Tessa
I hugged Sully to my chest and watched Gray stare at the car as we pulled away from my house. I watched until I couldn’t see him anymore, and only then did I take a full breath. I giggled when it hit me that the man driving me away from the man who just broke my heart by breaking up with me, was the first man who I’d thought had broken my heart when he’d broken up with me.
My life was a soap opera.
“Would you like to go to lunch after you finish volunteering?” Paul glanced over at me before turning back to the road. “We could go to Mac’s. You could get the loaded nachos like you used to.”
No, we couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t sit next to Paul and act like everything was just fine for another minute. I couldn’t. If I had Paul drop me off at the Loco Taco on the corner, who could I call to pick me up? Not Laura, since she was at work. Not Gigi, as she didn’t drive. I could try my dad. If he couldn’t pick me up, I’d ask Eli. I was desperate and pretty sure he’d help me.
I shot both Dad and Eli a text, deciding I’d ask whoever texted back first. Eli responded right away.
Eli: What can I do you for, ball buster?
Me: Can you pick me up at Loco Taco…now?
Eli: Five minutes. But I will need a chalupa grande. And a churro.
Me: Done. Thanks.
“Actually, I’m not volunteering today. Can you drop me off at Loco Taco?”
“There are better places for tacos. We could try Miguel’s.” For a guy who couldn’t stick three years ago, he was suddenly very Velcro-y.
“Paul, I’m not eating lunch with you. In fact, I’m meeting someone here. But thank you. I appreciate the ride.”
His jaw clenched and his knuckles went white on the steering wheel, but he put on his signal for a right turn into the parking lot and pulled into a spot. He shut the car off.
“I’ve been trying to talk with you for months now, Tessa. About us.”
“I’m trying not to hurt your feelings, but there’s nothing between us. If you recall, you ended it almost three years ago.”
“Is that it? Are you still angry over it? Because I made a mistake, I know that now.”
“I’m not angry. I’m just over it. That’s all. No hard feelings. Honest.”
“I love you, Tessa.”
“You gave up on me. There were days, weeks even, when I wanted to give up. When I did give up. But you were already long gone. You gave up on me even before I did. Thank God my family stuck by me. They were there to pick up the pieces. To tell me I could make it. They were strong when I was weak. Dad, Gigi, and Laura. They never gave up on me because they love me.”
“Right. I fucked up. I freaked out. I admit I was scared. But you don’t know what it was like, standing next to that hospital bed day after day, tubes going every which way, machines beeping, not knowing if you’d live. Or walk again. It scared the crap out of me.”
“I get that. I understand that. The fact is, you had a weak moment. Lord knows, I had plenty of weak moments myself. But after I left the hospital I was in the rehab facility for six months. And then another two years of outpatient rehab to get where I am today. Between the day you broke up and now—you had plenty of time to regroup and figure out if you loved me enough even if I would never be the same.”
“Our years together were the best of my life. All I’m asking is for you to think about it. Maybe not today. But—”
“No. I thought you destroyed me when you broke off the engagement and walked away. I get that you were scared. You saw me in the wheelchair and it scared you. Scared me too. What if I never got better? What if I’d be in the wheelchair the rest of my life? Would I ever walk again? Would I be able to dress myself? Feed myself? That certainly wasn’t what you signed up for when you asked me to marry you.
“But you know what? You did us both a favor. I wouldn’t want to spend my whole life with someone who didn’t love me enough, someone who didn’t believe in me. And the fact that you didn’t break me, that I got over you…I don’t think I loved you enough either. You deserve better too.”
He leaned against the driver’s door to keep his gaze on me. “Answer me this… If Gray Thorne weren’t in the picture, would you give me a second chance?”
“This has nothing to do with him.” I shook my head, feeling my lips wobble.
“I’ve seen how you look at him. Tessa, please tell me you aren’t serious about him,” Paul said. “I asked around about him. He’s a damn player. He’s not interested in you, he’s interested in fucking you. I know you, Tessa. I know what you want. Since the day I met you you’ve been looking for what your parents had. Love at first sight. Meeting of souls. That’s us, Tessa. That’s you and me.”
“I thought that was us too. Until you walked away from me when I needed you the most.” Plus…my inner voice hadn’t said a word when I’d met Paul. Although it was looking like my inner voice might be wrong about Gray. And I deserved a churro for holding it together and having a mature conversation with Paul after being dumped by the man I’d fallen head-over-heels for. “Okay, Paul. I’m going to consider this closed. I need a churro now. Thank you for the ride, and have a nice life. You’re a nice guy, Paul. Somewhere out there is a woman for you. She just isn’t me.”
