by Stella Rhys
“Why not?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. I think subconsciously, I just like to stay close to home. There’s never a moment where I don’t feel like I should be working.”
I remembered the feeling. “It gets that way when you start your own company. The beginning is always the worst.”
“Oh God, yes,” she said, her smile gleaming at the server who presented a menu. “It got so much worse when I went full-time. I mean my apartment doubles as my office so it never really feels like I’m off. It always feels like I’m supposed to be doing something,” she sighed, though her smile remained as she studied the menu. Leaning back, I watched her. She had her pointy chin perched in her hand, her finger running lightly down the paper as she read each dish to herself in a little murmur.
“I remember that,” I said finally. “What did you do before you went full-time?”
“Waitressed. It was the only real job experience I had so that’s what I went with when I got here.”
“Where are you from?”
Lia peered up. “Oh. Lukas.” She smiled. “Are we doing the classic getting-to-know-you-dance? Just to remind you, this isn’t a real date so you don’t have to act all interested in my life.”
“I genuinely am but thanks for the out. I’ll use it if I feel the need. In the meantime, where are you from?”
She gave the obligatory eye roll but I got a small laugh out of her. “Upstate New York,” she answered. “Tiny town called Warren,” she added with a face.
“I take it you didn’t like it there.”
“Loved the town. Hated the memories I left with.” Lia avoided my gaze as she went suddenly from the menu to the wine list. “Breakups and such,” she muttered. “Well – breakup. Singular. It was only one jerk the whole time I was there. I left literally the day I broke up with him.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“Two-and-a-half years ago.”
I raised a curious eyebrow. “So you stopped having sex with your boyfriend six months before breaking up.”
Her eyes shot up at me. “What are you, Sherlock Holmes?”
“It was basic math, but sure.”
She squinted for several moments but with a snort and a shrug, she said, “Fuck it – yes. We went at least six months without sex towards the end. His choice.”
I choked on my water. “I can’t even fucking fathom that.”
“Well… fathom it.”
“Was he sexually interested in women?”
Lia gave a dry laugh. “Oh, he was interested in women. He just preferred to watch porn and jerk off because that didn’t require thinking about another person’s pleasure.”
Christ, what an asshole. I could’ve come last night just from listening to Lia orgasm, so I had genuine trouble picturing a man who wouldn’t want to hear that sound as much as humanly possible. “Damn,” I finally said.
“I know. Shall we change the subject?”
“No, I’d like to know more about this boyfriend. There had to be a reason you stayed with him for however long you did.”
“There was. And I’ll tell you all about it if you tell me about Cam.” Lia cocked a daring eyebrow. Fuck me, the last thing I wanted to talk about was Cam but the sexy look she gave me somehow won me over so I played it off and gave a shrug.
“Fine,” I agreed.
“Shall we order wine first?”
“Absolutely.”
I went with a bottle of Bordeaux and the tasting menu, letting Lia hold off on her story as we waited on the wine. She was bouncing with the need to check out the big painting hanging on the back wall so I wound up watching with amusement as she failed to contain herself, eventually getting up and weaving through the tables to go get a look.
I obviously enjoyed the view but I wasn’t exactly pleased with the other eyes that followed me in gazing at Lia’s backside. I rarely had the energy to care about other men eyeing my date but something was different tonight. I couldn’t help feeling protective as she abandoned her usual caution to admire a simple painting. Jesus. She really nailed that whole sexy-but-cute thing. Even from the back, I could see her sense of wonder while soaking in every inch of the canvas, the same way I was so damned eager to do with her body. I had to smile her entire scurry back to the table.
“Sorry, sorry!” she whispered, slipping back into her seat. “It’s just so beautiful. I had to study it hard to take a proper mental picture.”
“Why didn’t you just use your phone?”
She looked up with surprise. “I thought I would embarrass you.”
I laughed. “You would have but I’d let you. Tell me what was so captivating about that painting for you.”
“I don’t know.” Her dreamy voice drifted off somewhere. “The colors. And patterns. It reminded me of pictures I grew up seeing of the food markets in Spain. And I sell more hand painted truffles than anything so I like to take inspiration here and there.”
I nodded at the bottle the waiter came to present, doing a quick taste and approval before returning my attention to Lia. “You’ve been to Spain?”
“No. I haven’t been anywhere outside the U.S,” she answered. There was a hint of bitterness mixed in the regret of her voice. “I want to though. Barcelona, in particular. I tend to gravitate so much toward Spanish flavors when I’m making chocolate.”
“Why’s that?”
“Ah.” She winced and touched the back of her neck. “I guess… this is a good transition into talking about Ritchie.”
“The one and only ex?”
“Mm-hm.” She peered up at me as if anticipating a reaction for what she was about to say. “I met him when I was fifteen. I was with him for ten years.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know. And yes, there were reasons I stayed. The wrong ones, I’m sure but they felt right at the time.” Lia stared at the wine that she swirled in her glass. Wrinkling her nose, she looked up at me. “You’re sure you wanna hear about this?” she double-checked with a laugh. “It’s not at all interesting. It’s just how I… got to be the way that I am.”
