Stronger

by Janet Nissenson

  “I’m not falling apart,” she protested weakly. “Even after sitting by my mother’s bedside for forty eight hours straight and watching her die, I didn’t fall apart. And I know I promised you I wouldn’t make a fuss if things didn’t work out between us. But - well, I’m sad, Dante. Sad because I loved being with you. Loved being your lover. You made me happier than I’ve felt in a really long time, and now I’m sad that I won’t get to see you again. Oh, I know you said we could be friends, but it won’t be the same. Not even close. And I’m going to miss you so much. So I’m sorry if my tears upset you, but I tend to cry when I’m sad. Or am I not permitted to be sad?”

  He cursed softly beneath his breath, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze. His eyes held a bleak look, almost as though he wanted to cry himself. Using his thumb to brush away the tears from her eyes, he kissed her forehead this time.

  “Of course you’re permitted to be sad,” he assured her. “Believe it or not, I’m sad, too. This wasn’t an easy decision for me, Cara. Not by a long shot. I know the risk I’m taking by letting Katie back into my life. And I also know what I’m giving up by letting you go. I’m going to miss you, too. More than you know.”

  She got to her feet, badly needing to put some distance between them, and to get control of herself before she did something really disgusting like throw up. Or pass out. Her throat felt raw and scratchy from the cold and from crying so much, so she silently filled a mug with water and stuck it in the microwave before scrounging around for a tea bag.

  “You can go now,” she told him in an oddly detached voice. “I’m going to have some tea, put my laundry away, and take a nap. Maybe not in that order.”

  Dante walked over to where she stood in her tiny kitchenette. “I don’t want to leave you like this, Cara. Not when you’re still so upset. Not to mention being sick. Are you positive you won’t let me take you to see a doctor?”

  She unearthed a tea bag from a box in the back of a cabinet. “I just have a cold, Dante. Nothing some Nyquil and a few hours of sleep won’t cure. As for being upset - well, I’ll get over it. Just like I got over my mom dying and my dad remarrying and selling the house and then announcing he wasn’t going to pay for the rest of my college tuition. I might be young, but I’m tougher than I look. So, please. You should really go.”

  “All right.” He blew out a breath of frustration. “But before I do there’s something I want to give you, Cara. Something that I want you to accept and not fight me on. Okay?”

  Cara frowned as he dug something out of his pocket. “What exactly are you giving me - the keys to one of your cars?”

  Dante shook his head. “Trust me. If I thought for one minute that you’d actually accept something like that, I would have gladly given you one months ago. Though I suppose you could use part of this - or all of it - to buy your own car. Here. This is for you.”

  He was holding out a check, and she took it from him warily, reluctantly, only to nearly drop it when she saw the amount.

  “Holy crap!” she exclaimed. “This can’t possibly be right. You - you want to give me a check for - for twenty-five thousand dollars? Are you crazy? Because that’s the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why you’d imagine for even a second that I’d accept any money at all from you, much less a fortune like this.”

  “I want you to take the money and use it on yourself,” he explained calmly. “For whatever you want or need. It kills me to know how hard you work during the day, and then have to drag yourself to classes four nights a week. I’ve seen how exhausted you are on Friday nights. And I know the fall semester has already started, but maybe for the spring you could take a leave of absence from your job and go to school full time during the day. Back at the Berkeley campus, where you should have been all along. That check should be more than enough money to pay for your tuition and help support you for a semester or two.”

  Cara shook her head emphatically. “I am not taking a leave of absence, Dante. Angela has been good to me, and I won’t do that to her. And I’m also not taking this check, under any circumstances. What is this anyway - payment for services rendered or something? Gee, I’m not sure whether to be flattered or grossly insulted!”

  Dante looked shocked at her accusation. “Jesus, no! It’s nothing like that, Cara. Nothing at all. Frankly, I’m the one who’s insulted that you’d even accuse me of something so crass. You’re the very furthest thing from a whore, and the check isn’t payment for having sex with me.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean it that way,” she admitted grudgingly. “And while I appreciate the gesture, I am not taking money from you, Dante. I don’t care if it’s twenty-five thousand or twenty-five cents. Thank you, but no.”

