by Sophia Renny
“Then why did he leave me? Why did he choose her? Wasn’t I good enough for him? Aren’t I pretty? Aren’t I kind and smart?”
Julia felt Hannah’s hand on her back, rubbing, soothing. “Of course you are, sweetie. Of course you are.”
“I am kind and good. I’ve been a good girl all my life. My mom and dad’s perfect little girl.”
“Shh. Let it go, Jules. You just gotta let it go.”
Julia yanked out of Hannah’s embrace and gave her friend a fuming glare. “Let it go? Let it go? Like I’m some kind of animated cartoon character? What the fuck! I’ve been dreaming about my wedding since I was a little girl, since I was five years old and hit Joe on the head with my p-plastic shovel in the sandbox. My m-mom told me that same day that I was going to marry him one day. He was supposed to be t-the one! And he just dropped me like that.” She tried to snap her fingers but failed. She flung her hands in the air instead. “He didn’t give me any w-warning. Nothing! It was like I was a defective p-purchase he wanted to return for a refund!”
“That’s not true. You can’t think of yourself like that. He told you the reasons why…”
“Like what reasons? Like putting himself first for a change? As if I was just someone he’d taken for granted all this t-time? Like I was just the girl he’d settled for because he couldn’t find his dream girl? What if we’d already been m-married when he met her? Would he have dumped me even then?”
“No. Not Joe. He would’ve stuck by your side. You know that.”
“And he would’ve been absolutely m-miserable.” Julia felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks. She swiped them away and rubbed her nose.
Hannah lifted a corner of the throw and dabbed at Julia’s face. “We’ve had this same conversation too many times, sweetie. You’re just torturing yourself. That’s what I mean when I say let it go.”
Julia took several hiccupping breaths. She tugged the throw out of her friend’s hands and wrapped it around her shaking body. She fell sideways on the couch and curled her knees towards her chest. “I’m so tired. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I get that he loves her. I get that she’s his one. But he was my one… Wasn’t he?”
Hannah stood up from the couch and pulled the throw across Julia’s legs. She lifted Julia’s head and propped a pillow beneath it. She brushed one hand down Julia’s cheek. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here in the morning. We’ll go for a long walk. Talk when our heads are clear. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Julia watched with bleary eyes as her friend walked to the bedroom, turning off the light as she left.
Alone in the darkened living room, Julia tried to tamp down the snippets of the conversation she’d had with Joe on that horrible, awful day, but they refused to stay put.
“What if you’d met her after we got married?”
“I was already having reservations and doubts before I met Willa. I couldn’t have gone through with the wedding, regardless. I should never have asked you to marry me in the first place. It wasn’t fair to you.”
“Why? Wasn’t I good enough for you?”
“No. No, Julia. Don’t think of yourself like that. You are a sweet, kind and beautiful woman. You’ve always been my best friend. But I’ve finally realized that that’s all you can be. I know I’m being a selfish prick right now when I ask you if we can keep our friendship going. You’re part of my family, Julia. You always have been. I don’t want to lose that. And I know that there’s a guy out there who’ll be a much better husband for you than I could ever be. Don’t give up on that dream because of what’s happened with us. I’m not going to let you.”
Sweet. Kind. Her parents’ perfect little girl.
What had that gotten her?
Nothing but heartbreak.
At least now she was finally able to fully acknowledge and accept a truth that she’d secretly hoped was a temporary madness on Joe’s part. He really did love Willa. It was there, in living color, for the entire world to see. He wasn’t coming back to Julia. Ever.
It was time to move on.
Chapter Two
“He’s been out there for ten minutes now. Doesn’t look like he’s calmed down much. I’ll go talk to him.”
“Give him a few more minutes,” Willa advised, coming to stand beside Tony at the kitchen island where they could both observe Joe pacing back and forth on the screened back porch. “He’s been on edge for the last week. He was worried about how the episode would be edited. He didn’t want too much emphasis on me and him.”
Tony gave a curt shake of his head. “Veronica pulled a fast one on us,” he said grimly, referring to the field producer of the television series. “All those damn close-ups.”
“I think it was unavoidable. Things were more obvious than we realized.”
Tony pulled his eyes from his brother to focus on the woman standing beside him. He liked Willa; he had from the beginning. She and Joe made a good match. “How do you feel?”
She sighed heavily. “I’m relieved that it’s finally aired. It’s all the girls have talked about for the last month. But I’m just as worried as Joe about hurting Julia further. Neither one of us wanted that.”
“I think she would’ve been hurt no matter how the episode was edited.” Tony took a swig from the bottle of beer he’d been nursing for a while and propped one hip on the counter to face Willa directly.
“Do you think she watched it?” Willa asked.
“I know she did. She told me she was going to.”
Willa gave him a searching look. “The two of you talk often?”
“I see her at least once a week.”
“But she still won’t talk to Joe. She hasn’t returned any of his calls.”
“Can you blame her?”
“No. But it’s bothering him so much.” She glanced towards the porch again, her expression tautening with concern. “I hate to see him this way.”
