Chapter Thirteen
Normally a man sitting alone at a bar staring down into his drink is a man with a lot on his mind, and tonight is no exception. Tonight I am that man, watching the scotch swirl in my smudged glass, wondering how the hell I’m going to move the mountains I need to move to clear my way to a life with Francesca. I’m going to have a life with her, I just don’t know how.
I always thought “when you know, you know” was utter bullshit, but if I’m not in love, then I’ve lost my damn mind. Actually, it might be both things.
I glance over as a man drops onto the stool beside me—pitch-black hair, blue eyes, square-jawed motherfucker. Nice of this asshole to show half an hour after he was supposed to be here.
“You’re late,” I inform him, unkindly.
Unconcerned with wasting my time, he says, “I’m sure you found a way to pass the time.”
“I hope you cheat on Willow one of these days so I can fucking kill you,” I mutter, taking a sip of my scotch.
His dark eyebrows draw together and he scowls at me. “That’s not very nice.”
“I strike you as a nice guy?”
“Well, no.” Glancing away from me, he signals the bartender and orders himself some whiskey. As the bartender turns away to fill his glass, Ethan adds, “I hate to break your heart, but that’s not going to happen. You’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you.” Reaching into the bag he discarded on the ground, he adds, “Speaking of, here you go.”
I glance at the folder he slides across the bar top, but I don’t open it. I glance over at this motherfucker, watching him thank the bartender, smiling like a Boy Scout.
Once the bartender walks away his smile falls, and he faces me again. “Turns out you were right about the husband being a sketchy asshole and lying about his income, just wrong about the reason. He’s been saying he’s working more than he actually is. Can you guess why?”
I roll my eyes. “Cheating piece of shit?”
“Bingo.” Ethan nods, grabbing his whiskey and tipping it back.
“Should’ve given him pointers on how to be a slimy asshole. Oh wait, you got caught, too.”
Glaring at me, Ethan asks, “Is there a reason you have such a hard-on for me tonight?”
Ethan makes me think of my dad, and unluckily for Ethan, tonight my dad really pisses me off. He’s the single biggest obstacle in the way of me having Francesca. “I just don’t like assholes like you. Or you, period.”
“Well, I don’t like being generalized as the kind of asshole you’re painting me as right now. I’m good to your sister. I’m doing this shit for you, even though you know I don’t like it. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
“Have you ever fallen in love fast?” I throw back the rest of my scotch, signaling the bartender.
Frowning like he doesn’t understand the question, or probably more specifically why I’m asking it, he says, “No, not really. I’m not the ‘fall hard and fast’ type.”
“You didn’t fall for Willow right away?”
“Definitely not. Regardless of what you want to believe about me, I didn’t want to have feelings for your sister. I was trying to be a good guy; it just snuck up on me.”
“What about the other one, the wife?”
“My ex-wife? No, I didn’t fall in love fast then, either. Why?”
The bartender approaches and even though I should probably stop, I order myself another. I’ve been drinking fast while I waited for Ethan to show, so I’m already feeling it.
“Is that why you’re in such a shitty mood?” Ethan finally asks, once the bartender has walked away again. “You meet a woman or something?”
“Something like that.”
“She doesn’t like you?”
“No, she likes me, she just… she shouldn’t. I shouldn’t like her. It was a bad idea to meet her, but now it’s done and I have to figure out how the hell it’s going to work.”
“Is she married?”
Scowling thunderously, I say, “No, she’s not fuckin’ married. Why would you say that?”
“You’re coming down hard on the cheaters of the world tonight, I thought maybe…”
“No. She’s just not someone I should be involved with.”
“A cop?” he guesses.
Laughing shortly, I say, “That’s about the only way this could be worse. No, she’s definitely not a cop.”
Grimacing, he asks, “Is she young?”
I give him another sound glare. “I’m not a fucking cradle-robber. Stop projecting your bullshit onto me.”