“Then it’s interesting,” I said. “Tell me.”
She took a sip of her wine, letting out a pleasured little hum into the glass. “Well,” she started slowly, drawing out the word as if buying herself time. “We met in high school. He was new and I had a crush from day one so my friends pushed it. We started dating out of nowhere and it was a normal, healthy high school relationship until probably a year later.” She paused. “When my mom died. Of a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” I frowned hard. “You don’t have to go on.”
“It’s okay. I can,” she said lightly, though she took her time to. The first course came and she took a bite before going on. “It’s been almost ten years, so I can talk about it now. Not sure about my dad though. He never really got back on his feet after she went and Ritchie’s mom loved me like a daughter from the start. She was always cooking fancy dinners for me and I was always at their place, so it was kind of a natural transition for me to live there. At least it felt that way. It was just my normal.” She looked up at me. “I’m sure it sounds weird to you though, right?”
“No.” I studied the warm glow on her face from the candlelight. “I had my own normal too. And it wasn’t.”
“Normal?”
“Nowhere near.”
“Oh.” Her mouth parted like she wanted to ask me about it but she stopped herself. “Anyway.” She pushed her hair back and blinked back down at her wine. “Ritchie’s mom, Gail, basically raised me. Her husband left her many, many years ago – way before I met her – but she was always just this bright, happy-go-lucky woman and she never stopped talking about her honeymoon.” Lia’s eyes sparkled with her laugh. “But not even because of her husband. Because of the food. The paella. The spices and the chocolate.”
“I’m guessing her honeymoon was somewhere in Spain.”
“Bingo, Sherlock. Barcelona,” she smirked. “You’re
good at this.”
“What can I say.”
Lia smiled at me. “Then I think you can guess that she was the one who started my fascination with chocolate,” she said, her voice a warm murmur. “We’d spend all day making just regular chocolate, dark chocolate truffles, almond truffles. We’d put saffron in it. Sometimes we’d make complete abominations and we knew they were probably going to suck going in to it, but we just did it. Chocolate paella. We did everything,” she chuckled. “And, um,” she frowned into the distance, “I guess it got complicated within a few years. Ritchie and I both went to the same college but then Gail started hurting herself around the house.” She caught the alarm on my face. “Not purposely,” she clarified. “I mean she would leave a pan on an open flame and burn herself. Or she’d put a knife in the wrong drawer and the next time she reached in, she’d cut herself.”
“Alzheimer’s?”
“Early onset,” Lia nodded, pursing her lips. “And Ritchie said I was always better with her, which was true, so I wound up… well, I went from full-time student to part-time to dropout so I could be home to take care of her. Ritchie convinced me by saying I could take the time to work on my recipes and make the chocolates into a business.” Lia looked up at me. “You probably think I’m so stupid right now.”
“Not at all,” I said straightaway. “That’s how it goes with family. You’d do anything for them.”
“Thank you,” she said in a way that had me guessing that she’d dealt with her fair share of ridicule for the decision. “And I took online classes at home. For business. Nothing great but it helped me feel less like a piece of shit,” she laughed to herself. “I saved up money, too, basically babysitting every kid on the block at the same time. Gail and I basically ran a daycare at home except most of the time, I was watching over her as well. But with that money, I wound up actually trying to make a business work. I bought nicer molds and equipment. I bought the domain and paid someone to do my designs and packaging. And it kind of grew… very slowly… but eventually I got little gigs around town for party favors. I did stuff for the high school proms and graduations. I was making money. Not Manhattan money but it was money. Enough to see a meaningful profit.”
“And Ritchie was in school this whole time?” I asked, running a finger over my bottom lip. “I have this sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t doing much while you were busting your ass.”
She shook her head at me. “Is my life that transparent or are you just really perceptive?”
I laughed. “I can just relate.”
“Because of Cam? The worthless, gold digging bitch?” Lia cocked an eyebrow.
“You bet. But I want to hear the rest of your story first.”
“Right, well. Ritchie wasn’t doing much. He dropped out of school to so-called help me with my business. But really, he just talked about it during his few shifts a week at the clothing store he worked at. He never got me any business but he still paid himself out for being a ‘representative’ of the brand.”
“Fucking egregious.”
“I agree!” Lia said brightly. I could tell this story pissed her off but she’d practiced laughing it off over the years. Impressive, considering I couldn’t imagine pulling that off myself. “Long story short, he’d have these lofty dreams about getting rich off this brand. Opening a store in town. Franchising into the city. But he did nothing about it so I told him he needed to get a full-time job, to contribute financially to my costs. And once he did start contributing to the costs, he made me change the recipes and the flavors. He didn’t like ‘exotic’ stuff. And I went with it because I was just so relieved that he was finally footing some of the bills. I didn’t realize how much stress I was putting on myself trying to earn all this money alone.” I watched her long hair spill over her bare shoulder as she tilted her head to the side, sticking her tongue in her cheek. “Of course, I found out far too late that he’d actually quit his job the first week and spent the next ten months secretly playing video games at his best friend’s house from nine to five.”