Tony felt the same. “These are unusual circumstances. Had it been anyone other than Julia…”
Willa glanced up at him. “She’s part of your family. I get that.”
He set his beer on the counter so that he could pull Willa in for a brief hug. “And so are you.”
She hugged him back and then stood back so she could look him in the eye. She smiled. “Thank you.”
“Things will work out, Willa. I know it.”
“How’s that coffee coming along?” Collette Fournier, Willa’s next-door neighbor, asked as she walked into the kitchen.
From the living room came the sound of female chatter and laughter. All the girls—Audrey, Shirley and Mercy—had come to Willa’s house to watch the show. They were Collette’s best friends and had quickly become Willa’s, too. Both Joe and Tony had been taken into their fold; the fifty-something women enjoyed pretending they were the fussy aunts that the brothers had never had.
Sylvie, Joe and Tony’s little sister, was there, too. She’d graduated with honors from Johnson and Wales University in May and was now working fulltime as Willa’s assistant manager at the bakery Willa had opened on Thayer Street in Providence back in June.
Tony’s features relaxed in a grin as Collette sidled up next to him and playfully nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. He couldn’t help but smile every time he was around her. She had one of those loud, effusive personalities that were very prevalent among women of her generation in the North Providence neighborhood where he’d grown up. She reminded him a little bit of his mother, who’d been strong and fearless in addition to being very protective of her children. He felt a little twist of pain in his heart; not a day went by that he didn’t think of his mother at some point. “How you doin’, Collette?” he asked, laying his Little Rhody accent on thicker than usual. “How does it feel to be a TV star?”
Collette beamed. “I looked good on there, didn’t I.”
“You were the highlight of the show.”
“Sylvie says I should open a Twitter and Instagram account for all the fans I’m going to
have. She’s going to show me how.”
“Go for it.”
Collette tugged her cellphone from her pants pocket and handed it to Willa. “Take our picture, hon. This’ll be my first post, or whatever you call it. Me and Mr. Tall, Dark, Sexy and Handsome here. My co-workers are going to be so jealous.”
Tony’s grin widened as he threw an arm around Collette’s shoulder and allowed himself to be posed to the older woman’s satisfaction. After Willa took a couple of shots, he glanced towards the porch. Joe was no longer in sight. “Think I’ll go outside for a while,” he said to the ladies, giving Willa a speaking look.
She nodded. “I’ll have dessert ready in a half hour. Collette, can you help me with the whipped cream?”
Tony stepped onto the back porch and looked around. Through the screen, he caught a glimpse of Joe walking around the corner of the house towards the front yard. Tony pushed the screen door open and set out after him.
It was a warm September night, just one week after Labor Day. The sun had gone down a couple of hours ago. As he moved away from the light streaming from Willa’s house, it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the mid-evening dark. Then he saw Joe walking down the driveway towards the street. Tony quickened his pace until he came abreast of his older brother.
Joe gave him a sideways look but didn’t speak. He only nodded to the left, indicating the way to the main road that led to Conimicut Point Park.
They walked in silence for a while, keeping their eyes on the road. Aside from the occasional passing car, the neighborhood was quiet. Dinner smells wafted in the air, combining with the scent of the salt marsh and the fainter scent of sea lavender.
It’d been a long time since he’d been alone with his brother like this, Tony reflected. They’d both been working nonstop on the television series since April. There’d been six projects in total, each one with unique challenges that had piled on extra hours right up until the final shoot that had taken place in early August. This was on top of a few other projects their construction company had taken on that weren’t related to the show. Business was better than it had ever been, and they’d been able to hire a couple of project managers plus additional crew to help offload some of the strain.
When Julia and Joe had still been together, Tony had seen both of them almost every day. He, Joe and Sylvie shared the three-decker house in North Providence where they’d been raised. Julia’s parents, Tom and Diane Kelly, lived next door. When Frank and Sarah Rossetti had been killed in a warehouse fire fifteen years ago, Diane and Julia had taken on most of the cooking and cleaning for the orphaned Rossetti siblings. Although Joe and Julia’s romantic relationship had been off and on over the years, there had been very few occasions where Julia hadn’t joined the Rossetti clan for dinner or just to hang out with them.
But Joe had moved in with Willa in July. And Julia hadn’t been back to her parents’ house since May. When Sylvia wasn’t working at the bakery, she was off with her friends, enjoying her early twenties to their fullest, as she should. Most nights, when he wasn’t catching up on paperwork at the office, Tony spent alone in a quiet house. Much of his eating these days was of the take-out variety. As he sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by empty chairs, his thoughts—more and more often—centered on Julia. In his mind’s eye, she was sitting across from him, her blond hair framing her lovely, heart-shaped face, her amber eyes smiling at him.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Joe asked, as if he’d been reading Tony’s thoughts.
Tony cleared his throat. “Last week. Helped her move some furniture.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“In her office. She’s converted the back room into a conference room. Looks nice.”
“Business has been good?”
“There wasn’t much going on in August, but it’s picking up again. She has some corporate functions lined up through December.”
“Good.”
They walked a few yards farther in silence. Joe kept his gaze straight ahead when he asked, “Does she… Do you two talk about me? About Willa?”
