There Better Be Pie

by Jessica Gadziala

  That was the only possible explanation.

  Because there was no way in the world I could ever feel something even akin to desire toward a man like Trip freaking Martin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Juliette

  My parents were night owls by nature.

  Me, I was always the early bird.

  My eyes usually sprang open just when the sunlight was slicing through the darkness, reminding it that its time was over.

  I wasn't someone who grumbled at the clock, who curled up in the blankets and tried to grab just five more minutes of sleep.

  I didn't struggle to drag my mind together, to shrug off unconsciousness; I woke up fully all at once, ready to get moving.

  And so I did.

  My headache was gone.

  Thanks to the impossibly soft mattress, so was the stiffness in my neck and shoulders.

  I climbed out of bed, hastily throwing my hair into a ponytail, slipping into my wool-lined leggings, a long-sleeved tee, and a pair of walking shoes I left in the back of my closet for just this very purpose.

  My parents slept like the dead in the mornings, but I found myself tip-toeing down the stairs and through the house, not wanting to wake up Trip, refusing to allow him to ruin my perfect morning plans.

  Grabbing a coffee in an insulated mug, I silently made my way outside just as the woods started to be illuminated, scaring off anything that might send me running and screaming.

  There was nothing like this place, I decided each and every time I visited, taking slow, deep breaths that expanded both my belly and chest, pushing out all the exhaust fumes and smoke I breathed in on a daily basis back at home, replacing that with pine and dirt and water and the distinct, yet indescribable, scent of fallen leaves.

  I never really seemed to follow the same path. Even if I wanted to, the woods changed too quickly to allow for such a thing given that I was likely the only person who ever trekked through them, and not nearly often enough to leave an actual trail through the underbrush.

  I simply started off at one direction, using the lake as a point of reference, so I never got lost.

  Walking had always been my preferred method of exercise. At my heaviest, it was really all I could manage cardiovascularly. When I did drop some weight, and my system could handle something more strenuous, I could never seem to consistently stick to anything else, preferring the peace I found in a good, long walk.

  The city was full of walking. To and from work, to events, to the stores. But I always made time to walk through parks, to try to get some hints of nature even in the middle of a sprawling metropolis.

  In the city, I walked with my cell or an iPod, needing to know how much time I was spending. And, let's face it, wanting a way to call for help should I need it.

  In the woods, though, I refused to bring any electronics with me, not wanting any distractions, choosing to take the walk as a sort of meditation, a time when I could let go of everything that existed outside of this perfect, peaceful little sanctuary.

  I had no idea how long I walked, only turning to head back when my thighs started to burn in objection at the idea of pushing it any further.

  I made my way around the lake, bringing myself to my fire-pit, taking a moment to get it going, then settling down with my back against a rock, knees to my chest, staring off at the water as I finally started to drink my coffee.

  "You get up early."

  "Jesus!" I shrieked, hand flying over my heart as my head whipped around, finding an interloper in my personal paradise.

  Not my parents, of course.

  I wasn't so lucky.

  Nope.

  It was Trip, looking fully rested even at this hour, dressed in a pair of black basketball pants with double white stripes down the sides, sneakers, and a gray sweatshirt, his hair a little mussed, his face a bit flushed.

  "Didn't mean to scare you. I wasn't exactly quiet walking up."

  "I wasn't paying attention," I admitted.

  "Smart. In the woods. There are bears in here, you know."

  "You don't say," I mumbled, trying not to let him get a rise out of me. It was too early to get annoyed at the day.

  "I was on the other side of the lake. Saw the smoke. Didn't realize there was a fire-pit here." He told me this as he invited himself to join me, taking the rock chair beside mine, entirely too close. I could feel the heat radiating off of his body.

  "What were you doing in the woods this early?" I asked, making sure my tone was calm and conversational even if all I wanted to do was tell him to leave me alone.

  "Going for a run," he admitted. "Your mom... she cooks heavy," he added with a little chuckle.

  She did, that.

  I never blamed her for my weight issues as a kid, but all the butter and pasta didn't help, I was sure.

  "Yeah, you look like you need to be watching your figure," I drawled.

  "Wow, Princess. That sounded dangerously close to a compliment."

  "It wasn't one," I insisted.

  "I'm taking it as one," he told me, leaning back, stretching his legs out, more at ease, more agreeable in the morning.

  But only by a little bit.

  And only in theory.

  I wasn't actually enjoying his company.

  But, you know, maybe somebody else might.

  "I see why you like it here. This is a great spot."

  "Private," I agreed, maybe a little pointedly.

  "Your father never mentioned this when he was telling me about the property."

  "He might not know it exists. He's not much of an explorer."

  "There it is again."

  "There what is again?"

  "A dig."

  "It wasn't a dig. It's a fact. He likes his creature comforts and things that are familiar to him. He's not someone who goes trekking through the woods looking for a fun new spot. That's not who he is. And that is not a dig. And, newsflash, he's my father. I get to say whatever I want about him."

  "Not if it's negative. Not in my presence."

  "He's a grown man, Trip. If he needed to defend himself, he could do it. He doesn't need you to speak for him."