  But he adamantly refused to take back the check she held out to him. “I knew you’d be stubborn about this,” he grumbled. “Knew you’d make it difficult for me to try and do something nice for you. Look, don’t use it for school then. Use it for something else altogether. Move to a bigger apartment, a nicer apartment. Preferably one with on-site laundry facilities so that you don’t have to lug that huge duffle bag on the bus and use a laundromat in a questionable part of the city. Or get a car. Go on a nice vacation. Buy yourself a whole new wardrobe. Or just save it for the future. One way or the other, I want you to take that money, Cara.”

  “Why?” she challenged. “Because you feel responsible for me? Because you feel sorry for me, or think I’m some sort of charity case? Or maybe it’s because giving me this check will help you feel better about yourself, make you feel less guilty about dumping me for another woman.”

  Dante’s cheeks reddened, and his dark eyes flashed angrily. “My feelings don’t matter,” he muttered. “I’ll need to deal with those on my own somehow, and even if I gave you half of my net worth it wouldn’t make me feel less guilty about how this has unfolded. Look at this way, Cara. Since I became successful, I’ve helped a lot of people out. I loaned money to different family members for their businesses. Remodeled my mom’s house inside and out. Put both of my sisters through college. So why won’t you let me help you out the same way I helped them?”

  “Because I’m not your sister. Or your mother. Or another member of your family,” retorted Cara. “I’m none of those things. I’m nobody to you, Dante. Just some silly, naïve girl you used to bang twice a week.”

  “Cara,” he said reprovingly, shaking his head in denial. “God, honey, you have to know that isn’t the truth! Have to know that I never, ever thought of you that way.”

  “Do I?” she challenged. “And exactly how am I supposed to know that, huh? You thought so highly of me that you kept bringing me to all of these out-of-the-way restaurants where we wouldn’t run the risk of seeing anyone you knew. You never once thought I was good enough to meet your precious family, good enough to bring home to your mother. I mean, I know I’m not the best looking girl in the world, that I’m overweight and don’t have nice clothes and probably next to your gorgeous actress girlfriend I’d just fade into the woodwork. But I have feelings, Dante. Feelings that were hurt every single time you went out of your way to make sure no one saw us together.”

  This time the color on his cheeks did the opposite and paled alarmingly. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, shaking his head as he ran a hand over his face. When he opened his eyes, there was such a bleak, desperate look in them that she very nearly rushed over to comfort him.

  “Cara. Christ, I don’t even know what to say,” he replied tiredly. “Why haven’t you said something about this before? It’s obviously been bothering you for some time.”

  She dunked the tea bag in the hot water, unwilling to meet his eyes. “I guess because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful for starters. And I told you before, Dante. I was just so happy to be with you, enjoyed spending time with you, that it didn’t matter to me where we went or what we did. You could have taken me to the closest 7-11 for Slurpees and day-old hot dogs and I would have been over
the moon. And I guess I was afraid that if I complained or asked you for something you weren’t ready to give me that you’d stop seeing me. And I would have done just about anything to prevent that from happening.”

  He came to her then, cupping her cheeks between his palms, his voice breaking. “Cara. I can see now that I never deserved you, not even for a day. I can’t even think straight right now. But you need to know this. Yes, I brought you places where we wouldn’t be likely to run into people I knew. But it wasn’t because I was ashamed of you, for Christ’s sake. It was just - well, my family is wonderful, the best family in the world. But they’re also nosy as hell, want to know everything that goes on in my life. And if word had reached them that I was dating someone new, they would have demanded all the details, insisted on meeting you, hinted that I should settle down. And I just wanted something for myself, wanted to keep my private life private for once. I’m sorry if it seemed that I was hiding you away, even though I sort of was. But not for the reasons you thought.”

