The cab rattles along 1-95 as I gaze out the window. The scenery is cloaked in rainwater and moonlight, and drowning in my tears. The city turns to suburbs turns to forest turns to an assortment of quiet towns sprinkled along the banks of the Long Island Sound. Whole worlds that exist outside of this heavy ache in my heart.
He couldn’t do it.
That’s what he said.
Did he even try?
Was it all just a ruse? Some big charade to have one final fling before he tied the knot? Well, he really could have picked a better target than his fiancée’s sister. Did he do it because he knew I would never talk? Because he knew I was so securely under Alex’s thumb that I could never be the one to break this to her?
Or was it because he got off on the challenge?
Fucking some random girl during a bachelor party in Vegas is too easy. But fucking the little sister? Now that takes guts.
But as hard as I want to hate Grayson Walker right now, I simply can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to believe that he could be that evil. That calculating. That heartless.
And this is what makes me cry harder than anything.
Because I’m a fool.
A stupid, lovesick little fool who never grew up. Who will always be the geeky fourteen-year-old tomboy with the unrequited crush.
I should have never turned back. I should have never rung his doorbell. But I had to know. I had to hear it from his own traitorous lips.
Because I’m an idiot.
“Are you okay?”
The cab driver eyes me in the rear-view mirror, concern contorting his features. I force a smile, wipe at the tears with the back of my hand, and muster a nod. Then I turn back to the window, hopefully making it clear that I’d rather not talk.
I don’t give the driver my home address. I can’t go there. Instead, I give him the address of La Bella Vita.
I turn my key in the lock and stumble into the empty restaurant. It’s after two in the morning, which means Olivia closed up shop hours ago. Not that I want to see anyone right now.
I drop my presumptuous overnight bag next to the hostess stand and slink to the bar. I grab a glass and a bottle of Chianti and uncork it with my teeth, probably violating like twenty health codes at once.
Fuck ‘em.
What the hell do I care anymore?
I fill the wine glass to the top and take a long gulp.
I notice a stack of receipts sitting at the end of the bar. I trudge over and peer at the little note Olivia clipped to the top.
$45.21
Our sales for the night.
I take another long swig. Forty-five fucking dollars. Sounds about right.
Underneath the total, she scrawled¸ “We ran out of that amazing sauce you made. The customers went crazy for it! You should definitely make more!!!”
I love how hard she tried to cheer me up. With her multiple exclamation marks and compliments about the sauce. She has no idea that her little note is like a kick in the gut.
There’s no more sauce where that came from.
It was a one-time thing. A fluke. A fling.
I pick up my wine glass and shuffle toward the kitchen, careful to avert my eyes as I pass table 9. The booth that will forever be haunted by memories of that blissful late morning. Where Grayson laid me down across the cool leather and moved eagerly inside of me, both of us gasping for breath, grasping for each other, moaning into skin and hair and mouths.
I push through the swinging door into the kitchen and am instantly bombarded by another onslaught of fresh images.
Grayson standing shirtless next to the stove, his muscles flexing deliciously as he stirred.
More tears threaten to spill as I glance around the rest of the kitchen, at my mother’s abandoned dream. She begged my dad for this restaurant for so many years. She claimed it would make her feel complete. It would fill some kind of emptiness in her life.
It turned out she was right.
Except that emptiness wasn’t filled by a restaurant. It was filled by a sexy, dark-haired bartender with an Italian accent.
I walk briskly toward the office, feeling purpose and resolve building with every step.
I know what I have to do. What I should have done months ago.
I was kidding myself to think I could keep this place alive. That my mother might walk through the door one day and want to return to her old life.
She’s gone.
She’s not coming back.
She found her new perfect life and we aren’t in it.
My sister was right to hate her all along. She saw what a selfish person my mother really is. And she held her responsible for that. Meanwhile, I tried to convince myself that it was some kind of oversight. A glitch in my mom’s programming.
I yank open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, remove the envelopes from inside, and slam them down on the desk. The most recent letter from my mother is on top. Telling me to claim my life. To throw caution to the wind.
The choices that lead us to happiness are never the easiest ones or the least painful.
But it’s the happiness that comes from these tough choices that makes the pain worth bearing.
What the hell does she know about pain? She has no idea what kind of heartbreak and destruction she left behind here. She doesn’t have a clue about the mess she made while she was out there on her “quest for happiness.” It wasn’t her pain to bear. It was mine. It was my dad’s. It was Alex’s.
I switch on the shredder behind me and stuff the letter into it, watching in satisfaction as the tiny metal teeth chew and gnaw at my mother’s words, turning them into dust.
I grab the next letter from the pile and resign it to the same fate. I keep grabbing and shredding and grabbing and shredding until there’s only one envelope left. But I stop when I see it’s not a letter from my mother, but rather the contract from that lawyer in New York. The one offering to buy the restaurant.
I flip to the last page and hastily scribble my name on the line that says “Proprietor.”
“There,” I say aloud to the empty office, feeling the weight of a thousand pounds of pasta being lifted from my shoulders. “You chose your life. Now I’m choosing mine.”