by P. Dangelico
“How can you suck this badly?” This question is directed at Calvin in genuine bewilderment. “And how the hell did they pick you for the cover? Do they know how bad you are?”
In response, I get a look intended to melt the skin off my body. “I’m not that bad. It’s him!” he says stabbing his index finger at his eight year old nephew.
“Have you played this game a lot?” I ask Sam.
“Yeah.”
“With your friends at home?”
“By myself.”
My stomach clenches as I realize the subtext; he’s hinted at how lonely he is at home on more than one occasion.
“You have this game at home?” Calvin adds.
“You got it for me.”
A detail that Calvin seems to have forgotten because his gaze swings back to Sam in surprise. Then Cal’s eyes meet mine. In them I see regret and embarrassment.
“If I would’ve known you were gonna beat my butt like this, I woulda sent you another Lego set.”
A huge, white grin spreads across Sam’s face. Be still my beating heart.
Chapter Fifteen
“It was so much easier to hate him.”
It’s a busy night at the lounge and since I only have one table left, I’m helping Amber clean the back bar while she serves the stragglers. Amber’s face goes unnaturally still. I don’t like it one bit. It’s the same face she gave me when we were in junior high and I had a crazy crush on Sonny Lynch and she found the doodles in my binder I had drawn of our initials. Yeah, she never let me live that one down.
“You like him, you like him,” she sing songs.
“I don’t like him. I respect him––which is far worse.” She raises a blonde brow. “Okay, maybe I like him a little.”
“He’s a man. He’ll do something real shitty in no time and you’ll be back to hating him.”
“And I wonder why you’re still single.”
“’Cause I’m smart, that’s why.”
“Don’t you think it’s time to let Parker go, Ambs,” I say as gently as possible.
“Is he picking you up?” She’s back to staring at the sink she’s cleaning. That’s what happens every time I bring up the subject of her scumbag ex-fiancé. It’s been two years though––and officially time to worry.
“It’s impossible to get him to stop. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
I walk to the end of the bar to clean up the well area when, out of nowhere, the flash of a cellphone blinds me. I rub the floating orbs out of my eyes to see a middle-aged woman––with a raging Botox addiction by the waxy texture of her face––giving me a sly, tight-lipped smile.
“Star News. Would you like to comment on the rumors that Calvin Shaw is impotent?”
“What?!” I shout in outrage. “He’s not impotent!”
That’s my first mistake.
“So you are sleeping with him. Does he know who you are? Who your husband was? Are you after his money?” She pelts me with questions so fast I don’t have time to do anything other than stand there frozen. The flash of her second photo snaps me out of a deep freeze. I search for Amber and find her busy mixing drinks for a fresh set of customers. I have to get out of there, away from the prying eyes of this woman before I break down in front of her. Ducking out from behind the bar, I march double time toward the kitchen with the reporter hot on my heels.
“Mrs. Blake? Mrs. Blake one more question––” The urge to refute whatever she hurls at me gets the better of me. My steps slow.
That’s my second mistake.
“Does Calvin Shaw know your husband killed himself to protect you?”
As the words hit me, the ground beneath my feet seems to fall away. The oxygen is sucked out of my lungs and my heart beats so hard inside my chest I’m pretty sure it’s about to implode into a black hole.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
But it’s too late. The panic attack sets in before I can head it off. On noodle legs, I somehow manage to stumble to the employee lounge and lock myself in the bathroom. Splashing water on my face doesn’t help. No matter what I do I can’t catch my breath. Sucking in gulps of air that never seem to be enough, I lean against the bathroom wall as long as I can. My knees buckle and my body does a slow slide down. Struggling for every tiny breath of air, it gets too much to fight against. I’m tired beyond measure, so goddamn tired. I just want to sleep for a thousand years. Until all of this fades away. Until I fade away. I don’t have the energy to fight it any longer. Resting my forehead on my knees, I close my eyes and let go.
“You selfish, fucking prick!”
Amber’s voice jolts me out of the dark numbness I’m drifting in. Her ladylike shout is followed closely by a bang, bang, bang. The door rattles on its hinges. I’m actually surprised it doesn’t splinter into a million pieces. Where am I? Oh yeah, I’m huddled on the floor of the bathroom, arms wrapped around my knees, forehead resting on said knees. I have absolutely no concept of time. As in what time it is, or how long I’ve been sitting here.
“If something’s happened to her, I swear on all that’s holy, they won’t find a single tooth of yours to identify, not a goddamn filling.”
Who the heck is she screaming at? The banging persists. Then I hear the click of the lock. The door is pushed open and a large man crams inside the small space. Calvin? What the hell is he doing here? Suddenly he’s on his knees in front of me, scowling fiercely. What’s his problem? Because I can’t take any more crap tonight. I just can’t. He grips my arms way too tightly.
“Ouch.” That startles him. His grip immediately relaxes.
“Let go of her, you pig.” Amber is trying with zero success to push the big man out of the way.
“Are you okay?” Calvin’s worry is palpable, his face tight. “What happened?”
‘Your husband killed himself’…the memory comes crashing back.
“I had a panic attack,” I mumble. My eyes flicker between the fury on Amber’s face and the concern on Calvin’s.