  She nodded. “I get it now. Thanks for clearing all that up. But I’m still not accepting this check.”

  She tore it into dozens of little pieces, scattering them over her tiny kitchen sink.

  Dante sighed, then gave her a frustrated smile. “Of course you aren’t. I didn’t think it would be that easy. But if you ever change your mind, ever need anything, I want you to call me. All right?”

  Cara could feel the tears beginning to well up again, and was anxious to have him leave before her humiliation deepened. “Yes. Though I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  “Stubborn till the end.” He dropped a kiss on the bridge of her nose, an affectionate little gesture that one might give to a child. “And just so you know, my mother would have adored you. Take care of yourself, honey.”

  He left then, closing the door quietly behind him. Cara took two sips of her tea before pouring the rest down the drain, recalling now that she hated tea and must have kept the bags here for the times Mirai visited. Thinking of her BFF made her reach for her phone so that she could call the one remaining person in the world she could count on to be there for her.

  “Mir?” she sniffled as her friend answered the call. “He broke up with me, Mir. Just a few minutes ago.”

  Mirai cursed vividly on the other end of the line when she heard how distressed Cara sounded. “Give me half an hour to gather supplies and I’ll be right over.”

  “You’re sure?” croaked Cara. “Aren’t you supposed to be visiting with your parents?”

  “Not tonight. They’re attending some fancy party and Rene has a date. So you just need to tell me what to bring over - pizza, chocolate, or booze? On second thought, forget it. As bad as you sound, we’re going to need all three.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Late September

  “And here I was starting to revise my opinion that you were the biggest fucking moron I’d ever known. You just had to go and screw that all up again, didn’t you?”

  Dante winced in reaction from Nick’s scathing retort to the news he’d just shared with him. “Sorry to have disappointed you - Dad. But in case you hadn’t realized it, I am old enough to make my own decisions. Whether you agree with them or not isn’t really the point.”

  Nick shook his head, not bothering to hide his disgust. “I can agree that this one in particular is a bad decision. Seriously, Dan - what the fuck! I wish I had taken a video of at least one of the dozen or more times you sat across from me just like you are now moping and whining because that chick had flounced out of your life so she could become a big movie star. Wait a sec. Maybe I actually did take a video one of those times.”

  As Nick scrolled through his phone, Dante scowled darkly at his best friend. He had deliberately put off telling Nick about Katie for close to three weeks now, knowing that the announcement would not be well received. Discretion, tact, and keeping his very strong opinions to himself would never be traits one would associate with Nick Manning, and he was certainly proving those facts to be true this afternoon.

  “Knock it off, Nick,” growled Dante, who wasn’t in the greatest of moods today himself. “Like it or not, Katie and I are back together and giving things another try. And nothing you say is going to change that. Hey, Angela gave you another chance and you were way more of a jerk towards her than Katie was to him.”

  “Hmmpf. Matter of opinion, I suppose,” grumbled Nick. “And at least she made me work for it when I tried to get her back. Is Blondie even the tiniest bit contrite? I mean, if a chick had pulled that sort of shit on me - well, moot point, because there’s no way in hell I’d have ever considered taking her back after that. But say in some alternate universe I might have thought about it, I’d damn sure have made her grovel and beg. A lot.”

  “That’s because you’re an asshole while I’m a nice guy,” retorted Dante. “And if Angela had ever bothered to ask my advice before she took you back, I would have told her to get some serious counseling for even entertaining a stupid idea like that.”

  Nick flipped him off before taking a sip of his Pinot Noir. “Angela’s too smart to take advice from a moron like you. Now, I think you and I have traded enough insults for one afternoon. And you’re right, Dan. You are a grown man, and God knows with my crappy record with women I’m probably the last person who should be telling you how to run your life.”

  Dante nodded. “All right. Agreed. No more insulting each other. At least for today. And while I know you don’t approve of my decision, or support it, I hope you won’t take it out on Katie when you see her this weekend.”