I tucked Sully under my arm, exited the car, and walked around to Loco Taco’s walk-up window and ordered a chalupa grande and four churros. One for Eli and three for me. It felt like a three churro day. And it was only lunchtime.
Eli’s truck was sitting in the parking lot when I left the window, order in hand. He stretched across the bench seat to open the passenger door and relieved me of Sully and one bag, so I could grab the overhead handle to boost myself up into his truck.
“Hi, Eli. Thanks for picking me up.” I buckled in, settled Sully between us, and dug into my churros. “Can you drop me at The Lakes? The new retirement community off of New Bern Avenue.”
“Can do, B.B.” He threw me a grin, then refocused on the traffic to pull out of the parking lot. “Got a sugar daddy over there?”
I reached over and tweaked his beard. “Sure. His name is Grandma Gigi.”
“I wish I had a grandma. Is she a sweet little lady who crochets and drinks Earl Grey tea?”
“Nope. She’s a ball buster, like me.” I winked at him and he laughed. Only I wasn’t kidding. “She hustles pool at the senior center and sneaks shots of Jack whenever she can.”
“Sounds like my kind of woman,” he said. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing. Why would you think something’s up with me?”
“You just plowed through all your churros…and mine. In under five minutes. That says red alert to me. Red alerts usually involve a man or the IRS.”
“Your brother is an idiot,” I grumbled.
“Actually, he has a pretty high I.Q. He just likes to play dumb because he’s lazy and he’s so pretty most people don’t call him out on it.”
“I mean with women.”
“Oh, true.” Eli turned into the main entrance and pulled up to the curb in front of the three-story building. “Tessa, my brother can be an idiot. But I’ve never seen him be an idiot like this. This is the first time I’ve seen him try to have a relationship. He’s brand new at it. Just…don’t give up on him too soon.”
“Thanks, Eli, for the ride.” I hopped out. As for the advice, the pain in my heart was telling me it was too late. Don’t give up on him too soon? Ha! His brother had already given up on me.
“Hey—one day ask him how much it cost him to sleep with you.”
“Excuse me?” What was he talking about?
“I’m just saying—you weren’t just some shag. You mean something. And you did not hear this from me.”
* * * *
“Tessa, what are you doing here?” Gigi stood in the doorway of her apartment, out of breath. She wore her tennis clothes, which meant she’d just finished giving the tennis pro a run for his money.
“I came over to cry on your shoulder and for a cup of your special tea.”
“Special tea? Come on in.” She closed the door behind us and I plopped down onto her soft-as-a-cloud goose-down couch. Sully abandoned me for Gigi.
“Well, hiya, Sully.” My grandma had his whole body wagging with her attention.
“Yes. When I was little, Mama used to bring me over to your house. I’d play on the floor with your collection of stacking dolls while you and Mama drank tea. And it always made you two feel better. You laughed and—oh, my goodness—you two were spiking your tea in the middle of the day.”
“Special tea coming up.” Gigi grabbed a bottle of peppermint schnapps from her antique bar cart and carried it into her kitchen. “I thought today was one of your volunteer days?”
“It is. It was. I was going to go, but then I got stuck in the car with Paul trying to jump start the relationship he killed three years ago. I couldn’t take another minute. So I bailed.”
“What else? There has to be something else to make you give up your volunteering,” she said, glancing up at me from setting out her pink cabbage rose china tea cups and saucers.
“Gigi, it’s over. I failed. My plan to win over Gray Thorne crashed and burned and now, since my inner voice has deemed he’s my soul mate, I will live alone, become a sucrologist, and live out my lonely days watching episodes of Murder, She Wrote while I work Sudoku puzzles. Unless my inner voice was wrong. That could happen, right?”
“No. Sorry, dear. The inner voice is never wrong.” She poured hot water over tea leaves and the soft scent of peppermint made its way through the kitchen. “But that doesn’t mean that it will work. Your soul mate has to get with the program too, or it could be like two ships passing in the night.”
“Oh.” I stood, moving to one of the barstools at the island, hoping Gigi would put out her shortbread cookies with the tea. I felt like I needed a cookie. And special tea. “So you’re saying it’s not a sure thing.”
“That’s what I’m saying. The planets have to align. That’s what makes love such a miracle. That’s why you can’t give up just because it’s hard.”
Can’t give up. This was becoming a theme… Heck, I’d just said that to Paul. You gave up on me even before I did. My family never gave up on me because they love me.