“Jesus Christ. I’m not either. If you’re going to be an asshole, I’m going home. I’d rather spend my night babysitting your sister than sitting here with you.”
I don’t say anything. If he wants to leave, he can go. All I needed from him was this folder; our business here is concluded.
He doesn’t, though. I don’t know why. I would. I’m always an asshole to this guy.
“What’s her name?” he asks, after a minute’s passed in silence.
“Francesca.” I guess I can say that much. She’s not the only Francesca in the world, and I already know Ethan doesn’t like to get involved in this shit, so there’s not much chance he’d ever get dragged into Morelli’s path. He loathes my father, so there’s even less chance he’d ever tell him.
“So, what’s the problem? If you like her and she likes you and you’re both unattached, why can’t you be together? Sounds simple enough.”
I take another sip. Since I don’t know how else to explain it, I lean in closer and tell him, “Francesca Morelli.”
Now his blue eyes go wide, his face freezing, and he looks at me like he’s praying for laughter, for this to be a joke. When he sees it isn’t, he slowly unfreezes, looking down at his whiskey with dread. He throws it back the rest of it, like he needs a drink for me. Then he leans over closer to demand, “Are you fucking crazy?”
I nod once, taking a sip and tilting my glass in his direction. “There you go. That’s the problem.”
He’s bracing both hands on his head now, bearing the weight of my dilemma, for whatever reason. After a minute, he asks, “Is it too late to back out of this thing? It would be a lot easier if you just cut it off now.”
“Probably would’ve been a lot easier if you cut things off with my sister and didn’t cheat on your wife, too, but you didn’t do that, now did you? So how are you going to sit here and tell me to do what you didn’t do your fucking self?”
“That’s literally night and day. There’s no comparison between these two situations. And I did break it off with your sister—it’s just your maniac fucking father decided to blow up my life the same day and she had to ride to my rescue. If not for him, I would still be married and your sister would be fucking Frat Boy Brian right now.”
“Willow’s always saving your ass,” I mutter.
He doesn’t even argue. “Yep. No one’s saving yours, though. I don’t know who’d be more pissed off about this: your dad, or her brother.”
“My dad,” I tell him, without hesitation. “Definitely my dad. He hates her family. Calls ‘em scum. I can’t even be around him lately because I want to fucking defend them.”
Ethan sighs. “Shit, Sal. This is not good.”
“Nope,” I agree. “But I don’t care. I want her, and I’m gonna have her. I already have her, but I’m keeping her.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Mateo’s logical. I think I could get him to come around.”
Ethan doesn’t look as convinced. “And your dad?”
My dad is a lost cause. This is making me more depressed than I was before Ethan got here. This isn’t what I want to hear. I told Francesca I would make this work, so I’m gonna, and that’s that.
“Her brother hired some cocksucker who used her to get to him. She won’t tell me his name. Any chance you could find out who it was?”
“Someone who still works for Morelli?”
“Yeah.”
Ethan shakes his head, but he looks almost apologetic. “Nope. Sorry, I draw the line there. I’m not going near Morelli’s men. How would that help with your dad?”
“It wouldn’t, I just want to kill the motherfucker.”
“Well, I think that’s a bad idea. If you want to make a good impression on her brother, killing his men probably isn’t where you want to start.”
“Cocksucker needs to die, though,” I mutter.
“Maybe your dad would think of her like a trophy,” Ethan suddenly suggests. “Maybe he’d get on board if you presented it the right way, like she’s your spoils of war instead of someone you actually care about?”
I shake my head. “I can’t pull it off. I’m too protective of her. He’d be a dick to her and I’d lose my shit.”
This makes Ethan smile faintly. “All right, I get that. How long have you been seeing each other?”
“Too embarrassing to admit,” I mutter, grabbing my drink.
Now Ethan grins. “Okay.”
“They say when you know, you know.”
