“You’re right, I don’t, but I know you enough to know you aren’t the vindictive type. You don’t want to cause my sister any more pain than necessary. You want your life, and you want her to have hers.”
“We sat at the table for five minutes,” I tell him, getting out of the car. I wave to the girls when they walk out of the school, smiling when they see me.
“It was in your eyes,” he says softly. “Someone holding that much pain doesn’t want to inflict it on someone else.”
“My kids just got out of school,” I tell him.
“I’ll let you go. Take care, Samantha,” he says, and he disconnects before I can say anything else.
Chapter Nine
Blake
I shouldn’t have called her. I shouldn’t have called her. I stare at the phone that I just disconnected. I shouldn’t have called her, but I couldn’t not call her. I had to make sure she was okay.
Her eyes haunted my dreams all night. The pain, the emptiness, the sadness—it was just too much.
“Hey.” I hear from behind me, and I look up to see Ricky. “Someone is outside asking for you,” he says, and I get up, walking to the front. I’m in my squad uniform of blue pants and a blue t-shirt. I walk downstairs, coming face-to-face with Rosanna.
“Hey,” she says, smiling at me. “I brought you lunch,” she says, holding up a brown paper bag. Rosanna is or was Frankie’s best friend.
I smile at her. “This is a nice surprise.” I kiss her cheek. “Let’s go sit outside.” I put my hand out to lead the way.
“I figured since I was in the neighborhood, I would stop in,” she says, sitting down at the table we have set up outside. I open the bag, taking in the two meatball subs that she got for us.
“Good thing we came outside. Not sure the boys would be able to sit by while I ate this,” I say, biting off a big piece.
“I figured.” She smiles and takes a bite of her own. “So what’s new?”
I shake my head, grabbing another bite. “Nothing much. Same old, same old.”
She nods her head. “Yeah, I was afraid of that,” she says as we finish eating in silence. “It’s almost her anniversary,” she says, and I nod. In one month, she will be gone seven years.
“Yup, crazy it feels like just yesterday,” I say, thinking that the pain is still there, still lingering on the surface. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, that I don’t close my eyes and see her face, that I don’t picture her smile.
“She would kick your ass,” Rosanna says. “Kick it from here to wherever if she knew you were living in the past.”
I roll my eyes at her. “I’m not living in the past.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Really?” She shoots up an eyebrow. “When was the last time you went on a date? When was the last time you smiled at a woman? When was the last time you …” She doesn’t finish, she just throws out her arms and widens her eyes. “You know”—she leans in—“had sex?”
I throw my head back and laugh. “I don’t like to date, and I also don’t really have time. Plus, I smile every single day. Sometimes at women, and sometimes, I even give them a nod and a chin up.”
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “And I’m not answering that last one.” It’s been almost seven years since I made love to someone, since I held someone, since I was with someone. I know hookups can be easy; trust me, I work with enough man whores to know it can be just about sex, but I can’t put myself out there.
“You’re basically a monk, which is sad since you’re so hot.” She pushes away from the table. “I have to go, but we will be revisiting this conversation next month.” She leans up and kisses my cheek. “Stay safe,” she says, turning around and walking to her car. I clean up our mess, tossing everything in the garbage. I jog upstairs to the kitchen and find everyone just lounging around while we wait for a call.
The night goes by quietly with no calls, and most of the guys head off to bed. I grab my phone and go to sit down to watch television, but my phone rings as soon as I sit down. I look at the time and see it’s almost eleven. But that doesn’t shock me as much as the name on the phone. Samantha.
“Hello?” I answer softly and quietly because some of the guys are watching a movie.
“I’m so sorry; are you sleeping?” she asks in a whisper.
“No, I’m at work,” I answer, going into an empty room. “Are you okay?” I ask her at my regular volume.
“I’m fine,” she says, not whispering either.
“Why were you whispering?” I ask her.
“Because you whispered,” she answers, and I laugh.
“Well, then, now we can have a normal voice conversation,” I tell her, “but it’s late. What’s the matter?”
“How did they meet?” I close my eyes and lean my head back. “We were having a girls’ night, and my kids watched Tangled, and the whole time, the only thing that I kept thinking about was how did they meet.”
“Samantha,” I say.
“I need to know,” she finally says as I hear the rustling of her covers. “I have no family.” She cuts me. “No one.” I don’t even know how to answer her. “I was an orphan, a ward of the state. Never had a father, never had a mother, I never had a family.”
“Samantha,” I hiss out with the need to reach into the phone and hold her.
“So I met Eric while I was waitressing. I fell really quickly; he was everything I wanted in a man. And his family accepted me with open arms.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” I lean back in the chair, seeing her in my head.
“Well, they were my family. They are my family. But…” She stops talking, and when I hear her sniffling, I know she’s crying. “But now I don’t know anymore. It’s just the more I ask them or shoot down Eric, the more they are pushing me away.”
“Assholes,” I hiss, thinking about his brothers and how different it would be for her if she was a part of my family, and I stop in my tracks.
“So now I’m here, and I’m questioning everything. I have so many fucking questions, and the only person who can answer me is buried.”
