“You want to hold him?”
Sitting up, I meet her gaze. She lifts him off her chest, hands cradling his tiny body as she waits for me to take him.
I love my siblings and I’ll always love the children my siblings bring into this world. I can appreciate a drooly smile or a little baby fedora or one of those pacifiers with the mustaches on them because they’re freaking hilarious, but as far as actually holding them? That’s so not my department.
But he’s my godson.
And this moment is absolutely priceless.
I suck in a deep breath and slide my arms beneath his swaddled blanket. Cradling him against my chest, my heart races.
“God, I love him.” I lean closer, nuzzling my nose against the tufts of fluffy dark hair that covers his tiny head. “He couldn’t be any more perfect, Delilah. I mean that.”
I want to stay in this moment for as long as possible, basking in the warm fullness that radiates from my chest. He begins to fuss a little, though his eyes remain closed tight. His cry is squeaky, and he reminds me of a fuzzy little mouse. His mouth opens as he yawns, and his tongue peeks out just a tad.
“That was adorable. Where’s Zane? He totally missed a Kodak moment here.” I hand my nephew back to my sister, and he immediately melts into her arms, no longer crying. It’s like he knows she’s his mother, and something about that sends an unexpected twinge to my ovaries and a strange tightness to my chest.
For a flicker of a second, I imagine what I might be like as a mother. I can only hope I’m half as natural as my sister.
“Knock, knock.” A man’s voice pulls my attention toward the doorway.
The first thing I see is a giant bouquet of flowers.
The second thing I see is a shiny Mylar balloon attached that reads, “IT’S A BOY!”
The third thing I see is Weston.
19
Cristiano
“You bring my suit?” I ask Fabrizio as we cross into Jersey.
“Yeah, it’s in the back,” he says, pointing. “We have to be at the church by three. We’re going to be cutting it close since you had to bid farewell to your new girlfriend and all. I suggest you change in the car.”
Unfastening my seatbelt, I grab the garment bag draped over the backseat and start suiting up.
“You’ve been quiet,” Fab says, giving me side eye. “Something happen with that girl?”
I don’t answer.
“Or is this about Joey’s wedding?”
I still don’t answer.
“Look, everyone’s going to be there,” my brother says. “You’re going to have to put on a happy face whether you want to or not. You knew Joey’d be the first of us to get married. It’s not the end of the world. The end of an era maybe, but not the end of the world.”
It’s the end of an era all right. And maybe even the beginning of something else entirely, though I can’t be sure. Everything feels oddly . . . up in the air at this point.
“You not going to talk?” Fabrizio chuffs, hands gripped on the wheel as he changes lanes. “Fine. Whatever. Suit up though. I’m responsible for getting you to that church, but whatever happens after that is all you.”
20
Daphne
“Can I ask you a question?” Weston takes a sip from his Styrofoam coffee cup as we sit at a corner table in the hospital cafeteria. After an awkward-as-hell hello in Delilah’s recovery suite and Delilah’s nurse needing to tend to a few private matters with my sister, Weston insisted we give her some space and some time to rest and bond with the baby before she’s flooded with visitors again.
“Of course.” I sit up tall, eyes fixed on his light blue gaze, finding myself wishing I was sitting across from Cristiano right now.
Months ago, I’d be foaming at the mouth in Weston’s presence. Drooling over the way he’s grown out his sandy blond locks or the way his shoulders fill out his navy blue polo, his muscles strained beneath the dry fit fabric. I’d be fantasizing about his jaw and the mouth he never quite could keep to himself whenever I was around. There would be hearts in my eyes, clouding up my vision and good judgment.
I haven’t seen him in well over a year, and even six months ago, I was still having doubts as to whether or not I’d ever be as happy with someone new as I was with him.
But something has changed. There’s been a shift. I’m not sure when it happened, but I don’t feel the way I thought I’d feel right now.
Looking at Weston, I’m hit with a flood of memories. They come crashing down on me all at once. The night we met in Miami at that awful club. Walking the streets listening to Cuban music. Staying up all night talking. Exchanging numbers. Flying across the country to visit each other. Lying in his arms in bed, breathing him in and wondering how it was possible life existed before him.
And then the rest of the memories follow . . .
Catching him flipping through a scrapbook his ex had made while he was cleaning out one of his spare rooms. Finding a text from her on his phone. He didn’t respond to it, but she was definitely trying to make a connection with him again, and the shift in his mood during the weeks that followed was undeniable.
That’s when I knew.
He wanted to love me. He tried to love me.
But he was still in love with her.
“Why haven’t you taken my calls?” he asks, his voice his signature shade of Weston-calm.
My jaw hangs. I’m not sure how to answer that. Normally when a person avoids another person’s calls, they’re able to avoid them in real life too. All those times I sent his calls to voicemail, I was never imagining what my explanation would be should he ask for one.
“I thought,” he says, pausing and exhaling hard through his nose, “when we ended things, that we were going to be friends. I know that’s a thing that people say to people when they don’t want to be with them anymore and they’re trying to be nice, but I thought we were different. I thought you meant what you said. I know I did.”
