She sighed into the phone. “You’ve done such a great job helping me raise them, still helping me with the twins and Charlie. Amelia though, she’s grown. We have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.”
My grip on the phone tightened again. “She has no clue what she’s doing.”
“You’re still coming home for spring break, right? For the interview?”
“Yeah.” I’d only told Ollie and my mom about the interview for the City of Charlamagne, to run their summer camps and after-school programs. Hopefully she hadn’t told Amelia, who would tell her fiancé, the mayor’s son. I grinded my teeth, hating the connection the chump would have to my new job.
“I’ll invite him to dinner so you can meet him. Maybe you’ll feel better about the whole thing.”
She was probably right. I needed to look this asshole in the eye, not only to assess his so-called “love” for my sister but to scare him enough so that he knew not to fuck with her or my family. “Fine.”
Mom blew a kiss through the phone, thanked me, and hung up.
Back inside the deli, the phone rang again, this time with Violet’s ringtone. An image of her peeking over a cup of coffee glowed on my screen as I paid for our sandwiches.
“Hey, Pix,” I answered, my mood instantly lifting. “I’m picking up dinner for later—”
“I…I…” Her voice quivered.
My joy at seeing her face on my phone immediately took a one-eighty. “What’s wrong?”
She sniffled into the phone. “I need your help.”
“Where are you? You sound like you’re crying.” I hated when Violet was upset. It was like every nerve in my body reacted with an instinct to fix her.
“My dad…he…had a heart attack. Can you drive me into the city?”
Oh no. I ran out of the deli, on my way to her, not even sure where she was. “Of course. Is he going to be okay?”
“I…I don’t know, Josh. My mom called, and she was crying, I have to get there.” Her voice shook. I could picture her twisting her hands, darting around the room, getting things together to go.
“I’m on my way. Are you home?”
“Yes. I didn’t know if I should call Rachel or take a car—”
“Hey.” That she’d hesitated to call me made my heart hurt. “You can always ask me anything. I got your back, remember?”
“Thanks.” Her voice calmed a bit, and she whispered into the phone. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She’d never have to find out. As long as I could help her, I would. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
* * *
Violet was quiet on the way into the city, glancing occasionally at her phone and tapping her foot in the passenger seat of my pickup truck. “Why isn’t she calling?”
I inched my way into the Lincoln Tunnel, where about eight lanes were merging into two. As a general rule, I hated cities. But I especially hated driving in Manhattan in my truck. Even though NJU was right across the river, driving there took forever. We probably could have walked faster. “Maybe because she knows you’re on your way?”
“Should I call the hospital?”
“Your mom will call if something happens. Please, try to relax.” I reached across the console and rubbed her shoulder. “Tell me about him.”
“My dad?”
I nodded. “Yeah. All I know about him is that he’s short.”
She snort-laughed. I was glad to make her smile, even if it only lasted a second. “His name is Jonathan. And yeah, we’re a short family. He’s almost as short as me.”
“Do you look more like him or your mom?”
“More like him, I guess. If he weren’t fat and balding.” She smiled again.
We moved another inch toward the tunnel. Maybe talking about her dad would help her relax. “What does Jonathan Nicholson do?”
“He’s the VP of a huge bank and does corporate finance. I don’t really know what that means, except he works a lot of hours and makes a lot of money. I hardly know him. I thought we’d have time, you know, when he retired...”
I gulped down the lump forming in my throat, knowing about the need to have more time with your dad. “I’m sorry, Violet. I really am.” I reached for her hand and held it. She covered our joined hands with her free one, pinning them to her thigh. Her grip was strong. Scared.
I glanced over and saw her eyes tearing up. Hating myself for making her sad, I cleared my throat. “Um, my dad was a truck driver. I thought it was cool when I was a kid.”
She chuckled. “It is. Did he like it?”
“There were the parts he loved. He made decent money. When I was little, he used to take me on his local runs. But sometimes he’d do the long-haul work, and we wouldn’t see him for weeks.”
“That had to be tough.” As she spoke, I felt her eyes on me. “Especially since you sound like you have a close-knit family.”
I missed my father, so much that I rarely talked about him. Whenever I was home, he was all around me, but when I was at school, I was able to step away from the memories. “We would have a party whenever he came home. Mom would bake a cake and he’d act surprised every time.” I chuckled, remembering. “My mom has a picture hanging over our mantel, of me and him in front of his rig.”
“You’ll have to show me some day.” Her voice was quiet, like she felt sorry for me. I didn’t like it. She shouldn’t be feeling sorry for me when her dad was in the hospital fighting for his life. “I’d like to see it.”
“The picture or the house?” I grinned, thinking of Violet in my house—a burst of color and warmth amongst my pale, blond sisters, mom, and grandmother.
“Both,” she answered. “I’d love to see both.”
“You’d like my family, I think. I don’t know if a city girl like you would be into the open space we have though.” To keep her mind off her dad, I described my house in detail—the porch in the front, the dog, the acreage, the deer that visit, the garden my grandmother tended every year. She laughed when I told her about the treehouse my dad had built me in the woods behind our property. “He called it our special place to get away from the girls.”