Ethan shrugs, like he’s not quite convinced. “I think that’s optimistic. But hey, maybe you stumbled onto something.”
“I’m terrified of hurting her,” I tell him, looking over at him. I damn sure didn’t expect to say that, but Ethan’s got more experience in this arena than I do, with all my shallow-ass relationships. He’s had a real one, a long one, the kind that stood the test of time—until it didn’t.
“How do you mean?” To his credit, the asshole listens like he actually cares. I know he doesn’t. He can’t. I’m such a dick to him all the time.
“My feelings for her have come on so strong, so fast. It honestly feels to me like…” I shake my head, because all the thoughts drifting through my head are soaked in scotch and too fucking hokey to get out. “It feels real,” I finally say. “It’s not like any other woman I’ve ever known, but how do I know it would stay like that? How do I know it would be worth blowing up both our lives to be with her? Not just for me, but her, too. Last thing I’d want is to hurt her. But I get bored. Not with her, not yet, but it hasn’t been long enough and all this shit’s in the way, but the problem is, since all this shit is in the way… I can’t tell if it’s exciting to me because of her, or because of all the bullshit I have to try to overcome to get her. What if we get together and it gets boring?”
Ethan shakes his head, smiling into his empty whiskey glass. “I can tell you the secret to making it real and making it last, but it’s not going to be romantic and you probably won’t like it.”
“What is it?”
“You just decide it is. Love isn’t some magical pixie dust bullshit. The initial attraction, the chemistry, the feelings, sure, you feel that for a while. But it all ebbs and flows. That’s life. It doesn’t mean your relationship isn’t real, it doesn’t mean it should end. Relationships last because people decide to make them last. If you’re an asshole who needs to chase an emotional high all the time, then yeah, that’s going to happen. It’s not if, it’s when. Relationships get hard. They get boring. They hit rough patches. It’s your job to keep investing in it, to keep deciding on that person every day. Love is more a decision than some fleeting, magical bullshit. If you care about each other, if you love her enough to commit to her, then that’s it. If you get bored, suck it up. Do something you did when things were new. Do something you’ve never done before. Take some time together and go somewhere. Relationships aren’t magic. They’re work. As long as you’re with someone who fits you well and you’re both realistic and doing the work, your relationship will be fine.”
“Then why are you divorced?” I ask him, simply.
He levels me a look to tell me he’s not impressed. Here he is giving me all this good advice and I bring up shit like that. But hey, if he’s such a fucking expert, it’s a logical question.
He’s apparently sick of my shit tonight, so he pulls no punches. “Because I took a bad job and had to rape your sister.”
The near-friendly feeling I just had a second ago abruptly evaporates and I suddenly want to kill him again. Not like this is news, but hearing him actually say it makes me want to put a bullet in his fucking head.
“My marriage didn’t fail because it was a bad marriage. It failed because I did something unforgiveable and my wife couldn’t get past it. I also didn’t cheat out of boredom. I would never do that. Only selfish assholes start something like that on purpose. I don’t have to tell you that. Go in with realistic expectations and you won’t be disillusioned. Well, if you can get this thing off the ground to begin with. Odds aren’t exactly in your favor.” He grabs his glass to take a last drink, then realizes he already finished it. Since our business here is complete and we’ve left friendly territory, he climbs off the stool, grabbing his bag off the floor. “Anyway, I’m gonna get out of here. Willow made some awful-looking lentil soup shit for dinner, so I need to grab a burger before everything closes.”
I rotate my glass on the counter, staring at the remaining contents like they might hold easier answers.
Before he leaves, Ethan pats me on the back. “Good luck.”
I give him a hostile look instead of offering back anything friendly, but he doesn’t care. He’s used to me being a jerk to him, and he probably just wants to get the hell out of here.
“I need more than luck,” I mutter to myself, once he’s gone.
Then, like the hopeless motherfucker I am, I pull out my phone to text Francesca.