  "He's not here to defend himself."

  "There was nothing to defend him about!"

  "You clearly have some issues with him, Princess. You're not even subtle about it."

  "Oh, my God. Trip. Don't think you can come in here and play shrink. This is my family, not yours. Is that why you're here? Your own family can't stand you either? Not even your own mother? I mean, it's not a surprise. You'd be hard even for a mother to love."

  "My mother died last month," he told me, voice a barely-healed wound scratched open.

  The words landed like a slap, shocking me back, leaving pain in their wake.

  My mouth sputtered as my heart crushed. I wasn't a cruel person. I didn't say things to hurt others. I didn't rub salt in open wounds.

  I felt like the biggest bitch in the world.

  An apology worked its way up my throat. But as I finally found the words, Trip was gone, nothing but a solid back steadily making his way as far from me as possible.

  This time, I couldn't even blame him.

  I couldn't have known. Of course not. We weren't exactly Facebook friends. We didn't run in the same circles, talk to the same people. There was no way I could have heard about his mother's passing.

  Save for my father.

  Who had to have known.

  And if he knew, so must my mom.

  Why the hell wouldn't they tell me that?

  My special place ruined with the scene, I got up, making my way back to the house, soul a little heavy.

  I couldn't imagine losing my mother. And I had known him to be close with his own, often bringing her to the work events instead of a date.

  She'd been an older lady, making Trip a late-in-life baby. But I hadn't thought of her as old enough to have been at risk of dying. Then again, death was an equal opportunity bastard, stealing the young and the old alik
e.

  "Mom," I hissed when I ran into her in the kitchen making her coffee, somehow managing to make a floor-length floral robe look like couture. "How could you not tell me that Trip's mom died?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

  "Oh, honey. It's so sad, right? I didn't feel it was my place to share his personal business. That was why your father invited him up. He doesn't have any other family. When his mom passed, he was completely alone in the world."

  Suddenly, I started to understand his almost irrational need to defend my father even when I wasn't even saying anything nasty about him.

  My father acted as a sort of surrogate father to him. He'd taken Trip under his wing years before, beefing him up, teaching him all the things he'd never taught me about the inner workings of the business, treating him very much like the son he'd never had.

  Of course Trip had latched onto that.

  I couldn't really even blame him. And I was trying really hard to find a reason to.

  "Why? What happened? Did you say something about her? Was he upset?"

  "Yeah, you could say that," I admitted, closing my eyes, leaning down on the island to cover my face with my hands.

  "Oh, no. Honey, you have to make that right. He must be heartbroken. You're not usually so callous."

  "I wouldn't have been had I known!" I insisted, dangerously close to crying. It was one thing to have a social faux pas. It was a complete other to tell some guy that his dead mother didn't love him.

  God.

  "He came in right before you. Go apologize, honey. Before too much time passes. You'll both feel better."

  She was right.

  I had to apologize.

  My stomach was twisted in painful knots.

  I had to say the words, get them off my chest.

  Even if I had to say those words to freaking Trip Martin.

  "I'm going," I agreed, taking a deep breath, moving off toward the stairs.

  I knocked.

  And knocked.

  Finally, knowing he was in there, I reached to push the door open, freezing for a cripplingly long moment at finding him sitting off the end of the bed, forehead in his hands.

  For a soul-crushing second, I thought he might be crying.

  But then his hand dropped.

  His head lifted.

  And there were no tears in his eyes.

  Oh, no.

  There was a burning rage.

  "Trip, I'm so sorry," I told him, and no one could doubt the sincerity in my tone. "I had no idea."

  "Clearly."

  "I didn't... I'm not that callous."

  "Telling someone their mom doesn't love them is a shit thing to say, Princess. Even if they are alive," he told me, getting to his feet. Was it possible for someone to do something like that angrily? Because if it was, that was what he did.

  He stalked over toward me, footsteps like cannons in the quiet house.

  He seemed like he was about to barrel right into me, making me take a hasty step back, my heartbeat skittering. For one second, I might have even worried he might strike out even though I knew in my heart he wasn't that kind of asshole.

  "Trip, I'm sorry."

  "So you said," he growled, grabbing the door, and slamming it in my face.

  So much for making it right, smoothing it over.

  Somehow, we went from Trip being the jerk, to it being—undeniably—me.

  Suddenly, words came back to me from my childhood, when I had been sobbing in my mother's arms because my best friend didn't want to be my best friend anymore because we had argued.

  Sorry is all you can say, Pudge. But that doesn't mean that it's enough.

  Clearly, it was not enough.

  It was going to be a long, long day.

  And it was going to be several hours before I could turn to alcohol to ease the sting of it all.

  After a long shower where I tried to convince myself that it would all be okay, that I would go out of my way to be kind to Trip—even if he was being a complete tool—that I could still make this right and salvage this holiday, I made my way downstairs to find my parents and Trip already at the dining table enjoying the simple spread of eggs and toast my mother had quickly thrown together.

  I made my way to my empty seat, reaching for a slice of toast.

  And Trip promptly excused himself. Despite having a half-filled plate.

