But he preferred it that way. And he’d only been home a few weeks.
“The color looks nice.”
White with a hint of purple.
“Heard you and Mom fighting this morning.” Rory directed the long roller up toward the ceiling. “Sounded like a bad one.”
Dad smiled. “Your mother. God, how I love that woman.”
Just like Rory loved Neve. Thinking of her, missing her, made his chest burn. “If you had to do it all again, knowing how much the two of you fight, knowing how difficult she can be, would you?”
Dad didn’t even take a moment to think. “In a heartbeat.” He stopped painting and turned toward Rory, his body thin and muscled from years of hard work, his dark hair still thick, though gray had made an appearance. “Your mother is a…passionate woman.” Same as Neve. Dad winked. “An excellent quality in a wife, especially for a man who’s been married as long as I have.”
“Stop.” Rory held up a paint-speckled hand.
Dad shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong—a passionate woman requires work. They have strong opinions. They fight hard.” His eyes met Rory’s. “But they love hard too.”
Neve sure fought hard. Would she love hard too? “When we were young you used to tell us to stay away from women like Mom, to marry an easy woman.”
“Sometimes I said that out of anger because, you know, your mother can really get me going.”
Yes, she could, just like Neve got Rory going.
“But most of the time I said it to get a rise out of her. Your mother in a snit can be quite entertaining, sometimes an adventure, other times a curse. But we take the good with the bad, don’t we? And makeup sex with your mother is worth fighting for.”
“I don’t want to hear about your sex life.”
But Dad wasn’t done. “I’d take a loud, argumentative, passionate woman over a quiet, compliant, boring one any day. Keeps life interesting.” He patted Rory on the shoulder, then got back to work.
No doubt marrying Neve would keep life interesting. But why was he even thinking that when he had no idea where she was or what she was doing and would likely never hear from her again? Because what if he did? What then?
“Mom…” He couldn’t find the right words.
“She’s worried about you.” Dad glanced over. “We all are.”
He didn’t want them to worry, but didn’t know how to make
them stop. “That woman…the one I was with in the storeroom…when I was home on leave.”
“She the one you’re missing?”
“Mom hates her.”
“Only because we found you gasping for breath on the ground because of her. Your mom hates to see any of her boys hurt, myself included.” Dad turned to face him. “Yet she conveniently fails to remember the time she broke a glass bottle over my head when she thought I was standing a little too close and paying too much attention to a new girl in our old neighborhood.”
Now, there was a story Rory hadn’t heard before. “She did?”
Dad nodded. “I needed four stitches, an X-ray, and a CAT scan. Boy oh boy, was my mother royally pissed.” He pointed his finger at Rory’s chest. “But don’t you dare tell your mom I told you. Or she might do it again.” He seemed to smile with love at the thought.
His brother Niall walked in through the open door. “This just came for you.” He held out an overnight envelope. “And Derry’s pissed.”
“At me?” Rory asked.
“He was so busy flirting with Mary, he didn’t pay attention to the spices he was putting into the stew.” Niall smiled. “Dumped in a bunch of freeze-dried crickets, then had to spend the next ten minutes picking them out. And you know how much he hates bugs.”
“Freeze-dried crickets?” Dad asked. “On the spice rack? Where did they come from?”
“It was a joke.” Even if right now it didn’t feel as funny as Rory had thought it would be when he’d finally put the container there.
Niall went in for a fist bump. Rory met him. “Nice one, dude.”
“Thanks.” But even messing with his brothers gave him no joy.
Rory looked down at the cardboard mailer in his hands. The address label read “McRoy’s Pub. Attention: Rory McRoy.” And beneath that: “Personal and confidential.”
His heart squeezed when he recognized Neve’s handwriting. He ripped open the mailer, snatched out the letter inside, and read it.
January 13, 2013
Dear Rory,
I spoke with Brooke tonight and she told me Shane’s worried about you, that you’ve been having a tough time since you returned home to Boston. I wanted to let you know that despite everything, I’m here for you if you need me.
All I Need Is You Page 21