“Oh. Um.” I take a sip of coffee, my toes tapping under the table as I fidget in my seat. “I meant it. At first. And then I came home and I thought it might be easier, for both of us, if we weren’t friends. You were with Elle, and I didn’t think it’d be respectful if I was still in the picture.”
“She wouldn’t have minded. I mean, we’re over now. It’s done. For good this time. But she wasn’t like that.”
“And maybe a part of me wanted to avoid talking to you because it was a reminder of what we had, and what we lost, and I didn’t want to know if you were happy with her because it would hurt too bad. It would only serve as a reminder that you weren’t nearly as happy with me.” My gaze flicks to a cardboard soup menu resting between us, nestled next to a salt-and-pepper shaker. “Maybe that makes me sound selfish, I don’t know. But my radio silence was never about you. I want you to know that.”
He gives me a bittersweet, closed-mouth smile, his gentle crystalline eyes trained on me. “I think about you all the time, Daphne. I never really stopped. Probably annoyed the hell out of Delilah, always asking questions about you. She probably told you.”
I shake my head, amazed that my sister actually listened to me for once when I told her not to so much as breathe his name around me that first year. “She never said anything. She was kind of under strict orders not to.”
He rakes his teeth along his bottom lip before smiling wide. But it isn’t a happy smile. There’s sadness in his eyes. Regret. Longing.
“I really hurt you, didn’t I?” He squints across the table.
Looking away, I inhale sharply. “Yeah. You did. But I know you didn’t mean to.”
His hand rests on the edge of the table, his fingers twitching. I think he wants to reach out to me, cover my hand with his, but something keeps him from making the move. It’s probably a good thing because despite the forty-year-flood of emotions happening in this depressing, gray-scale hospital cafeteria, I find myself wondering what Cristiano’s doing right now . . .
&nb
sp; . . . and why it’s so easy to sit here with Weston and not want to jump into his arms and start all over again, because something tells me that’s where this conversation is headed. He wants to start over again. To make it work. And for the first time in over a year, the idea of being with him holds zero appeal. It’s like my longing for Weston dissipated, fading into thin air practically overnight.
“God, it’s good to see you, Daphne,” he says. It feels good to hear him say that, but it doesn’t change how I feel. “You have no idea.”
Checking the time on my phone, I rise, cutting this conversation short before it grows wings and flies to heights much too dangerous.
“It’s been a long day,” I say, wincing apologetically. “I’m going to head home and rest for a bit. Tell my sister I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
I don’t give him a chance to respond; I simply turn and leave.
21
Cristiano
“She’s in there.” Joey’s mom straightens my tie outside a Sunday school classroom at the church, her lips pulled up in one corner and eyes misty. She smells exactly the way I remember: Charlie perfume, aerosol hairspray, and menthol cigarettes. “You look very handsome, Cris.”
“Is she nervous?” I ask.
Her mom swats her hand in front of her face. “Not my Joey. You know how she is. She was at first, but she’s been all smiles today. Only thing she was worried about was whether or not you’d make it here in time to give her away.”
Connie runs her hand down my lapel and gives me a misty-eyed smile before walking off, her shimmering blue dress swaying with each step.
Rapping on the door, I take a deep breath and wait.
“Come in,” she calls.
Pushing the door open, I’m smacked in the face with a little bit of everything all at once.
Confusion.
Guilt.
Regret.
Subjection to the inevitable and that which I have zero control over.
But she’s my best friend and she has been for almost two decades, and I’ll be damned if I’m not happy for her on her big day. It’s not about me. I’ll swallow my pride. I’ll stuff these emotions deep down, where they belong, and I’ll put on a good face.
I almost missed this day; I’ll be damned if I ruin it.
“Don’t look at me like that, you’re making me nervous.” She offers an uneasy laugh, reaching for a dark tendril and twisting it around her fingers. “Do I look ridiculous with all this makeup? Please tell me I don’t. You know how I am. I don’t think I own a tube of Chapstick, and now I’m all glammed up. Feels weird.”
Joey’s a tomboy through and through. Always has been. It’s how she got mixed in with our group growing up. Granted, she lived in our neighborhood, but she was also into riding bikes and playing baseball and video games while all the other girls on the block would’ve preferred to braid each other’s hair and aimlessly page through Seventeen magazine.
“Nah,” I say. “You look beautiful.”
And I mean it. She looks gorgeous. I don’t know what she did different. I know she’s wearing makeup and her hair is curly or wavy or some shit. It’s long, dripping down her shoulders, and there is some kind of crystal and pearl crown sitting on the top of her head. She looks like a princess.
“You sure? You know you can tell me the truth,” she says. “I’d rather hear it from you than anyone else. If you think I look ridiculous, I’ll wash it all off right now.”
“Nah.” I take a seat on the edge of a table beside her. Her bouquet of red roses rests next to me. “Leave it. You look like a million bucks, Jo. Honest.”
