by AM Hartnett
But he opened the curtains and made a grand gesture for her to exit first. As she took the hand he offered, he decided that putting that smile on her face by going back upstairs was worth the waiting until he got her to himself again, alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Standing at the stove, April thought she heard shouting coming from somewhere in the building. She flipped her grilled cheese onto her plate and took her soup off the burner, but before she made it to the window a black flash whizzed by her.
Marco bounced off the chair and landed on the arm of the sofa, and when she laughed and took a step towards him, he hissed and bolted into the bedroom.
She saw him scoot under the bed, and then noticed the wet splotches he had left all over the place. The poor thing was soaked, and when she tried to coax him out from his hiding space he only glared at her.
Leaving her lunch to go cold, April went down the fire escape. Through the window, she could see Seth in the dining room. The table had been cleared. His piles of photos were piles no more, instead a chaotic mess on the floor and mixed with crumpled paper towels and his discarded shirt.
Though shirtless, with muscles bunching all across his shoulders and back, there was nothing at all sexy about him at that moment. He tossed another paper towel aside, then swore as he tore more from the roll.
‘Seth?’ she called quietly.
He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t say anything. Everything about him warned her off, but she didn’t go. Instead, she perched in front of the window like a bird and waited for him to say something.
After a moment, after he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the wastebasket, he spoke.
‘That goddamn cat. When she brought it into the house, I told her I didn’t want it. It pissed on the bed and puked up bugs, but she wanted the little bastard. I wanted to give it away, but she wanted it and she always had to get her way, didn’t she?’
With angry, jerky movements, Seth picked up the paper towels all around the table and then slammed the garbage can down on the surface.
Her guts churning, April slipped inside. ‘What happened?’
‘What does it look like?’ he snapped, and swept his arms out. ‘I had a frigging glass of root beer on the table while I was sorting, and for no good reason that demon jumped on the table and went right for it. It was just a glass, but it went everywhere.’
He bent and picked up a picture. It had already begun to curl, and she could see the white back stained brown.
‘Oh…it’s not so bad.’ It was a lie. It was bad. As she drew closer, she could see that his pictures were a mess.
She bent down, but he gave the pile she reached for a shove with his toe.
‘Leave it. They’re ruined.’
‘Once they dry –’
‘Once they dry, they’ll still be ruined.’
He hadn’t looked at her yet, and as he stalked away his anger spread over her skin, as sticky and disgusting as the spilled soda clinging to his precious photos.
It was bad, she had to admit. Though she didn’t touch the photos, she stepped around them and had a good look. Just one glass of root beer? It looked like a bucket of the stuff had been splashed all over the place.
Still, they could be salvaged if they worked quickly.
When he didn’t return from the kitchen, she went to him and leaned in the doorway. Seth stood over the sink, head bowed and fingers white where he gripped the edge, the back of his neck crimson.
‘Let me go upstairs and get my blowdryer. It’s got a cold setting. It won’t take us long to –’
‘I don’t care. I’m just going to throw them all out.’
‘No, you can’t.’
She reached out for his shoulder, then jumped back as he spun and glared at her.
‘Yes, I can. I’m sick of looking at them. It was a stupid fucking idea to begin with.’
April knew she should keep her mouth shut, especially with him glaring at her with all that fury in his eyes, but she could also see the hurt there. She couldn’t bear to let him stand there and suffer.
‘You don’t mean that. You’ve been working really hard for so long.’
‘And I’m done,’ he hissed, thrusting his face close to hers. ‘No more pictures, no more computers and no more Rita.’
In the second before he stepped away and out of her sight, April caught the shine as the tears came.
Still leaning in the doorway, she watched him move past the table, stepping on the photos as he went. He dropped into his chair and glared at the floor.
‘I’m trying not to take it out on you,’ he growled. ‘You should go.’
‘I can’t just leave you like this.’
Sighing, he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. ‘Please don’t do this to me. I have to take it from everyone else, I don’t want or need to take it from you.’
‘Take what?’
‘Feeling sorry for me.’
‘I don’t feel sorry for you.’ She left the kitchen and, more carefully than he had, made her way across the mess to kneel in front of him. ‘I feel bad about what happened, but I’m not here because I pity you. I want to help.’
‘You can’t.’
He sounded so helpless she wanted to wrap her arms around him, but he was still taut, a caged animal about to strike. He lifted his head and looked at her, and April saw none of the patience and warmth she was accustomed to. There was only anger and frustration, and at the moment it was homed in on her.
‘You can’t help me. What are you going to do? Turn back time?’
‘We’ll lay them out to dry overnight, and in the morning we’ll use the camera on your phone to –’
‘I’m not talking about the pictures.’
She knew that. She knew it when he first said she couldn’t help him, but had hoped he would take what she could fix and that he’d feel better.
‘You should go back upstairs,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m not going to just leave you like this.’