“Tell me what happened.” Gigi poured out the tea, added a healthy shot of the schnapps, and slid my cup over to me. “The last we talked you were going with my ‘just be yourself’ advice. Where did it crash and burn?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. I thought things were going well. We were spending time together. Getting to know each other. I’d stopped slamming the door in his face. And then boom.”
“Boom?”
“Pretty much. Gray showed up at my house and said it was over. He can’t do us together anymore. Back to a professional relationship. I’m the client. He’s the designer. Boom.” I took a healthy sip of my tea.
“Hmmm. Just totally out of the blue, you say?” She must have seen how pitiful I was because she did bring out the shortbread cookies. Parked the tin right in front of me.
“Thanks, Gigi.” I took out four and placed them on my saucer next to my tea cup. If ever there was a cookie emergency, getting dumped was it. I kept the tin close, in case this was more than a four cookie and four churro emergency. I dipped a cookie into my tea and took a bite while I recalled the whole conversation with Gray. “Maybe not totally out of the blue…”
Gigi raised her eyebrows and waited.
“The Thorne brothers have a brother who’s been missing for ten years. Ryker. They’ve been searching for him for a long time. Gray has this deep-seated guilt that it was his fault that Ryker ran away.” My throat went tight remembering Gray’s pain. I moved on to my next cookie. “They finally got some news about him. From what his brother Eli said, it wasn’t good. And Gray blames himself.”
“Seems to me you know exactly what that’s like.”
“Different. Very different. And I’m working on it.”
“Work harder, Contessa.”
This is where I always fell off the rails. Because Gigi had lost her daughter. Daddy had lost the love of his life. And they were dealing with the loss and pain with so much grace. But they hadn’t been the one behind the wheel. The one responsible. I folded up the pain and tucked it into the back of my heart. For now. I just wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. I knew Gigi felt that by not letting go of the guilt I was stuck, but I wasn’t. I’d come a long way from lying in the ICU. I was moving a baby step at a time.
“Maybe it just isn’t meant to be. The planets didn’t align.” I dipped the next cookie in my tea before taking another sip. “Thanks for listening, Gigi. And for the tea. And the cookies.”
“Contessa Imogene Madigan, I’m shocked. You’re simply giving up?” My grandma pulled out her disappointed face, which was the absolute worst. I hated disappointing my grandma. “You’re giving up just when your man needs you the most?”
“What do you mean? He broke it off. He—”
“It sounds like he’s hurting, Tessa. He’s at a weak point. What if we’d given up every time you were at a low point—ready to give up during your recovery?”
Eli’s last bit of advice echoed through my brain. Don’t give up on him too soon.
And I remembered what had drawn me to Gray in the first place. The fire and passion in his face when he talked about the brother he refused to give up on. So six brothers. Always. Because we want him to know he’s always a part of our lives.
“You don’t give up on people you love,” Gigi said.
“You don’t give up on people you love,” I whispered. “I can’t give up on Gray.”
“You can’t. That’s not who you are, Tessa. You’re a fighter. You don’t give up. That’s how you came back from near death. You go back there and fight for what you want. Life’s too short. You know that.”
I set my tea cup down and stared into my grandma’s eyes. She believed in me. And she believed in love. In soul mates. In loving passionately even if it hurt because not loving hurt worse.
“You’re right, Gigi. I’m not a quitter. I can regroup. So my first plan didn’t work. And my second one crashed and burned. Third time’s the charm, right?”
“That’s the Tessa I know.” Gigi gave me an approving nod.
It took me another cup of special tea and three more cookies, but I came up with a plan. I could do this. I could at least try one more time. I grabbed my phone from my purse and called him before I lost my nerve.
“This is Gray,” he answered.
“Gray, I need to talk.”
“About your house?”
“Not about my house.”
“Tessa—”
“I’m only asking for thirty minutes.”
“I’m slammed with work the next couple days.”
“Fine. A week from today. Say… One o’clock. At my place.”
“No. Not your place.”
“Okay, then your place,” I said, trying to be accommodating. Plus I had fond memories of his place.
“No, that won’t work either.”
“The SBC offices?” Not that I wanted his brothers as a built-in audience.
“No. Let’s meet at Big Eddie’s.”
“Fine. One week. One o’clock. See you then.”
I hung up and reached for another cookie. “What a pain in the ass. He’s going to make me grovel in a public place. I actually love Murder, She Wrote and Sudoku puzzles. It might not be a bad life.”
Gigi laughed like I was kidding. “It sounds like he’s afraid to be alone with you. That’s a good sign, darling.”