She smiles, exhaling as if she’s releasing tension. “I’m so glad you made it. I was worried for a while. I shouldn’t have let you go out of town the week before my wedding.”
“Like you could’ve stopped me.” I toss her a wink, arms folded across my chest.
Joey rolls her dark eyes. “Right. You always were my rolling stone. God forbid you gather a little bit of moss every once in a while.”
There’s a palpable silence that lingers between us for a moment, and her smile fades.
“I wish you’d come home more,” she says. “We miss you. It’s not the same going from seeing you every single day to seeing you a couple of times a year.”
Pulling in a deep breath, I glance up at the ceiling tiles, unsure of what to say. The truth lingers on my tongue, though I have zero intention of speaking it.
“Sometimes I think you left because of me.” Her voice is lower now, and when I look her way, I see fingers fidgeting in her lap as her gaze is focused on them. “Sometimes I think a lot of what you do is because of me.”
“Joey.”
“Cris,” she cuts me off. “You weren’t the only one whose life changed forever that night.”
Her bottom lip trembles. I can’t have her crying on her wedding day because of this.
Because of me.
“You have to stop blaming yourself . . .” she says, pulling in a long breath and looking to the side. “And you have to stop running when things get hard. You act like you’re this world traveler guy, but I know you, Cris, and I know you’re just running. I know you don’t come home because it’s hard for you to see me.”
“Come on. Not today. We’re not having this conversation on your wedding day, Jo.”
“No.” Her voice booms and her eyes flick into mine. “We have to have this conversation because we have to move on from that night. We both do.”
Blowing a tight breath past my lips, I fold my arms snug across my chest and give her my full attention.
“All right,” I say. “Go ahead. Let me have it.”
“I know you don’t like Trent,” she says, clasping her hand across her heart. “But he loves me, Cris. He loves me so much. He’s the love of my life, and he loves me exactly the way I am. He knows what he’s signing up for with me. And I know that’s hard for you to hear because you’ve always felt like you were supposed to be the one to take care of me, but Trent loves me in a way that you can’t. Not because you don’t want to, but you know, I’m like a sister to you. You’re like my annoying big brother. It’d be really frickin’ weird. You remember that time we kissed, right? In tenth grade? It was disgusting.”
I crack a hint of a smile, though it disappears in a flash. It’s true. I don’t like Trent. He lived in his mom’s basement until he was thirty. He manages a video game store. And from the outside looking in, I get the impression he has zero motivation in life to ever leave Jersey or make something of himself.
But fuck if he doesn’t make Joey happy.
And he’s loyal as hell.
He loves her, and he loves her exactly the way she is.
“At some point, you have to stop blaming yourself,” she says, reaching for my hand and slipping hers into it. “I’m sure we’d both like to go back three years and make different decisions, but we can’t. We went on that spur of the moment road trip, you fell asleep at the wheel and hit that guardrail. You walked away with hardly a scratch and I . . .”
She glances down at her lap.
“It was my turn to drive,” she continues. “You were tired, and I was tired, and I asked you to drive just a little bit longer, and you agreed because that’s the kind of person you are, Cris. You’re selfless. You did it for me.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.
“I don’t blame you,” she says. “You’re still my best friend, and I still love you, and it hurts so damn bad to see the way you look at me now and to know you avoid coming home because it means you’ll have to see me and it means you’ll be reliving that night all over again.”
Letting my hand fall to my side, I look her in the eye. “You’re right. I hate seeing what I did to you. And sometimes I fly halfway across the world just to try and forget it. And when I heard you were getting married, a part of me felt like an even bigger piece of shit, because I’d always vowed to be the one to take care of you.”
My chest burns the way it did the summer we both turned thirteen and the weightlessness of childhood faded without warning. Her dad had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer the day after school let out. And the night before he took his last breath, he’d asked to see me. Mom sent me over with a casserole for Connie, and I was startled when I walked in and saw Joey’s dad sitting at the kitchen table. He was bald and frail and pale, and he was wrapped in a thick blue robe, but he was smiling as if nothing was wrong. There was something lighter about him that night, as if he knew it was his time. He called me to the table and asked me to take a seat.
That night he asked me to promise to always take care of his Joey.
“I don’t blame you, Cristiano. So can you please stop blaming yourself? And can you please be happy for me? Because I’m so happy and in love. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I promise. And for the love of God, will you please push me down the aisle now?” Her face lights the way it does when she thinks about Trent.
“Yeah,” I say, standing tall and moving to the back of her wheelchair, letting the burn in my chest fade to a soft fullness. “I’ll push you down the aisle now.”
22
Daphne
Crawling under the covers of my childhood bed, I clutch my phone and peer through tired eyes at the bright screen in the dark. I left the hospital an hour ago, stopped for a late dinner with my parents at a local diner, and patiently bided my time until I could be alone with my thoughts again, and exactly as I predicted, they seem to be fixed on one thing.
Pulling up Facebook, I type in the name Cristiano Amato.
I want to see his pictures. I want to know more about him. I want to pull back the curtain and peek into his life one snapshot and status update at a time.
Cold Hearted Page 39