‘I want you to go back upstairs. I don’t want you here right now.’
It was so hard not to take his harsh words personally. She wanted to offer him comfort and make the awful thing he felt go away, but it was like he had gone into a hard shell with barbs that stung when she tried to break through.
‘OK,’ she said quietly, and got to her feet. She paused, giving him a chance to change his mind, but he was radiating an unwelcoming aura.
At the window she looked back. His head bowed, he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and his shoulders and chest trembled as he took one quick breath after another.
It was the sight that followed her back upstairs. Hopping back into her living room, she felt out of body. Her head ached with the need to cry a little, but she couldn’t squeeze it out.
She didn’t know what to do for him, and so she went to the bedroom and tried to get his cat out from under the bed.
Wide green-yellow eyes stared back at her, uncaring as she wiggled her fingers.
‘Please come out,’ she said, and was alarmed by how small her voice sounded. ‘Please. It’ll be all right.’
The cat blinked and kept its tense pose, and April got up and sprawled across the bed.
She had the horrible feeling that it wasn’t going to be all right, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She had just stepped out of the shower when his text came.
Can I come up and apologise to your face?
Part of her wanted to say no, to punish him a little for snarling at her like he did, but as she thought about her last sight of him, with his face buried in his hands and his shoulders quaking, she decided that, if he could be the bigger man, she could open the window and let him in.
Sure. Be out in a second.
Dressing quickly in shorts and a tank, April shook out her damp hair and stepped into the living room just as he was coming through the window.
With flowers – pink ones she recogn
ised as the ones growing alongside the front of the building.
She laughed and shook her head. ‘Seriously?’
‘Liquor store is closed.’
They stood before one another in the centre of her living room. He looked sheepish and uncomfortable as he held out the little bouquet. ‘I’m really sorry, April.’
She took the flowers and lifted the blooms to her face. There wasn’t much of a smell, just enough perfume to tickle her nostrils.
‘Sit down, but get your cat out from under my bed first.’
‘He’s here?’
‘Yeah, though if that look he’s been giving me is any indication, he might claw your face off.’
She listened to him cooing at the cat as she put the flowers into water in a plastic cup.
This was, what, the third apology between them in the two weeks since they started up together? That wasn’t good. Not one bit. Even with his romantic gesture, she couldn’t shake the feeling that, no matter how bad they had it for one another, this could never work. He wasn’t ready, or she wasn’t strong enough to put up with such a broken, bullish man.
Yet when he came out of the bedroom with his cat cuddled into his neck, talking softly to him as he stroked his sticky fur while the cat purred like a refrigerator motor, she felt as motivated to punish him as Marco did.
He sat down and continued muttering to his pet as she returned and placed the flowers on the end table.
‘Not too long ago I was acting all high and mighty, dishing out tough love like some relationship guru,’ he said to her. ‘Now look at me. I’m the guy I’d be telling you to stay away from.’
‘You had a bad day,’ she replied, even though she knew that was minimising it.
His cynical laugh agreed with her.
‘If I’d just had a bad day, I’d go to bed smiling. April –’
‘Don’t.’ She twisted her fingers together as the dread moved slowly through her. ‘I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it.’
‘I’ve got to say it, or else I’m going to blow up at you again. This is no good the way it is, with me the way I am.’
She looked at the flowers – so simple and funny a gesture, but so sweet. They weren’t nearly as pretty as they were a few moments ago, now that they were no longer his apology, but a token of his breakup.
‘I’ve got to get my head straight. All this feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to end if I keep trying to ignore it.’
April’s stomach churned. It would be so much easier to swallow it if he gave her the same lame breakup reasons as the other losers who pulled the plug before she did, but he spoke from the heart. He wasn’t merely trying to escape.
She struggled with the knot that formed in the back of her throat. She wouldn’t cry over a man she had only known for a month, let alone in front of him.
‘That wasn’t all right what I did to you upstairs,’ he went on quietly. ‘I’m just going to keep bubbling and then blowing my top, and I don’t ever want to do it at you again.’
April cleared her throat. ‘You don’t have to keep explaining. I get it.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you.’
‘I’m –’
Not hurt? She wouldn’t even try and finish that sentence. Even if she couldn’t acknowledge that her heart was wounded, there would be no denying that her pride was being shredded. The anger gathering in her chest was putting up a fight to be let out.
‘You don’t need to explain anything to me. You said right from the start that you wanted to see where it goes. I guess this is it, isn’t it?’
She kept her gaze on the flowers as Seth stood and went to the window. She couldn’t believe he was just going to walk out, and when he simply put the cat out and closed the window, she was angry that he didn’t.
‘It’s not like that. I wasn’t in this for one thing.’
She didn’t want to hear it. She looked at him for the first time where he stood leaning on the other side of the sofa and somehow managed to keep a level gaze.