  "What did you say to Trip?" my father asked, and there was no mistaking the accusation in his eyes.

  "Something I never would have said if someone would have told me about his mother's passing," I shot back, face starting to burn.

  Almost no one had the ability to actually make me blush in embarrassment. My father was one of the very few who could manage it with a simple look.

  Everyone knew that look.

  It was the I am so disappointed in you look.

  "You said something about his mother?" he hissed, eyes nearly as angry as Trip's had been an hour before.

  "I already apologized," I told him, holding up a hand to fend off the lecture.

  "Clearly, not well enough," he shot back. "If you'll excuse me, I seem to have lost my appetite as well."

  Alone with my mother, my hand rose to cover my eyes.

  "Everything is going wrong, and I haven't even been here a whole day yet," I told my mom, fiercely blinking back the tears that were forming. I wasn't going to cry. I wasn't going to make a bad situation worse. With my luck, Trip would see and then accuse me of making the situation about myself.

  "The day is young, sweetie," my mother comforted, reaching out to pat my other hand with hers. "There is plenty of time for it to get better."

  My mother, the optimist.

  As it turned out, though, things did not get better. Not with both Trip and now my father angry at me, refusing to be near me, to listen to my apologies.

  I was not a silent treatment kind of person. I would much rather have the uncomfortable conversation, get it out in the open, get it out of our minds and hearts than let it fester and punish someone else with my silence.

  My father and Trip, though, were not of the same mind.

  I was given the cold shoulder.

  And because I refused to try to make my mom choose between us, I just encouraged her to go hang out with them.

  While I went ahead and had a drink. Or two. Or three.

  I lost count.

  But somewhere along the way, after avoiding dinner, claiming I wasn't hungry—which everyone knew was a lie—I somehow got the idea that slipping into my bathing suit, and wrestling off the cover to the hot tub would be a good idea.

  At least it was an excuse not to be around anyone else and deal with their painful silence. And my mother's equally painful attempts to get everyone to include me when they clearly did not want to.

  I took a long drink out of the entire bottle of wine I brought out to the hot tub with me, then sat back, closed my eyes, and tried to enjoy the floating feeling of drunkenness, hoping it was strong enough to numb all the other feelings coursing through me.

  "Alright," a voice said, cutting through my floaty little half-dreamworld, dragging me back into the ugly reality, knowing that voice, knowing who it belonged to.

  Trip.

  "I think you've been punished enough," he added, making my eyes open to find him standing there on the deck above me, dressed only in a pair of low-slung black bathing trunks that put his annoyingly perfect abs on display, complete with that enviable deep V of his Adonis belt.

  Bathing trunks, though, meant only one thing.

  He was coming in.

  Then, just as that thought formed, he did, slipping down into the water, making me acutely aware of how small a hot tub really was. And how intimate it felt to share what was, essentially, a bath with someone else.

  "The silent treatment is immature," I managed to inform him, a little loose lipped when I was drinking. If I thought it, I usually said it. It was a miracle that I managed to keep the parts about his body inside my head only.
"They consider it a form of abuse actually," I added, giving him a nod when his brow rose.

  "You're a talk-shit-out person."

  "It only hurts you when you let things fester."

  "That's fair enough," he agreed, looking off toward the woods for a long moment, searching for what to say, how to start. "My mom was all I had," he told me. "Losing her was like losing a part of myself."

  "I can't imagine," I admitted, feeling the tears I had been fighting filling my eyes at the knowledge that someday—hopefully very far down the road—I would absolutely wouldn't have to imagine. Just the idea of that was like a knife sliced through my insides.

  "Don't," he demanded, voice rough when his gaze moved back to me. "Can't take tears right now, Princess."

  "I won't judge you if you cry too," I told him, reaching up to swat tears away.

  I wouldn't, either.

  Having grown up with a typical man's-man who seemed allergic to open displays of emotion, I came to really appreciate the men I met in college who felt comfortable enough to admit that they got sad and overwhelmed and teared up too.

  To that, he gave me a strained sort of smile. "I don't cry."

  "Everyone cries. Even if they don't do it in public."

  "I don't cry," he repeated. "I had no old man growing up. Even though my mother would never put the burden on me, little boys of single moms, they see themselves as the man of the family. I had to be strong for her. I stopped crying when I was seven. And only then because I broke my leg in three places."

  "Well, in case no one has ever told you, it's okay to cry. Especially over the big stuff."

  "I'll keep that in mind," he agreed, though I knew it was in one ear and out the other. "You're not such a pain in the ass when you're drinking, huh?" he asked.

  I wasn't so drunk that I didn't feel the fizzle of anger. I was so drunk that it was quickly drowned in happy nothingness.

  "You're almost tolerable when I'm drinking," I agreed, feeling my smile curve up.

  "I concede that I was maybe being a dick earlier."

  "Just earlier? Or do you maybe mean the past several years?"

  "You've been no picnic yourself," he told me, shaking his head.

  "To my reco-reco... that's a hard word," I told him, trying to force it to the tip of a tongue that suddenly felt a little fat and slow. "Rec-o-llection. What was I saying?"