I set my fork down and stared. “What the fuck? Where was he getting the money to make it seem like he had a job?” I asked, enraged.
“He took a loan out in my name.”
My fists balled. “I’m going to kill him.”
She hit me with that fake-it-till-you-make-it smile. “Trust me, I wanted to,” she sang between her teeth. “Really, really badly. I mean we’d been on the rocks for years, honestly. I felt like I was chained to that house. He never let me leave and he was so good at guilting me over everything. But I couldn’t imagine leaving Gail because I knew he wouldn’t really watch over her. So I made excuses for him every day till she – ” Lia broke off for a second. When her voice came back, it wavered. “Every day till she died,” she finished hastily.
I ran my hand over my face. I didn’t have to say I was sorry again because I knew she knew.
“Um.” Lia’s brows pinched together as her voice darkened. “That actually happened recently.” She looked down in her lap. “Two-and-a-half years ago. I found out about Ritchie’s lies and my destroyed credit barely two weeks before Gail died. I broke up with Ritchie the day of her funeral. It felt like my life changed all at once, without any warning.”
“When it rains, it pours.”
“Exactly. It all went nuts at once but it was a long time coming. I realized there was only one reason I stayed with Ritchie for so long and it was her. And my friends hated me for that. They thought I was a monster for leaving him right after his mom died but…” Her eyes were misty as she shrugged. “I had to. Or else I’d never have my own life. I would’ve never grown up or known anything besides… basically the kitchen in that house, the inside of Gail’s car and the tiny grocery store down the block. That was all I had for so long.” Drawing in a deep breath, she closed her eyes. And when she exhaled and opened them again, the tears remained but her voice was steady. “But that’s the story. I left him, I lost my little starter business to him since so much was under his name and I came here because I reached out to everyone I knew looking for a place to stay. And I mean everyone.”
I was still reeling from her story but I felt a hint of a smile return to my lips. “And how exactly did you find my sister’s townhouse?”
The sound of her laugh lifted my heart. “Oh, it’s so Tess. She’d just booted both her tenants at once – couples, I believe – for being loud and always fighting and making tons of noise. Basically, she bit the bullet for years with them and then one day just lost it. Does that sound like her?”
“Painfully so.”
“Right, so once she kicked them out, she rented the lower level to Rachel, who was a friend of her friend. And Rachel told everyone at her work about the great deal some sweet girl was giving for a beautiful apartment in Gramercy. And someone she worked with happened to be my cousin’s Facebook friend.”
“Is that the friend you were with at the café when Julian overheard you talking?”
“Is that his name?” Lia squinted and rolled her eyes. But she laughed when I did. “Ugh. But yes, that’s her. Sara. She commented on my cousin’s Facebook post asking about affordable rooms anywhere for a relative in a tough spot. My cousin told me about the apartment. I wrote a long, personal email to Tess before I even met her, just begging her to hold that space for me. And the rest is history.”
“Damn,” I sat back to process it all. “That’s some good timing. I just figured she found you the way she found the one who lives downstairs.”
“Not quite. I found her. And I thank God basically every day that I did.”
“She honestly says the same about you,” I grinned. When Lia cocked her head at me, I gave a chuckle. “Don’t worry, I didn’t know much about you before I met you. All I knew was that the second floor neighbor in Tess’s building saved her ass a lot. She can be a bit of a disaster sometimes but…” I trailed off. “But it’s probably my fault so apologies on her behalf.”
“Why is it your fau
lt?” she asked.
I stared at the flame between us on the table. I didn’t even know where to begin with that answer. It started with our parents, of course, and it ended with Cam. But there was so much in between. So many mistakes, so many lives ruined that I couldn’t bring myself to think about it despite the fact that I’d promised an even exchange with Lia. But I liked keeping her as my bright spot.
She was my distraction from the darkness – the complete shitstorm that should be my life right now. The shit with Cam happened, there was Tess to worry about and of course, it was May. It was the hardest month of the year for my sister and me and normally, around this time, I’d be spiraling into my week of self-destruction as I waited for the Twenty-Third to come and go. But I wasn’t the dark cloud I usually was this month.
And I had a feeling it had least some to do with Lia.
“Fuck.” I looked at her. “If I ask you something, will you promise not to kill me?”
“No.”
There was no reason for that answer to charm me but it did. “I’m wondering if I can give you a rain check on the Cam story. I know I said I’d tell you, but I can’t do it tonight.”
“Are you serious?” The eyes she gave me were big and comically sad but I didn’t give in. “That’s not fair. I only told you about me because I thought I’d hear about you.”
“You can hear about me,” I smirked. “You’ll just have to wait another day.”
“Nuh-uh. Are you asking me out on a second date?”
“I thought this wasn’t a date.”
“Fine. Are you asking me out on a second foreplay?”
“Yes.”
Her lips turned up. “I don’t know. We’ll see. Maybe I don’t need to hear about Cam. It’s probably for the better, anyway,” she said as our plates were swiftly switched out for the second course.
“Yeah? How so?”
“The conversation was starting to get way too date-like,” she said, eyeing me flirtatiously while sipping her wine. “And like I said – ”