“This is all your fault,” she growls at Calvin, who continues to act like she’s not standing there ready to murder his ass. He runs his extra large and very warm hands up and down the length of my arms. God it feels so good.
“Is this the first time?” he asks softly. Shame robs me of the ability to speak. I shake my head, my eyes moving away from his perceptive gaze. I should be stronger. I should be able to control this. “Can you tell me what happened?”
After exhaling deeply, I start to form actual words. “Reporter from Star News was here…asking about us.”
He looks so completely stricken with guilt I almost regret telling him.
“Motherfucker!” shouts the skinny blonde with the foul mouth.
Calvin levels a slightly annoyed glare at Amber. “Give us a minute?”
“No.”
His expression softens when it returns to me. “Can you stand?” At my nod, he wraps a muscular arm around my shoulders and lifts me up, securing me to his side. Essentially, I’m under his big wing like he’s a mama duck, and I’m the puffy, ruddy faced duckling. Amber’s eyes skip back and forth between us. She doesn’t budge from her spot in the bathroom doorway. Next to me, I can feel mama duck growing tense, his muscles assuming a certain rigidity.
“Amber––” At my weak prompt, she turns and walks away, grumbling something under her breath––more charming pet names for Calvin, no doubt. While Amber grabs my jacket and purse, Calvin walks me out the employee entrance.
“You’re staying with me tonight,” she announces once we’re in the alleyway behind One Maple.
“No, she’s not. She’s coming home with me.” Amber responds with a filthy glare, which Cal pretends he doesn’t see. “Stop flapping those lips and make yourself useful by getting in the car.”
I’m surprised Amber doesn’t gut him then and there. By the look on her face, she’s definitely slow cooking him in a vat of acid in her mind…or skinning him alive with a dull and rusty paring kn
ife.
“Amber, please get in the car.” I’m ready to beg on my knees if it will get her compliance. All I want to do is get into bed, hide under the covers, and never come out again. The clear exhaustion in my voice quells her fury for a moment.
“Fine,” she grumbles through gritted teeth and jumps into the Range Rover without further argument. Wearing a carefully neutral expression, Calvin helps me into the back and buckles my seatbelt. I’m letting him manage me. I know I am. And yet I can’t muster the requisite energy to care. Truth: he’s being so considerate it’s easier to let him, pride be damned.
Amber wraps me in her slender arms. On the drive to Greenwich Village, to Amber’s apartment, Calvin repeatedly glances in the rear view mirror at me.
“How long was I in there?”
“We couldn’t find you anywhere. You scared the shit out of us,” Amber tells me.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s two thirty. We’ve been looking for you for over an hour.” Calvin’s voice is low, underscored with a hint of anxiety I’m not too far gone to miss. I don’t let the thought linger, however, because I am too far gone to care.
Not another word is spoken until we reach Amber’s building. It takes another fifteen minutes for me to convince her that it’s best I go home with Calvin. As much as I love Amber, I’ve always licked my wounds in private––that’s just how I’m wired––and right now I feel the need to be alone. I can do the postmortem with her tomorrow.
Killed himself? No. No way. Matt’s death was an accident. The police ruled it an accident. The roads were icy that night. Was he stressed in the weeks leading up to it? Yes. Depressed? No.
We wait for Amber to enter her building safely before Calvin drives away, on a tear back home. I can feel him watching me.
“I’m fine. Stop looking at me that way,” I manage weakly.
His pointed gaze holds mine in the rearview mirror. “You’re not fine,” he insists, his full lips set in a grim line. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Champ, but I already have a daddy.”
His eyes instantly turn into two shards of steel, hard and intractable. Whatevs. I’m not sorry. His sudden concern is a bitter pill. He hadn’t given two figs about what was good for me not so long ago, and now he thinks discussing it will magically make me feel better?
The Rover moves swiftly up the West Side Highway and over the George Washington Bridge, I close my eyes and stop fighting the sleep pulling me under.
When I wake the next morning, my head throbs from an emotional hangover like I’ve been on an all night bender. Minus the fun, of course. I’m in bed, fully clothed with a blanket thrown over me…hmmm. I don’t even recall getting home last night––and thank my maker it’s Saturday because I’m positive I would’ve been useless to Sam today. A shower will have to wait for later since it’s already eight and he’s probably wondering where his breakfast is.
Throwing on a white button down and skinny jeans, I dash downstairs…and come to an abrupt halt when I spy two Shaw men sitting at the recently delivered kitchen table. Sam is busy digging into a large stack of misshapen pancakes while Calvin eats the last bite of his eggs.
“Who cooked breakfast?” I ask in open surprise. I take a seat at the table and load my plate with food. Sam glances at Calvin, who’s watching me with alarming focus.
“Are these pancakes square?” All I get is a short nod. “Please stop looking at me that way.”
“How often does it happen?”
“May I be excused?” Sam cuts in.
“I thought since it’s raining we could go to the New York Aquarium today? What do you say?” Sam nods quickly. “Go on and get ready.” I barely finish my sentence and he’s already bolting out of his seat with a big smile on his face. His adorableness almost too much.