“They never knew about it?” Her eyes widened. “How’d you manage that?”
“It was pretty far out. To this day, I don’t think they know it’s out there.” Talking about my dad was kind of nice. “I haven’t been to the treehouse since he died.”
She reached for my hand again and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.” Her words were genuine, but I could tell that talking about my dad’s death wasn’t helping her deal with her own father’s situation.
“Shit, Vi. I shouldn’t be talking about this. Your dad…he’s going to be fine. I just know it.”
“How?” she asked. “How do you know?” She faced me, her big brown eyes pleading, hoping I’d have a good answer.
“I just do” was all I could come up with.
Violet
Josh pulled up to the hospital entrance and handed the keys to the valet. Still holding my hand, he guided me inside to the information desk and asked for my father’s information. In a daze, I listened, grateful that he was taking charge and navigating for me.
I prayed and prayed for my dad. Even in the truck, when I was talking with Josh, I prayed. He couldn’t die. There were still things we had to do together. Things I needed to say. We’d never been particularly close, but I’d always thought that we would be someday. He had to stay alive for that someday to come.
Before I realized what was happening, Josh led me through a series of elevators and down a hallway. When we got to my father’s floor, my mother stood over the nurses’ station, her short, gray, bob pushed behind her ears as she studied a stack of papers.
When I stopped moving, Josh stood next to me. “Is that your mom?”
I nodded. “I’m scared, Josh. I’m afraid she’s going to tell me he’s….”
He stood in front of me, blocking my view of my mother. “She’s not. I promise.”
Behind him, Mom walked toward me, and our eyes met. I couldn’t bring myself to ask how he was, as I let her pull me into an embrace.
Josh approached the nurses’ station, to the spot Mom had left. He leaned over the counter and talked to the nurses. Over Mom’s shoulder, I saw him visibly relax, as he looked at me and gave me a thumbs-up. “He’s going to be okay,” he mouthed.
I offered him a weak smile and then grasped Mom tighter. “He’ll be home before you know it.”
Later, we were allowed to go into the room. Dad was in a deep sleep after an emergency angioplasty procedure, and Mom didn’t seem too concerned with me at the moment, which I understood. I touched his arm and gave him a kiss on his cheek, told him I loved him, and tiptoed out. Mom said she would stay with him and call me when he woke.
I dragged myself into the hallway, drained, wishing there was something I could do. When I looked up, there was Josh, waiting for me with two red, heart-covered, steaming coffee cups.
For a second, I stopped and stared. When his gaze found mine, he placed the cups on a counter next to him. He fidgeted, waiting, watching me, ready to give me whatever I needed. He was always waiting and watching over me, and in that moment, my heart beat one word.
Josh.
As I stood there, unsure what to do, I knew that Josh would somehow make it better. It wasn’t worth pretending that I didn’t need him. I did. I always did.
He opened his arms, and I burrowed into his chest. “You okay, Pix?”
With a kiss to the top of my head, he held me tightly. Unlike my mom, unlike Oliver, Josh’s first concern was always me. Always had been, and I didn’t know what I would do without him.
We stood there for a while. I didn’t care that we were in the hallway of the hospital or that I was squeezing him tighter than I ever had, taking every ounce of strength he was willing to give me.
Finally, I pulled away. “I think I’m going to sleep in the city tonight. Mom’s staying at the hospital, and I don’t want to be too far. I know you have things to do…”
“Do you want me to stay with you?” His voice was deep, quiet. The fact that he read my mind made my heart swell. His eyes pierced into mine, trying to find the answer without me saying the words.
“I don’t want to impose on your time—”
“Not an imposition. Always here for you.” He handed me the red coffee cup. “And I’m your Valentine’s date, remember?”
Reaching for the cup, I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, a wave of relief washing over me. “How could I forget?”
* * *
Josh must have been worried about me because he barely complained about driving in the city. He stayed quiet, listening to my directions, until we found a spot a few blocks from the townhouse. We walked on the icy sidewalks, the cold air freezing my cheeks, and I held his hand, pulling him along.
He stopped in front of Ollie’s house.
“Yep, that’s Oliver’s place.” I pushed aside thoughts of Oliver because I’d already had enough emotions for one day.
“I thought it looked familiar.”
I continued walking. “Mine is just a block this way.”
The sun turned shades of orange over the trees that lined the street where I grew up. I knew every crack of the sidewalk, every neighbor, every car parked in front. Even though we were in the middle of New York City, my block was my community, making the Manhattan borough of over a million people feel small.
Digging out my key, I opened the front door and led Josh into the foyer. After punching the code for the alarm, I flipped on the lights. Josh followed me through the hallway to the back of the townhouse, into our kitchen.
When I turned to him, he was looking around the room. His eyes landed on something, and he darted toward the fridge. He pushed a magnet to the side and grabbed a picture of me. I grimaced, knowing I was too late to stop him.
“Sexy,” he teased. My eighth grade face, complete with the braces over my bucktooth smile, stared back at me.
