“Maybe,” Carlo replied, giving him a sad smile, “it’s time you figured out why they always leave.”
“Sounds to me like you have your own theory.”
“I might.”
“Care to share it with me?”
Carlo shook his head. “Sorry, brother. I know we all meddle in each other’s business a lot, but this is one thing you’re going to have to work out on your own. Because, until you do, they’ll just keep leaving.”
“The bloom is definitely off the rose.”
Gretchen raised her head from the file she’d buried it in to say, “Hi, Gary,” before burying it again.
The upholstered leather chair in front of her desk made a crunching sound when he sat down. “Do you know what time it is?”
She looked at her watch. “Nine o’clock.”
“That’s p.m., not a.m.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
She nodded toward the pile of files on her desk. “I’m swamped. Which you must be, also, because you’re still here.”
“I don’t have a brand-new husband waiting for me at home.”
She turned a page and strove to keep her voice neutral. “Neither do I.”
“Marco working late?”
“I have no idea.” She raised her head and met her friend’s gaze. “I’ve left him, Gary. I moved back into the duplex. My marriage is over.”
“When did this happen?”
“A week ago.”
“That would explain why you’ve been walking around like a lost soul.”
She just looked at him.
“I don’t understand,” Gary said. “When we spoke in August, you were in love with him. You married him the first weekend in October. Only five weeks have passed since then. What happened?”
“What happened is that, in between my talk with you in August and my marriage to Marco in October, I got pregnant.”
There was a long silence. “So what you’re saying is…”
“Marco did the noble thing and offered to make an honest woman of me. The only reason he married me is because I’m pregnant.”
“I could have sworn…”
“What?” she asked.
“You should have seen your faces during the wedding ceremony. I could have sworn the emotion was real.”
“For show only.” At least on Marco’s part. “Marco’s great at putting a good face on things.”
“Why did you leave him?”
“He—” She drew a deep breath when her voice cracked. “He doesn’t love me.”
“From what you told me, he didn’t love you when he married you. Nothing’s changed. So why leave now?”
Even though it was the truth, the words still hurt. “Let me rephrase. He’ll never love me.” She bit her lip. “I thought I could live with that. I discovered I can’t.”
“You sure give up awfully quick.”
Gretchen sat back in her chair and blinked at him. Where was the sympathy, the pat on the back, the shoulder for crying on?
“What are you saying?”
Gary shrugged. “Only that your marriage must not have meant that much to you in the first place if you could walk away from it so easily.”
The pain cut her swiftly, its aim more accurate than a master marksman’s. She felt tears spring to her eyes.
“How can you say that to me?”
“What things in your life do you feel passionate about?” he asked. “What would you fight for with your last breath? And don’t tell me it’s this job. You’re wonderful at it, Gretchen, but you don’t live for it.”
“I…I don’t understand,” she said.
“That’s the problem. Let me explain. I fought passionately to build this business. I fought passionately to earn respect as a gay businessman in a straight world. What have you fought passionately for?”
Gretchen could only stare at him in silence.
Gary stood. “Word of advice from a friend? Go home, Gretchen. You won’t be doing yourself, or your unborn child, any favors if you let yourself get run-down. And while you’re home, do some thinking. Decide what things you feel most passionately about. If they’re missing from your life, start fighting for them.” He swept an arm out indicating the files on her desk. “Otherwise, this is your future.”
A woman carrying a clipboard ushered Gretchen down a long corridor lined with practice rooms. As they passed each room, she heard snatches of different sonatas from behind the closed doors. Her fellow contestants were practicing their selected pieces one final time.
Gretchen drew a deep breath and tried to slow the staccato beating of her heart. This was it. Her big chance. After today she would know whether or not she should pursue the childhood dream that she’d thought she’d left far behind her.
The competition was divided into two parts. The first part was the audition phase. Twenty contestants would each perform a sonata of their own choosing. From those twenty contestants, six finalists would be selected. The six finalists would then perform a composition for piano and orchestra, the performance to be held one week after the auditions. The top three placers, who would be ranked by a jury of five, would receive monetary prizes, along with a medal and the chance to enroll in a larger, more prestigious competition.