“What if I don’t have the answers? What if no one has them?”
“Then I go on, but I need to make some sense of what he did. I need to know if I was the one who pushed him away. I need to know that no matter what I did as a wife, I didn’t fail.”
“Fuck,” I hiss. “Who the fuck put that shit in your head?” I ask angrily, so fucking angry I think the phone is going to snap in my hand.
“No one.” I know she’s lying. “Just, can you help me?”
I close my eyes while pinching the bridge of my nose. “What do you want to know?”
I hear her covers rustling again. “Before we do this, you need to promise me that whatever you tell me is the truth, no matter how much it may hurt me. I’m not searching for half-truths. No more. I need to know even if it hurts, even if I get mad, even if it’s not what I want to hear. I need to know.”
“Jesus.” I shake my head. “You can’t let sleeping dogs lie?”
She now laughs out loud. “He’s dead, so I’m not sure he gets a vote.”
The sound of her laughter fills my body with something, making me smile. “Okay, fine, what do you want to know?”
“How did they meet?” Simple enough.
“He was in town, I think working, and they ran into each other when he was walking out of the restaurant, and she was walking in.”
“Figures,” she says under her breath. “How long did they date before he proposed?”
“Shit,” I say, trying to think. “I’m not really sure. I want to say nine months, maybe a little bit more.”
“Did you like him?” she asks me.
“Very much. He was a brother I never had. When he was home, that is.” I stop myself. “I don’t mean home. I meant when he was here. His home was with you and his girls.”
“Thank you,” she says softly, “but I don’t even think he knew where his home w
as.”
I’m about to say something else when the alarm rings. “Shit, I have to go. We just got a call.”
“Oh,” she says quietly, “okay. Thank you for this, Blake.” She disconnects, and I run out of the room, getting my gear on as we are briefed about a kitchen fire that just started in a house. The owner came home from work and fell asleep with the oil on the stove. It’s two hours later when we pack up all our gear and head back to the station.
Shrugging my jacket off and stepping out of my gear, I pull my phone out of my pocket and see that I have a message. It came in right after we hung up.
Thank you for tonight. Stay safe.
I look at the time, and see that it’s almost two in the morning.
Anytime.
I answer her back, and I’m shocked when she answers right away.
Glad to know you’re safe.
I don’t answer, thinking maybe I woke her up, so I close my phone and head to the shower and then quickly crash once I’m done.
I dream of Frankie, I dream of the time she told me she loved me, I dream about the time we sat on the beach watching the water with her in front of me. Her hair blowing in my face. But when I lean down to kiss her, Frankie’s face doesn’t smile back at me. It isn’t Frankie’s lips I lean down to kiss—it’s Samantha’s.
The next day, I try to forget the dream while also trying to make sense of it. I try to convince myself it’s because she needs help, because she’s alone. But when I open the phone and text her, it isn’t about Eric, and it isn’t about Hailey, it’s about her. It’s about making sure she is okay.
I hope you are having a better day.
I press send and put it back in my pocket. I’m getting up and getting something to eat when it buzzes in my pocket, so I pull it back out.
I’m actually having the best day in a long time. Thank you for asking.
I smile, putting the phone away. That night, I don’t know why I expect my phone to ring, and I don’t know why I constantly check the time. I don’t know why I’m disappointed when I see it’s eleven thirty and no calls have come through. But then, my phone rings.
Chapter Ten
Samantha
I shouldn’t call him. I shouldn’t want to call him, but he holds the answers.
After I hung up the phone with Blake last night, I lay in bed thinking about what he told me, thinking about the questions I still needed answered. I turned and drifted off to sleep but never fully fell asleep, so when the phone beeped at two thirty, it was no surprise who it was. I answered him and quickly fell back asleep because the morning would be here way too soon.
The girls and I got up and made pancakes together, hung out in our pjs all day while we watched every single Disney movie we had. We ordered Chinese food and ate in the living room; the mess was very minimal, but I didn’t care one bit. Even when half the box of rice fell on Daisy and went between the cushions, I just shrugged. I cleaned up the mess while they showered, and now we were all camped out in my king-size bed. And it was fucking blissful. I watched the time go from nine to ten to eleven and then finally caved. I picked up the phone, sneaking out of my bedroom and going downstairs. He answered after one ring.
“Don’t you sleep?” he asks instead of saying hello. I laugh.
“I took a three-hour nap today,” I tell him, and it’s the truth. The minute they put on Boss Baby, my eyes closed, and I slept till the end, and even was asleep when they put on another one.
“Figures you didn’t even sleep last night,” he tells me, and I hear the softness in his voice. “Did my text wake you?” he asks, the worry evident in his voice.
“We aren’t allowed to lie, right?” I ask him. “Yes, you did.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I should have just waited until this morning.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him, and it really is. “What do you do?” I ask him. I’m not sure if he’s a police officer or fireman.
“I’m a firefighter for the county,” he says, and the job fits him.
“So you do shift work?” I ask, not sure how it works.
“Yes, we do shifts. Four days on, three days off,” he answers, and I hear creaking in the background.
