Without Warning (Capparelli & Co. Book 1)

by Dee Lagasse

  Oh, my dad. My sweet, overprotective father. He’s another one I should probably call. He’s another one that is going to lose his fucking mind when he finds out. My dad, my brother, my cousins, my uncles. Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  There are times being part of a large, crazy Italian family has its perks. Like, every Sunday when we get together for dinner at my Nonna and Nonno’s house. To say that there will never be a lack of love in my life is an understatement, to say the very least. But, because of that, this situation I’m in won’t just go away on its own.

  A pulsating vibration from my phone, signaling an incoming call, brings me back to the present. A rage that could give a certain green superhero a run for his money fills me, but I fight the urge to “Hollis Smash” my phone. Slamming my fingers on the red decline button, I hope I can block the number before a voicemail comes through. Before I can get to the block option, three texts in a row come up on my screen.

  One: Call Me!!!!!!!!!!

  Two: Hollis, it's not what you think.

  Three: Baby, please, please, please call me before you talk to Chase and Davis and the rest of your family.

  A full belly laugh leaves me knowing thirty-two-year-old, big shot marketing executive Noah McDougal is worried right now. Serves him right. Douche. Picturing him stressing about the possible repercussions of me telling my twin and my best friend that he's a complete scum bag gives me more pleasure than it probably should.

  It doesn’t matter that I went there to break up with him. It’s what I found when I went to his office, unannounced. It doesn’t help matters that Davis and Chase both tried warning me about Noah from the get-go. All it took was a quick scroll through his ex-girlfriend’s social media to find out that Noah had cheated on his ex… more than a few times.

  Given Noah’s history, I might have listened to Davis (probably not) based on the merit of brotherly intuition. Chase, on the other hand, has found an excuse to not like any guy I’ve ever shown any kind of interest in since I was sixteen. So, I brushed it off. Like every woman who thinks they can be the reason a guy changes, I thought it was different with me and Noah. Joke's on me, I guess.

  My fingers fly over the keyboard, furiously typing out directions on going directly to hell in response to his texts and hover over the little blue arrow to press send. Instead of sending it though, I backspace and block the number. He cheats on me and thinks I'm going to take anything he has to say into consideration?! I might have missed a page or two in the “how relationships work” handbook, but I'm pretty sure that's not how this works.

  Now that I’ve temporarily handled Noah, it’s time to focus on what really matters. Music. Giving this comeback a solid soundtrack and finding an outfit for tonight, that’s what I need to focus on right now. Over the next ten minutes, I flip through the double stacked black milk crates that line the wall of my bedroom. Finally settling on Dropkick Murphys’ The Warrior’s Code.

  If there’s anything I’m certain of, it’s that a girl’s favorite band can fix just about anything. And, just like some form of voodoo magic, the bagpipe and piano introduction to “Your Spirit’s Alive” hype me up. By the time the fast-pace of the guitar starts up on “The Warrior’s Code,” I’ve almost forgotten about What’s-His-Face.

  With a little too much gusto, I open my closet door. The doorknob slams into the wall behind it, leaving a small indentation in the paint. Sliding a dozen shirts on hangers to the opposite side of the closet, nothing jumps out at me. Come to think of it, I should probably wait to hear back from Kinley to figure out where we’re going to end up tonight. I wouldn’t want to be overdressed or underdressed. Despite my original idea to go all out, I find myself hoping we end up somewhere that ripped jeans and Converse are acceptable.

  The bright red digital numbers on the alarm clock sitting on the wooden whiskey barrel used as my nightstand read 4:47PM. Which means, in the real world, it's only 4:27PM. The love/hate relationship I have with the snooze button requires setting my clock twenty minutes fast. Over time I thought I might adjust and not need the snooze button, but the only thing my groggy ass is thinking about at 4:30 in the morning is getting a coffee in before my brother comes strolling in at five for our daily morning run. Sister or not, Hell hath no fury like a retired Marine waiting on your ass when they’re motivated.

  Only a half hour stands between the current calm and the impending phone call from Kinley, freaking out, needing every little detail leading up to the text I sent. Not that I blame her. If I got a text from one of my oldest friends like the one I sent her a little while ago, I would call her back freaking out.

  Taking the vinyl off my record player, I put it back in its sleeve and scroll through my phone’s music library until I find Devin Dawson’s “All On Me” single. Not everyone can go from Celtic punk rock to California country, but my love for good music knows no prejudice. With every song that plays, I feel myself relax a little more, sending me crashing from the adrenaline high I’ve been on.

  After convincing myself I’ll only lay down for five minutes, I let my body fall onto the queen size bed. As the memory foam molds to fit me, spending the night at home, specifically here, in this bed, hidden from the rest of the world starts to sound like a solid plan. The lavender scent heavy on my recently washed bedding sends a soothing wave over me as my head hits one of the twelve decorative throw pillows taking up half my bed.

  I'm not sure what the point of having a dozen decorative pillows on your bed is, but my grandparents insisted on buying every brown and tan pillow they could find when I moved back home after college. The second I told my dad I was coming back to Abbott Hills, everyone in my family stopped what they were doing and got ready for me to come home. And, while I know that might make me sound self-important and spoiled, that’s just how my family is. It’s not just me.