  Nick’s dark eyes narrowed menacingly. “You mean, not threaten her with dire consequences if she fucks you up again? Or ask her how she’s planning on making it all up to you?”

  Dante rolled his eyes, realizing that nothing and no one was ever going to change Nick. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  Nick shrugged, as though bored with the subject. “Fine. I’ll be on my best behavior. Though I can’t promise Angela won’t try to rip your ex – er, your girlfriend a new one. She’s her own woman, after all, and doesn’t take it very well when I try to tell her what to do.”

  “Big surprise there,” replied Dante sarcastically. “Especially since you try to control everything she does and says.”

  A wicked grin split Nick’s handsome features. “Not everything. Once in awhile I let her get on top.”

  “Jesus.” Dante shook his head in disgust. “Sometime I forget what a pig you are. Then you open your mouth and it all comes back to me.”

  “Angela and I are good right now,” replied Nick in a far more serious tone. “We get each other, recognize each other’s triggers, and know when to back off. Not everyone pretends to understand our relationship, but that’s tough for them. So long as we’re both happy, then everyone else can go fuck themselves for all I care. Including her family.”

  Dante picked up his own wine glass. “Are you positive that Angela is happy with the way things are between you? Did you ever bother to ask her if she’s satisfied with your relationship? Just because you don’t believe in wedding chapels and babies and white picket fences doesn’t mean she doesn’t.”

  Nick gave him a glare that would have been terrifying for anyone who didn’t know him as well as Dante did. “Butt out, Lover Boy. Angela and I are in a good place right now, so don’t start putting ideas in her head. She knows how I stand on marriage and kids and all that shit. So concentrate on your own relationship and stay the hell out of mine.”

  Dante couldn’t resist grinning, realizing he’d hit a nerve there somewhere. “Fine. So long as you stop harping on Katie. Give her a chance, Nick. Give us a chance.”

  Nick looked disgusted, but merely shrugged. “Whatever. All I know is that you’ve actually been happy these last few months. You never discussed the subject but I just assumed you were getting laid on a regular basis. Was it just one woman or a whole parade of them?”

>   Dante felt his face redden at his friend’s very direct question, and resisted the urge to squirm in his chair. He knew there was no way that Nick or Angela would have suspected he’d been dating - more accurately, fucking - their cute, innocent little admin assistant for several months. And he was positive that Cara had never spilled the beans to either of her bosses, because if she had Nick would have broken at least a few of his bones by now.

  He’d felt obliged to finally clue Nick in about his reconciliation with Katie since all four of them - Dante, Katie, Nick, and Angela - would be attending a party given by a mutual friend this weekend. And there was no way he would have risked Nick saying something rude and inappropriate, or allowed Angela to look down her nose at Katie as though she smelled bad. So even though he knew he’d be in for an hour of grief from Nick while they ate lunch, Dante had sucked it up and broken the news.

  News that he had yet to share with his family, though. ‘One step at a time,’ he had told himself. The same way he’d imagined his reignited relationship with Katie unfolding.

  Katie, however, had initially envisioned a rather different path to their reconciliation. She’d first been shocked when Dante had flat out refused to let her move in with him, a topic she had brought up within a day or two of their getting back together.

  “But I can’t afford a place of my own in San Francisco yet,” she had pointed out. “I’ve been job hunting like crazy but haven’t been able to find anything yet, and my bank account is more or less empty. So when you told me you’d like to give things another try between us, I was thrilled because not only would we be back together the way we were always meant to be, but I’d have a place to stay in the city while I looked for a job.”

  Dante hadn’t allowed her to manipulate him into something he wasn’t ready for, however, no matter how big and blue her eyes were, or how tempting those lush pink lips looked. “Sorry, but it’s way too soon to start talking about moving in together. I told you, Katie, that things need to be different this time around - a lot different and in a lot of different ways. I realize now that I was probably too pushy, wanted too much too soon from you, instead of just having fun together and letting things develop naturally. So that’s the way it’s going to happen this time around.”