Jericho ~ Present
I WATCHED AS SHE WALKED across the street, one foot stepping slowly in front of the other, as if she were marching to her death. Then, as she debated whether or not to actually step inside of Prime Beef, I held my breath and waited. I saw her step inside and look around, and wondered what she was thinking.
I’d shared everything with Natasha. Often bouncing ideas off of her and asking for her opinion. I craved her thoughts in that moment.
I waited until she started toward the bar to come up behind her, and this time it was me struggling to find the courage to act.
At the sound of her name on my lips, Natasha stopped, but didn’t immediately turn around. No, her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath, and I could only assume she was steadying herself before she turned to face me.
It was that breath that told me she still cared, and I didn’t even try to fight the hope that filled me with that knowledge.
“Natasha,” I said again, my voice so low that only she’d be able to hear.
Finally, she turned, her eyes wide as she looked up at me. After a few moments, her lips parted, but no sound came out.
Terrified that she’d leave, I took control and asked, “Join me?”
I held out my arm, praying that Natasha would take it. When she did, I led her to a secluded table that we kept open for ourselves, or last-minute special guests. It was hidden in a little alcove, which would give us the privacy I knew we needed.
I held her chair out, before moving to sit across from her.
“A drink?” I asked, when she continued to look at me without speaking.
“Yes,” Natasha said roughly, then cleared her throat and added, “Dirty martini.”
I nodded at my server, indicating that I wanted my usual, and to get Natasha her martini. When he turned and left us alone, I folded my hands on the table and waited.
“I saw you . . . today, at Three Sisters,” Natasha began. My gaze dropped when she began fidgeting with the napkin in front of her, and I bit back a smile at the evidence of her nerves.
She was as bad at this as I was, maybe worse.
“Yes,” I replied simply. Even though I’d been willing to make the first move this morning, we were on my turf now, and I wanted to hear what she’d come to say.
“Why were you there?” Natasha asked boldly, her tone getting stronger.
“I came to see you, to talk things out once and for all,” I admitted.
“Then, why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to intrude on your moment,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even, so as not to give away the fact that seeing her with another man had caused me pain, even after all of these years.
“My moment?” she asked, looking adorably confused.
“The guy . . . the morning-after breakfast . . .” I managed, even though each word felt like razor blades in my throat.
Natasha’s expression cleared and she chuckled lightly, then shook her head.
“Kalvin is a client,” she explained, and my vision cleared. “We’re catering his engagement dinner . . . to a woman who is not me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed,” I said, feeling like a fool. A relieved, very happy, fool.
“Anyway,” Natasha began, letting out a deep sigh, then smiling at my waiter as he served our drinks. “Thank you,” she said, then took a sip of her martini. “Delicious,” she assured him, then looked back to me.
I held my scotch a little tighter than necessary and asked the question that I’d been dying to learn the answer to for the last few years.
“Why did you leave?”
Natasha put her drink down in front of her and cleared her throat.
“Millie called . . . My mother took a turn for the worse. I had to get to her, to spend whatever time she had left . . .”
“I understand that, Natasha,” I said dryly. “I understood that then, and I still do. What I don’t understand, is why it had to be like that. No goodbye, no note, no phone call, just . . . gone.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d sat in Coffee Time until lunch, waiting for her to show up, then went to her apartment, sure that she was sick or injured, only to find that it had been cleared out. She’d simply disappeared.
“I knew if I told you, you’d have offered to come with me, or asked me to come back . . . I knew you wouldn’t let me walk out of your life.”
“No, you’re right about that, because it made no sense. It makes no sense. What did one thing have to do with the other? Why was it me, or your family? Why not both?”
My voice had started to rise, so I took a long drink of scotch and forced myself to calm down.
“I told you about my parents,” she began, her eyes on the table, rather than me. “How my mother loved my father more than life itself, and he’d just left her . . . left all of us, for another woman, never looking back.”
I nodded. We’d told each other everything.
“She never moved on . . . never recovered. I knew I had to leave you then, in that way, because I didn’t want to leave you. My mother was dying and my sisters needed me, and all I could think about was being away from you. How I’d miss you, all the things I wouldn’t get to do with you.”
Natasha stopped when she started to get choked up, took a calming breath, and continued, “It hurt so bad, it felt like I was the one on my death bed. I wanted to call you, to go back to you, and I knew that I would . . . that once she passed and I helped Millie and Dru with everything, I’d go back to you.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, my own voice catching with emotion.
“Before she died, with her last breath, my mother called out to my father. The man who’d left her to raise three daughters alone, the one who’d broken her heart without a backwards glance, and she still yearned for him. I loved you that way, and that gave you all the power. The power to smash me into a million little pieces. So, I stayed. I finished my degree here and decided to go into business with my sisters.”
“And smashed me into a million pieces,” I said softly, not caring how those words made me look.
They were the truth.
“I’m sorry, Jericho, for all of it . . . Truly, I am.”
I nodded.
“And now?” I asked, feeling worse than I had in years.
“Now, my sister is engaged to your friend, and there’s going to be a wedding. Plus, we’re business owners on the same street, in the same town. Is there any way that we could learn to be civil, to coexist?”
It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was better than the avoidance of the past year. It was a start.
“Yes, of course,” I answered, managing to sound unaffected, even though my soul was crushed.
Natasha gave me a small smile.
“Thank you.”
I nodded, and she stood, so I stood with her.
“I’d better get going,” Natasha said.
“I have to get to work,” I agreed.
She smiled again and dipped her chin, then turned and walked out of the alcove.
I resisted the urge to pick up her martini glass and smash it against the wall. Instead, I downed my scotch and gave her a few moments to get out of the restaurant, then I went to check on my guests.