  Four years of an empty house had been more than enough for my dad, and me being hours away had been more than enough for the rest of my family. Before I even had the chance to look for a place of my own, my dad and my uncles renovated the entire basement of his house into a little in-law apartment for me. I told him over and over that I would have been more than happy to take my old bedroom on the first floor, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  My aunts and cousins chose paints and decorated. Both sets of my grandparents furnished everything. I came home needing to do nothing. At first, I had been resistant to move back home, back to all the Capparelli craziness, but now, the thought of leaving the comfort of my own little corner gives me anxiety.

  It’s why after two years together with Noah, I never once pushed moving in together. It makes sense now why he didn’t either, but even if he had, I wasn’t ready to give up having my own space. That alone should have been a clear indication that being with Noah wouldn’t last forever.

  I loved him, especially in the beginning. But, I never needed him. It was fun, we were fun together, but our relationship was never all consuming. And all it took was the security of putting a diamond on my finger for Noah to feel he didn't need to be as present.

  The first year was an amazing whirlwind of fun. We met at a private charity event hosted at Capparelli & Co. just over two years ago. As a bartender, the weekend singer, and granddaughter of restaurant owners, I was working. That night I was on entertainment detail. It was just me and my guitar, singing an acoustic set on the second-floor lounge area of the restaurant. At the end of my set, he asked to buy me a drink, which led to him asking for my number. A week later, we went on our first date.

  We spent weekends in New York City, San Francisco, Dallas, and Las Vegas while he met with clients…and that was just the work trips. We spent my birthday weekend on Martha’s Vineyard, his in Myrtle Beach. He proposed to me in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World, a trip we took for our “one year” anniversary. No sooner did our plane land back in New Hampshire—without any sound reasoning, at least not any I can make sense of—he started with the excuses.

  He always had some
reason why I couldn’t come with him anymore. Not that I had ever asked to go in the first place. It was his job. He was working, and I understood that. I never got mad at him for working. I got mad because he was lying. After going on multiple trips with him, I knew he didn’t spend four or five days holed up in a conference room negotiating deals. He spent the first day and maybe some of the second working, while the rest of the trip was used to explore and have fun. More so if he and his partner managed to secure the contract they were trying to score.

  The final push that sent me over the slippery slope that began the end of “Hollis and Noah, the super happy couple” happened eight months ago, only four months after he proposed. When my grandmother invited me, my aunt, and my cousin Ellis on a “girls’ trip” to Italy for her sister’s birthday, there was no hesitation in my decision to go. Giving him a month’s notice, I texted Noah letting him know I would be out of the country for a week.

  And, he lost his damn mind. It started with three phone calls, being hung up on each time. Then, him blowing me off for dinner the next night. When we finally saw each other face-to-face about a week after, he ended up leaving the restaurant before appetizers were even served because I refused to change my plans. He had the audacity to say that he was upset I didn’t “check” with him, when so often the only way I found out he was going out of the state was an email with a forwarded travel itinerary.

  In hindsight, I should have just ended it right then and there. There was no coming back from that. I went to Italy with my family and didn’t speak to him once while I was gone. When I let him know I was back, after two weeks of not speaking to each other, it took him three days to even answer my text.

  But, it’s not like I didn’t at least try to fix things. When I came home from my Italy trip, I tried to make lunch plans, dinner plans, plans during the week, and on the weekend. It didn’t matter when, there was always an excuse and usually a personal dig thrown in for good measure.

  “I know you don’t understand, but some of us don’t have a father that lets us live in their basement and grandparents that just hand us a job right out college, Hollis.”

  “We can’t all just work for only four hours in the morning.”

  At first, I would defend myself. But after a while, his words just became incoherent babble to me. From that point, instead of growing together, we grew separately, as individuals. The more time that passed, the further we drifted from each other and the stronger I felt without him.

  He didn't understand how I could be happy using my business degree “just” to talk on the radio and why I wasted so much time handling the social media platforms, the website, and answering the e-mails for my 85-year-old grandparents that owned Capparelli & Co. He looked at my Friday night of bartending and my Saturday night acoustic gig as a hobby. I had spent so much of our relationship trying to justify my career and my passion to him, and the more time we spent apart, the more I realized I shouldn’t need to.

  It was cool for me to get him and his friends front row and backstage at concerts, but when I did a radio promotion at a sports bar or a business opening, I was just “out flirting with everyone.” It didn’t matter that I worked six, sometimes seven days a week. Or, that I put in more hours and made more money than him. No matter how much I did, nothing was good enough or considered a real job to the lead marketing strategist at Brady Branding.

  Eventually, I stopped going out of my way to plan something, anything, with or for him. Instead, I just worked. A lot. (Go figure.) Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into a month. Out of the blue, he would ask me to meet him for lunch, never dinner. Each time, I went, bracing myself, expecting, and if I’m being honest, hoping for the break-up, but it never came.