Tony kept his tone neutral. “Just once. Right after she came back from San Diego. She wanted my take on things. Did I know what had been going on. Did I think it was legit. That kind of thing.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That I’d tried to prevent it. How hard you tried to stay away from Willa. Nothing you probably didn’t tell her already.”
Joe drew up short and pivoted to face Tony. He folded his arms across his chest and scowled. “Damn it. I wish I’d told Veronica what was going on. She said from the beginning that the wall unit would be the central focus of the episode. She could’ve edited things differently.”
“That storyline and you and Willa go hand in hand,” Tony pointed out. “I don’t think there was any way she could’ve avoided it.”
“I didn’t want to cause Julia any more hurt or embarrassment.”
Tony sighed. “I’ll stop by her place this weekend. Feel her out. It’s been four months. It’s time for both of you—all of us—to move on.”
Joe gave him a measuring look. He seemed to hesitate a moment before saying, “You see her a lot then.”
Tony shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “I used to see her every day before you two split. Sylvie sees her, too.” He retrieved his cellphone from his jeans pocket and glanced at the time. “We should be heading back. Willa said she’d have dessert ready in a half hour. That was twenty minutes ago.”
Joe shoved his hands in his pockets as he turned to head back to the house. Tony kept one eye on his brother’s stern profile, one eye on the road.
After a couple of minutes, Joe cleared his throat before asking gruffly, “So… You’re just being a good brother to her then.”
Tony’s steps faltered a little. He took a fortifying breath. “I don’t think of her that way. I don’t think I ever did.”
“How do think of her then?” Joe persisted, nothing more than curiosity in his voice. “As just a good friend?”
“Maybe.”
Joe suddenly grabbed Tony’s arm, bringing him to a halt. He had a good two inches on Tony, but there wasn’t anything aggressive in his touch. He only looked concerned, an expression Tony had witnessed many, many times since that devastating night when their parents had died, and Joe had taken on the dual role of both father and brother, more of the former until Tony had left for college. “Anything you want to tell me, little brother?” he asked quietly.
Tony held Joe’s assessing gaze. He squared his jaw. “Still haven’t sorted it out in my own head.”
Joe frowned. He looked a little uncomfortable as he said, “If it’s something…more, I want you to know I’m okay with it.”
Tony’s startled laugh was abrupt. “Bullshit,” he said succinctly. “Don’t act so damn noble. You know it’s weird.”
Joe dropped his hand from Tony’s arm. His mouth twisted in an acknowledging smile. “Okay. Yeah, it’s weird. Aside from the fact that she and I have a sexual history…” He made a gruff sound. “She’s my age. Six years older than you.”
Tony straightened his shoulders. “Five and a half to be exact. About the same age difference as between you and Willa.”
Joe shook his head. “That’s different. I’m older than Willa.”
“Age is just a number.”
“And you don’t have an issue with the fact that she was in love with me since we were kids?”
Tony felt a stirring of annoyance, almost on the verge of anger. “That’s what she said anyway.”
His brother’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t think she was?”
“Of course she was,” Tony conceded. “But there are different kinds of love, as you’ve recently discovered. And who planted that seed in her head—and yours—in the first place? Her mom.”
Joe cocked his head to one side. His expression turned considering. “And our mom, too. They teased me and Julia about it constantly.”
&
nbsp; Tony felt his features relax. First, he hadn’t anticipated this conversation happening tonight. Second, he hadn’t anticipated Joe apparently taking things so well. Tony was still coming to terms with his feelings for Julia, feelings that he was only beginning to realize had been lying dormant for years. “Do you think the reason you finally asked her to marry you was because it was what Mom would’ve wanted?”
Joe heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe. You know how your own memories of things can change over the years, become embellished or exaggerated?” He shook his head. “Lately, I’ve wondered if things would’ve been different if Julia and I had just been left alone when we were kids. Left to figure things out for ourselves, you know? How much of our relationship was simply the result of the power of suggestion, planted in us at a young age? Both Mom and Diane said we fell in love with each other when we were kids, and they took it for granted that we’d get married someday. Julia was so set on it. In the end, I went along with whatever made her happy.”
“Yeah,” Tony said gruffly. “I know what you mean. I made her unhappy once, and I hated the way it made me feel.”
They stood in silence for a few moments. Joe looked down, scuffed the toe of his shoe on the ground. He cleared his throat, glanced at Tony again. “You’re my brother. I love you. And I don’t want to see you hurt. There’s no guarantee that Julia feels the same way about you that you do about her.”
Tony folded his arms across his chest. His voice was firm with conviction. “I understand that. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“What about the fact that I’ve slept with her?” Joe pressed. “I was her first. That doesn’t bother you?”
Tony felt his face redden. “Jesus, bro. You had to go there, didn’t you. Yeah, it bothers me if I think about it too much. But then I remind myself that I will be her last and her always.” His voice turned flat, hard. “And that’s the last time you and me are ever going to have that particular conversation.”
Joe’s laugh sounded relieved. “Fair enough.” He held out his hand. “Let’s shake on it.”