“Oh my God.” I grabbed it and shoved it into a drawer.
Josh took another picture from the fridge and studied it. It was a picture of me and Ollie.
“There is a lot of Oliver here.” My parents hadn’t gotten the hint that we weren’t going to get back together. “He was like their son. I can’t get away from him.”
“Do you want to? Get away from him?” he asked.
I thought about it and shrugged. “If it means that I can move on, like he did, then yes.”
“He asks about you all the time.” He studied the picture again.
Grabbing it out of his hand, I replaced it on the fridge. “He’s with Tar…”
“Taryn. You can say it.” He sighed. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re never going to forget Oliver. And you’re never going to forget Taryn. But maybe Oliver was sort of like a path you took, not your final destination, you know?”
“Maybe.” It was hard to think of Oliver as a path when my whole life had been centered around him being the destination. “So I’m still on the path then?”
“Yep. And you know what your path will turn out to be?” He leaned back against the island in our kitchen, crossing his ankles, watching me.
“What?”
“Your life. Your story.” He reached for my hand. “I can’t wait to see where it leads you.”
Holding his hand, I looked down at our entwined fingers, then back up to his face, recalling the emotion that had overwhelmed me when I saw him waiting for me in the hospital hallway—that feeling of relief, safety, security. “So if my path is my story, what does that mean for you and me? You must be a part of my story.”
He bobbed his head back and forth. “I guess that’s true.”
I studied the man in front of me, the man I’d become so attached to, who took care of me. What if me being with Oliver—the entire relationship, the fact that we lived around the block from each other and went to NJU—was all meant to lead me to Josh? Maybe Ollie had just been a vehicle to merge our paths?
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.
“I…” I couldn’t form the words, but they played through my mind on repeat, a revelation that both freaked me out and warmed my heart. There was a part of me that wanted Josh—not just physically, but emotionally. It was something real, something peeking around the pieces of my broken heart. Wanting Josh was something more than a physical need, something more than being sex-starved.
I shook my head to clear it. Starved. That’s what this had to be—I was hungry.
“Let’s get dinner,” I blurted. I knew Josh well enough to know that food would be a perfect distraction from this conversation, and from the feelings I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
“Any place to eat around here?” He winked at me, not knowing that my heart melted and the butterflies in my stomach swarmed when he did. He didn’t know that my feelings for him were changing. To him, he was just Josh and I was just Violet, and we were each other’s go-to people.
Our friendship had grown so special, so perfectly balanced. My heart clenched in an attempt to control myself because all I wanted to do as he waited for me to say something, those blue eyes piercing mine, was to tip that perfectly-balanced scale and see what tumbled out.
Chapter Six
Josh
We ended up ordering pizza since we couldn’t agree on anything else. Vi wanted Thai food, but I told her I’d rather starve. I suggested burgers, but she didn’t like any of the delivery places and didn’t want to go out since it was Valentine’s Day. So, pizza it was. Violet changed into sweats and opened a fancy-looking bottle of wine for us too.
After we ate and polished off half of the bottle, Vi called her mom. I poked around the townhouse, examining the framed pictures of her scattered around. There were no pictures of her parents, or her and her parents. Most of them were of Violet playing the violin, and each was more amazing than the previous one. I was surrounded by Violet, standing in the middle of her world.
I made my way to the window, sloshing the wine in my glass as I looked outside. A limo pulled up to the house across the street. The driver exited and held open the back door. A suited-up man, and a woman dressed in red and carrying a bouquet of roses, ran outside and got into the limo. How the other half lived.
I took a sip of my wine, and the smooth blend rolled down my throat. There were so many houses, so many families, in this little area. In Rambling, our houses were so spread out that if we knew even one neighbor, we were lucky. Vi and I had grown up in completely different worlds, yet we’d somehow managed to meld into each other’s lives.
When she joined me, I turned away from the window. “How’s your dad?”
“Recovering fine. Mom sounds tired.” She looked outside. “What are you thinking about?”
I took another sip, painfully aware of how close we stood. “A couple of things.”
“Like?”
I shook my head. “Tonight’s supposed to be about you, not me.”
She leaned closer and hip-checked me. “I’d rather hear about you for a while.”
I squeezed my glass to stop from wrapping my arms around her. “Well, for one thing, what it’s like growing up in the city. Ollie always said he loved it, but it seems…noisy.”
Violet smiled up at me, so cute I wanted to kiss her right there. “To me, the noise is what makes it peaceful.”
With a scoff, I asked. “How do you figure?”
Her eyes glazed over as she looked out the window again. “I spent a lot of time in quietness growing up. My parents were busy. My nanny barely spoke English and had no interest in teaching me Polish. When I was alone, when it was quiet, my mind started to race with noise. So I’d sit in my room and open the window for the sounds of the city, so that I could focus on other things for a while. It would settle me to know that people were in the world doing things.” She shrugged. “Between that, and music, and my friendship with Ollie, I had peace and made it day-by-day all the way to today.”
Making the Move: Mill Street Series #2 Page 6