Turning my attention back onto the pancakes, I say, “Often enough.” I can’t look at him. I’m hanging onto the edge of control with only a bare grasp on my emotions, what that woman said about Matt hovering over me like a black cloud.
“What did she say to you?”
After a long, long pause, in which I decide I’m too beaten down to verbally spar with him, I go with the truth. “She asked if you were impotent.”
The coffee comes flying out of his nose and lands right between my breasts. Hacking and coughing, he stands so quickly the chair topples backward. I get up and pound on his back. Then he tries to dab my white button down with his napkin and I have to swat his hand away from my breast. He actually scowls at me for that.
“What did you say,” he wheezes.
“I told her you weren’t.”
That starts a whole new coughing fit. “You did?”
“A: she took me by surprise,” I indicate with my thumb. “And B: what did you want me to say? ‘I haven’t given him a prostate exam yet but I’ll let you know.’”
“Jaysus,” he half chuckles.
“Everyone will believe I’m your girlfriend now.”
His wheels are spinning, his mind jumping from one possible scenario to another. It’s all over his face, and in the way he studies mine.
“You okay with that?”
“I guess. We’ll have to see though, won’t we?” I say, resigned to my fate.
The silence feels like we’re standing on the precipice of something important, a turning point in our relationship that could go either way.
“I won’t make you regret it.” His expression is so open and earnest that I almost forget that I should be worried. “You can’t work there anymore.” There’s no thrill of victory in his voice. On the contrary, it’s comforting and kind.
“I need that job,” I say, shaking my head.
“I’m paying you for lost wages. Besides, you’re saving me a fortune in what I was paying for those specially prepared meals.”
Still too bruised and demoralized by last night’s revelations, I don’t have the will to argue. “You win.”
Except by the look on his face, I’d say he lost as well.
Chapter Sixteen
Surprises. I never cared for them. There’s nothing I hate more than the rush of adrenaline. And after having been woken in the middle of the night to be told that my husband had drowned, I hate them with a passion. So you can imagine how I feel when I’m at Whole Foods shopping, and get a text from my mother telling me to meet her at the hospital because my father had to be rushed to the emergency room. I abandon the full cart in the cereal aisle, grab Sam’s hand, and dash to the car.
Ten minutes later I pull up to the valet at the hospital, throw the keys to the attendant, and drag Sam to the ER. The nurse that checks me in directs me to examination room two after I tell her that I’m his daughter and Sam is his grandson––wink, wink.
Outside the examination room, I shoot Calvin a text. He’s at team facilities, meeting with his trainer, and will be gone for most of the day. I don’t want him to worry about Sam when he gets back to an empty house.
“Sam, just sit here for a moment, okay? I’ll be right back,” I say, pointing to the chair right outside the room my parents are in. I have no idea what to expect and if things get ugly, I don’t want him to witness it. Eyes burdened with worry, he gives me a brief nod. It’s unquantifiable how much I love this kid.
Peeling back the curtain, I find my father sitting up in bed, hooked up to a bunch of machines. Most importantly, a heart monitor. My mother’s face looks drawn, weary. And my chest wants to go ahead and collapse in on itself.
“Dad?” The adrenaline that’s busy burning through my veins turns me into a jittery mess. Though I do my very best to keep it together.
“I’m okay, Punkin’.”
“He fainted,” my mother shrills in accusation.
“I got light headed,” my father responds.
“The client found him on the floor of her bathroom––passed out.”
“I was replacing the bathroom sink.”
“Thank God, she called 9
11 immediately.”
“I didn’t have breakfast.”
And back and forth they go.
“They’re checking his heart for a valve leak. I told him two weeks ago to see his doctor.” Then my mother turns her full attention on the man in question. “I told you two weeks ago to see your doctor, but did you listen?”
Time to jump into the fray. “When are they doing the tests?”
“Any minute now,” my father answers. Over which, my mother adds, “That means we’ll be here all night.”
A large man is suddenly standing in the doorway. He’s dressed in black track pants and a white t-shirt and he’s sweaty––like he ran here. “I got here as fast as I could.” His gray eyes move from me, to my father, to my mother. None of us move a muscle, or say a thing. We all just stare.
There are moments in life where you don’t get a do-over, where the true nature of your character is revealed. You either step up to the plate or lose your chance forever. These moments shape a life. These moments earn you the right to say to yourself ‘at least I got the important stuff right.’
The man standing in the doorway might not consider me a friend, but in this moment he has earned my eternal devotion. “Calvin?” is all I say, stunned and on a level that I don’t want to examine too closely, happy as shit.
He steps further into the room and holds a hand out to my mother. “Calvin Shaw, pleasure to meet you ma’am.”
My mother looks as dazed as I feel. Then her face cracks into a huge smile as she takes his hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she coos. Good grief. “We’ve heard such wonderful things about you. It’s a shame it has to be under these circumstances.”
Calvin’s attention shifts to my father’s equally stunned expression. “Sir.” The two men shake. “How are you feeling?”
When my father remains mute, my mother interrupts with, “Tom.”
“I’m okay…thank you for asking,” Tom finally answers.
Who knew my parents were such groupies.