“Is it hard?” I ask, not even able to imagine being gone from home for four straight days. “What happens if you have a family? A wife and kids.” And my heart stops for just a second. Holy shit, he could have a wife and kid, and I’m calling him, I’m texting him. “Are you married?” I ask before I even know the words are coming out of my mouth.
“So one question at a time,” he starts. His voice just soothes me, so I lie down on the couch with the phone tucked between my shoulder and my cheek. “It is always hard; sleeping on a cot is nothing like sleeping in your own bed.”
“This is true,” I agree with him. “Although I have to say I hate making the bed. I don’t really ever make it. No, that’s a lie,” I say right away. “I don’t want to make it, but I do.”
He laughs, and I smile. “Usually the wives pass by or they go home for an hour or so. They do it in shifts in case something happens,” he answers, and then I hold my breath, knowing it’s the last part of the question. “I’m not married, nor do I have children.”
“I should have asked that right away. It wouldn’t have been right for me to call you and text you if you did,” I tell him quietly. And then I realize what I said. “I mean no disrespect.”
“I get it,” he says, breathing heavily. “At no time did anyone suspect he was married,” he finally says out loud. “Not fucking once.”
“I think I knew,” I whisper. “I mean, I didn’t know, know, but …” I finally breathe. I’ve never told anyone this, not even Judy. “He had just come back from being away for two weeks, and he came in and just kissed me on the lips and turned around. No hug, no I missed you, nothing.”
“Okay,” he says, waiting for more, and I give it to him.
“I felt him pull away. He turned, hugged the girls, and gave them attention, then took off to take a shower. Lizzie looked at me confused, like she didn’t understand why he wasn’t hugging us, why he wasn’t telling us how much he missed us and that it was so long and he hated it. There was just something missing. I chalked it up to him just being tired. He was just …” I feel my arm get wet with the tears that are coming now. “I dismissed it and told myself it was nothing. Till the next time it happened, and I waited until after the kids were in bed and went down to him as he watched television. I turned off the television and asked him if he was happy.” I laugh bitterly. “He was very quick to tell me that he was more than happy.”
“Samantha.”
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “I told him that if he wanted out, he could go, and I wouldn’t stop him. I would never stop him. I would never ever keep the girls from him. I begged him, Blake, fucking on my knees begged him to tell me.” I sniffle. “I sat there giving him the fucking out, and he got off the couch and sat in front of me and held my hands, telling me he was just tired, telling me that he loved me more than life itself, telling me that the girls and I were his life, and that without us, he wouldn’t be able to survive,” I say. “After that, he made an effort, but it was never the same, so I sat there waiting each time he came home to tell me he wasn’t happy, to tell me he was moving on, but then I got pregnant.”
“Samantha,” he says quietly, but I don’t stop.
“I sat on the toilet and begged for it to be negative, prayed to whoever would listen to me for it be negative. It wasn’t; it was positive, and he was so happy, or at least, that is what it felt like. And then two days later, the cramps started, and I woke up covered in blood. I knew what was happening. I knew that somehow I actually wished our baby away, and they took it.” I don’t even try to stop the sobs.
“Samantha,” he whispers, and I feel like he is so close. I feel like he is here holding me, and he isn’t. “These things happen.”
“I know,” I say, my nose stuffed. “I know it was a sign, but I can’t help
but think I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want it. I wasn’t the only one sending out that prayer.” I wipe my tears. “Did they want children together?”
He blows out. “Yes, every single time they were together, they talked about it. They were going to start trying next month.”
“What would he have done? How would he have been a father to that child and my children? How do you have two lives?”
“I don’t know, Samantha,” he says. “I don’t think anyone can answer that. I have to believe that one day, both worlds would have come crashing together, and he would be out two amazing women.”
I whisper, “I wonder if he loved me.” I blink, my eyes getting heavy. “I know he loved me, but was he in love with me or was I just there?”
“You’re killing me,” Blake says.
“I’m tired,” I finally say. “I think I’m going to go to bed. Thank you, Blake. For this, for listening to me, for answering me.” I don’t wait for him to answer. I just hang up the phone and drag myself to bed, cuddling into Daisy. I close my eyes, letting the blackness take me to sitting on a beach watching the waves crash to shore like where we went on our honeymoon. I feel his arms around me and look back to kiss him, but it isn’t Eric. Those blue eyes are green, the clearness now cloudy, and the smile belongs to Blake.
The next morning, we are all up at the same time. The girls sit around the table, and I’m opening the fridge when the doorbell rings. I walk to it and open it to see it’s Elliot. “Hey,” he says. “I brought doughnuts and figured I could visit with the girls.”
I step aside as he walks in. He’s never, not fucking once, rang that doorbell. He has a key and has used it ever since we moved in. “Did you forget your key?” I ask him.
“Nah, I just didn’t know if …” He stops talking, not sure what to say. “It’s been a weird couple of days.”
“Has it?” I answer him, putting the doughnuts on the table while the kids get up and run to him, telling him all about our girls’ weekend.
Broken Love Story Page 6