‘So how is this going to work?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, you’re my landlord. We have to see one another all the time.’
He appeared confused by her question at first, opening and closing his mouth a few times before shutting it altogether.
April had meant to sound petty and part of her was pleased by his discomfort. Though an irritating little voice chastised her for not being more understanding, she beat it back as her humiliation intensified.
‘I think we can work something out…if you don’t want to see me any longer.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not moving until my lease is up. I shouldn’t have to.’
‘I didn’t say you did. April, I don’t want to make this harder than it is.’
And that was it. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t crushed for another minute. She turned away as fat tears started to roll.
‘I get that you’ve got a lot to deal with, Seth. I really do, but this is a really shitty thing to do to me.’
‘I know, and it’s all on me. I’m not going to pull the “woe is me” card on you. I should have gotten my shit together before I started up with you, but I’ve got to be honest – I didn’t think being with you was going to hit me as hard as it did. April, honey, I haven’t felt this way since –’
‘Oh, please stop.’ Her back still to him, she rubbed her stinging eyes. ‘I don’t want to hear that while you’re dumping me.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t say anything. Just go back downstairs. Leave me alone.’
April remained taut and burning, praying he didn’t continue this torture. She hadn’t realised until that moment just how deeply she had come to feel for him. It had all been so easy and laid-back, hadn’t it? Nothing but laughter and great sex.
But there was this horrible ache, and she couldn’t handle it, and she wanted him to leave.
And leave he did, after a long silence. The window scraped and the fire escape rattled, and then she was alone and crying her eyes out, miserable in knowing that he was just one floor below and could probably hear her sobbing.
He showed no mercy to the cat as he held him by the scruff of the neck and rinsed the soap from his fur, but he still spoke to him in a soothing tone as he bathed him. After a quick rubdown with the towel, he let the animal go to exact revenge by soaking his pillow.
He was furious with himself. What had seemed like the right thing to do an hour ago when he was picking through the sticky mess on the dining-room floor now seemed like a shitty thing to do, a real dick move.
But he didn’t see any other way. He just wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready, and that hurt like hell.
Stupid.
Part of him had expected her to say, ‘Do what you need to do: I’ll wait.’ Some delusional part of him hadn’t really looked at what he was doing to her as it really was – breaking up with her – or realised that she’d take it as such.
He changed his shirt and went to his chair, and swivelled away from the sight of the mess on the dining-room table. He couldn’t bring himself to look up at that painting or engage that fucking voice in his head.
Wolfman – Seth, I’m gone. Get over me, already. I’m not coming back.
I’m not coming back.
She’s not coming back.
It was the first time the thought ran clear as a bell in his head. He wasn’t putting off moving on because it was hard, but because deep down he really believed that the day would come when he’d walk through the front door and Rita would be sitting there with her feet up, bingeing on the television while fucking around on her laptop.
He bowed his head and cried, really cried for the first time since the day she died.
His whole life was a mess and he had no one to blame but himself. He’d gotten himself into a fling with his closest friends, then pushed them away and claimed it was to save their relationship. He
turned to anonymous sex he never really wanted just so he could tell himself that he was doing something other than moping around. He’d thrown himself headfirst into a thing with April because he didn’t want to miss his chance with her, even though he knew damn well from the start that something was still off with him.
And he still didn’t know what to do about it.
He sobbed into his hand, guts twisted and chest feeling like it would cave in. More than missing Rita, more than hurting April, it was the helplessness of not knowing how to climb out of this deep abyss he’d been hiding in that crushed him.
When there was nothing left to come out, his eyes ached and he felt nauseous, he smoked three cigarettes in a row and thought about crushing what was left in the pack into the toilet, but instead tucked them into his front pocket and went for his keys.
Once behind the wheel of his truck, Seth pulled out his phone and brought up the texting app.
He messaged Ryan.
Can we meet in 30 mins? Need to talk. Don’t tell Evie.
As he pulled away from the front of the building, he couldn’t help but glance up at the fire escape and straight to April’s window.
Seth couldn’t shake the picture of her with her back to him, long hair spilling down to her waist and her shoulders shuddering as she cried.
He shook his head and turned onto the main street that would take him to Ryan’s neighbourhood. He couldn’t think about that right now. He needed help, and she couldn’t give it to him any more than he could help make what he did any less brutal.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Get up, dickhead,’ Ryan demanded, then punched Seth in the shoulder.
Ryan was a lightweight and the punch was merely annoying, and Seth endured three more before he punched back, and as the other man groaned Seth rolled over to face the back of the sofa.
‘Look, I didn’t spend three hours sweating my ass off in your car listening to how you wanted to turn things around only to have you turn into a mould spore five days later. Get up!’
Ryan hip-checked the sofa. It didn’t move, but when he did it a second and a third time, Seth was annoyed enough to sit up.