Gretchen was realistic about her chances. It was highly unlikely that she would advance past the audition stage. She would be pitting her skills against performers who had spent many more hours at the keyboard than she had in recent years, and whose repertoires were far larger than her own.
The woman with the clipboard stopped in front of a room with the number twelve painted on the door. It corresponded to the number Gretchen had drawn when she registered, and signified the order in which she would play.
“Good luck,” the woman said with a smile.
Gretchen’s answering smile felt forced. “Thank you.”
Inside, the small room was bare of any ornamentation save the console piano that looked as if it had seen better days. The cinder-block walls were painted pale yellow, the floor was covered by gray tile that at one time might have been white, and the lone window was in need of a good washing.
Thankfully, though battered, the piano was mostly in tune. Gretchen played scales for ten minutes, warming up her fingers. Then, too nervous to sit still any longer, she rose to her feet and began pacing.
She knew she should close her eyes and visualize herself on the stage, and that when that picture grew clear in her mind she should start playing. But she couldn’t. She tried to console herself with the knowledge that if she wasn’t prepared by now, she never would be.
She’d done enough practicing over the past months, especially the last ten days since she’d left Marco. Without a tenant next door, she’d been able to practice whenever the spirit moved her, early in the morning before work, late into the night when her demons wouldn’t let her sleep.
Since she had walked away from her marriage, Gretchen had tried to keep her mind a careful blank. She’d succeeded by filling every available minute with work and music. In all likelihood, after this afternoon she wouldn’t have the music to keep her mind off her troubles. What would she do then?
The words Gary had spoken to her echoed in her brain. What things in your life do you feel passionate about? What would you fight for with your last breath? Start fighting for them. Otherwise, this is your future.
What did she feel passionate about? she asked herself. Definitely her music. The child growing in her womb. And, despite it all, Marco.
She’d fought for her music by entering this competition and by practicing as hard as she could. She knew instinctively that if called upon she would fight like a tigress for her baby. But she hadn’t fought for Marco, the man she loved. On the contrary, she had reverted to old habits and had cut and run. Why?
Because she didn’t have his love. He certainly hadn’t tried to stop her when she walked away.
“Why should he have?”
she said out loud. When it came down to it, she hadn’t expected their marriage to last, either. She certainly hadn’t overwhelmed Marco with declarations of love.
Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t said their marriage had no chance. What he had done, in those first vulnerable moments after hearing about Brian and Val, and while his emotions were still raw and on the surface, was to ask what kind of chance it did have.
Instead of reassuring him and telling him that it had a wonderful chance because she loved him, she had turned her back on him and walked out the door. Why should she have expected him to put himself on the line, to beg her to stay, when she hadn’t been willing to put herself on the same line?
There was a knock on the practice room door, and the woman with the clipboard peeked in to tell her that it was time. Gretchen drew a deep breath, straightened the folds of her white silk blouse and ran her hands down the fabric of her ankle-length black skirt.
As she followed the woman down the corridor and into the wings off the stage, she made one more promise, this time to herself. It was the most important promise of her life. She would fight for the man she loved. No holds barred. Life was just too short not to do otherwise. And she wouldn’t give up the battle until he told her that the cause was hopeless. But the telling would have to come from Marco himself, not her insecurities.
Wasn’t that the real reason Jill had asked her to make those promises? So she would, for once in her life, stand up for herself and fight for what she wanted. Passionately.
When she sat down at the piano, Gretchen made the mistake of looking out at the crowd. At the sight of all those faces looking expectantly at her, the magnitude of what she was about to do froze her in her seat. Her mind went blank. Like Marco at the top of that tree, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t blink, even when people began murmuring and shifting restlessly in their seats.
A movement caught the corner of her eye. She was able to turn her head far enough to see Marco stand up from the middle of the audience. Relief rushed through her, accompanied by a sense of elation. He had come.
“You can do it, Gretchen,” he called. “Play for me, sweetheart. Play just for me.”
She did. Gretchen poured her heart and soul, all the love she had for Marco, into her music. When she finished, she knew she had played better than she had in her life. But she didn’t even hear the applause. Nor did she worry that she had played well enough to final. She only had eyes for the man making his way to the front of the auditorium.
She met him in the wings. Marco looked big and strong and impossibly wonderful, and it was all she could do not to throw herself into his arms.