  Today had been three weeks since we had seen each other and that wasn't out of the ordinary for us. You would think that the space and time apart would give us more to talk about, but the last lunch it had been a stretch to exchange small talk and simple, casual conversation. There was nothing of substance or meaning anymore. It was just a lunch of bottomless margaritas and empty conversation.

  Never mind the fact that I hadn’t had sex in six months. Half a fucking year. Being given the impression that he was a workaholic, I assumed he was just too busy with work to care about not getting anything from me. And I didn’t need the attention from anyone else.

  Beyond the lack of everything substantial needed to make a relationship last, my family hates him. When I say “hate,” I don’t just mean that they strongly dislike him. I mean the very rare presence of him makes everyone around me turn into different people. My warm, loving, embracing family becomes cold and rigid.

  Noah’s adamant refusal to come to my family’s Sunday dinner, when it was the only day, every week, we could have certainly seen each other spoke volumes to them. I tried for a long time to make excuses for him. At first, in hopes things would get better, and then eventually just because I didn’t want to get lectured about wasting my time. Because what rebuttal would I have? I knew it was true. There was no reason why I didn’t end things with him. I just didn’t.

  My family was “too loud” and “gave him anxiety.” How he intended to spend the rest of his life with me and avoid Sunday dinners at Nonna and Nonno’s baffled me. But, like everything else, he had an excuse.

  “I asked to marry you, not your entire family, Hollis.”

  He made the mistake of saying that after I very specifically asked him to come to dinner because it was my grandfather’s birthday…with both Davis and Chase in the room with us.

  Noah had called me on a whim, asking me to go to lunch. Anticipating a break-up, I called Chase and asked if he wanted my ticket for the matinee Red Sox game Davis and I had planned on going to later that afternoon. Chase got to the house forty-five minutes later and somehow, he and Davis had convinced my dad to drop them off at the train station, taking “the T” into Boston instead of driving. They were both three beers in when Noah came strolling in, a half hour later than he’d said he would be there.

  My brother kept it as nice as possible by only calling him a “fucking idiot,” but Chase burst out laughing. I’m talking big, loud, holding-your-stomach-because-it-hurts uncontrollable laughter. Taking the bait, Noah asked him what was so funny and I braced myself, knowing the conversation was about to take a turn for the worse.

  Sure enough, without skipping a beat, Chase reminded him that if you “marry a Capparelli girl, you do in fact, marry the whole family.”

  That might have been the end of it, but Chase had to go and add, “What do you seriously think is going to happen, buddy? Do you think you’re gonna marry her and she’s going to stop being a Capparelli? HA! I’m just the best friend though, so what do I know? I’m just there every Sunday and every single fucking time you decide Hollis isn’t worth your time.”

  The wink in my direction that followed his tangent was the nail in the coffin, closing any chance of Noah and Chase ever getting along. The fight that came next from Noah’s, “Maybe you should marry her then, dickhead,” response was one of epic proportion. I ended up calling them both assholes and storming off. Grabbing my extra set of keys from the hook hanging by the front door, I made damn sure to slam the door behind me.

  Without looking back to see if anyone was following me, I got in my Jeep, stopped for an iced coffee and then drove around aimlessly for hours. Over the blasting music, I couldn’t hear the constant vibration of my phone sitting next to me in the passenger seat. It wasn’t until my gas light came on one-hundred-sixty miles from home in Augusta, Maine, did I realize exactly how far I’d driven and how long I had been gone. At the first sign of gas, I pulled off the highway to look for a gas station and possibly a coffee shop to give me a boost for the ride home.

  While I was pumping the gas, I finally checked my phone. The only people that texted or called me were my dad, my brother, and Chase. All of them worried because I hadn’t been heard from in three hours and was nowhere to be found. I was about to group
text them all letting them know I would be home in a few hours, when I looked over and saw the cutest little bed and breakfast across the street.

  So, instead of going home, I checked myself in for the night. It was only early evening and on a whim, I decided instead of coffee to get home, I was now on a mission to find some lighthouses and eat some lobster. Because when in Maine, what else do you do? If my boyfriend wouldn’t take me out on a date, I’d take my damn self.

  Or so I thought. By the time I texted my dad, Davis, and Chase to let them know I was okay and planned on staying put for the night, Chase and Davis were on the way home from the baseball game. Chase persistently asked where exactly I was, to the point that I knew if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t leave me alone all night. Once he got an answer from me, he made me promise not to go eat anything until he got there.

  I had stared at my phone for ten minutes, making sure I read his text correctly before answering him. Sure enough, three hours and twenty-eight minutes later, Chase showed up with a bag of full of my pajamas, my toothbrush, face wash, and a change of clothes for tomorrow in one hand and a bouquet of sunflowers in the other.

  He apologized in the form of lobster rolls and hand-churned blueberry ice cream. After dinner he started to say his goodbyes, but I asked him if he wanted to stay and go lighthouse hunting the next day. He rented the room next to mine, which was never used because we both fell asleep watching a movie.

  The next morning, I woke up to coffee, blueberry muffins, and a note saying he went to go buy a change of clothes. He didn’t even a bring a change of clothes when he came up. All that mattered to him was making sure I knew he was sorry. I didn’t hear from Noah for a week.