“Why are you here?” she asked breathlessly. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I had to see you. I couldn’t let you do this alone.”
She drew a deep breath and mentally steeled herself for what she had to do. “I’m glad you’re here. I need to talk to you.”
He held up a hand. “Me first, please. I have a few things to say, and I’d like you to hear me out.”
He looked so serious, Gretchen’s heart lurched. Had he chosen this time and this place to serve divorce papers on her?
She squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin. Where was her backbone? She’d met the first obstacle, and already she was ready to give up? Not a chance. She’d made a promise, and she intended to keep it. If he was here to end their marriage, he was in for the fight of his life.
“Not here,” she said, taking him by the arm and leading him off the stage and out into the corridor lined with practice rooms. This time the sound of music could be heard behind only a few of the closed doors. They passed the woman with the clipboard, who was leading the next contestant, and Gretchen gave the nervous man an encouraging smile.
Marco preceded her into room number twelve and moved to stand in front of the window. She placed her back to the door, her hand on the knob. Blocking him from escaping before she’d had her say?
“What did you want to tell me, Marco?”
He turned to face her. “I’ve been a fool, Gretchen. A coward and a fool.”
His words took her by such surprise she could only stare at him dumbly.
“Remember asking me if I’d ever let myself go with a woman, if I’d ever lost myself so completely in her that I didn’t know where she ended or where I began?”
Still bemused, she nodded.
“I lose myself that way every time I look at you, Gretchen. Every time I touch you.”
“Then why did you let me go?” she burst out.
“Because I was afraid. Being with you felt so right that I spent every waking moment terrified I would lose you.”
“The way you lost your mother and Tess,” she murmured.
“Yes. But I understand now that I drove Tess away. The way I drove away every woman I’ve been involved with. The way I drove you away. My fear of loving was all tied up with my feelings of loss. But I’m here to tell you today that I am no longer afraid. And I’m not letting you go.”
Though her heart threatened to take wings and soar, there were still a few things they needed to set straight between them. “What are you saying, Marco?”
He took a step toward her. “I’m saying that when you told me you were pregnant, I was thrilled. Because it allowed me to do what deep in my heart I really wanted to do, even though I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. It allowed me to marry you. I’m saying that losing you, the way I lost my mother, would be indescribable. But losing you and knowing that you are somewhere out in the world, alive and vital and not in my arms, is a thousand times worse.”
He took another step. “I’m saying that I love you, Gretchen. I want our marriage to continue, and not just because of the baby you’re carrying, although I want our child more than words can say.”
She started trembling. “What about your work?”
“It will always be a priority. But you, Gretchen, and our children, will be number one in my heart. You always make me see what’s right and good about the world. I’m a lesser man when you’re not by my side. I love you, Gretchen, and I’ll continue telling you so until you beg me to stop. I’m putting you on notice right here and now that I’m fighting for you and our child. I’m not walking away until I get your complete surrender.”
She couldn’t hold back any longer. Flying across the room, she threw herself into his arms. “I love you, too, Marco, and I’ll never leave you again,” she managed to say before his lips claimed hers in a fiercely possessive kiss.
Two hours later they stood in the wings while the six finalists were announced. Gretchen’s name was not among them.
“There are other competitions,” Marco said. “We’ll enter you in one the minute we get home.”
Heart full, Gretchen shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not necessary. The point of entering this competition was for me to figure out what I want to do with my music. I’ve figured it out.”
“You have?”
She smiled. “I want to be a piano teacher.”
“What about your job at Curtis, Walker, Davis and Associates?”
“I’m quitting. I want to be home with our children, Marco. And I want to work at a job that I’ll love as much as I do you. Giving piano lessons will fill both wants. Plus, we’ll have one entire week a month together. That’s more than most couples have.”
“How is Gary going to take this?” he asked.
“He’ll pitch a fit, and then he’ll wish me luck.”
Marco laid a hand tenderly on the side of her face. “I will always love you, Gretchen. That is my promise to you. My promise to keep.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers through his. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go start our wild, crazy affair with life.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0374-7
PROMISES, PROMISES
Copyright © 2001 by Shelley Cooper
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Promises, Promises Page 23
