I motion to my car. “Sorry, but I have to go.”
“Damn, you’re even more delusional than Valencia.”
“Excuse me?”
The mention of my wife triggers my defense mechanisms. The fact that we’re currently not talking makes it worse. I should have stayed quiet but this woman is not getting away with talking about the love of my life as if she has the upper hand. I know nothing about her and I want it to remain this way.
“What my wife and I have is not your business. But for your specific information, no I haven’t been with any other woman and I don’t plan to. Now, is that all?” Slonne’s words about Samuel come back to me in that moment. “Actually, no. What is your business is teaching your son how to respect girls. My daughter has told Samuel on numerous occasions to stop kissing her. He hasn’t listened. No is always no. If you don’t explain the facts of life to your son, this matter will soon include the principal. Kindly stay out of my family’s life. Have a good one, Zoe.”
“Oh, please.” She scoffs, arrogance bright in her eyes. “It’s not my fault if my son likes the girl in the class with the saddest sob story. Tell Slonne to suck it up. Weak kids don’t win. Like mother like daughter, huh?”
Suck it up?
Weak kid?
Like mother like daughter?
All of a sudden it feels as though my father is standing in front of me. That four letter word, weak, digs deeply in my mind and the words are out before I can even think about it.
“When you throw around a word like that, you are the weak one. Slonne reached out for a friend and Samuel gave her more than she bargained for. She doesn’t want him kissing her anymore. Make sure he knows it. Stay the hell out of my family’s life and never, ever, call my wife or daughter weak again.”
I slip inside my car before Zoe can reply.
Christ.
My heart is racing.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I realize I told her everything I wish I’d told my father.
I wish I could text Valencia. I wish I could tell her that if Zoe has ever bad mouthed her, she won’t anymore. I wish I could tell Valencia that I’m sorry and all I want is her.
It’s what I’m desperate to tell her, but I fear it may be too soon. I’ve never not wanted Valencia, but with all the shit in the way, I’ve needed her in different ways. I miss the person she once was, but it would be selfish to openly admit that to her. Logically and morally, she will never be exactly the same woman I married, and I will never be that exact man. Addilyn’s abduction has changed us and as much as I want to tell her I want her, as much as I want to sink inside her, I know better…or do I?
Even through the chaos, I’m still in love with Valencia Giannotti.
I’ll never stop.
But deep down I know we need time to heal. I need time to comprehend what she truly means to me now. Valencia needs time to understand what my true intensions were when I hid that the police called. It’s been too much for us. Letters. Terrors. False hope. Bryce’s advances.
Bryce.
The thoughts remains lodged in my mind, alongside the next. Today, on this Friday fucked-up-day, not only am I chasing the thoughts cluttering my brain, I’m also chasing up Bryce McCarson. He hasn’t shown up, answered my calls, nor responded to the knocks at his duplex. He isn’t seeing clients. I’m beyond the stage of disappointment. With Bryce, I go full on Terminator.
Marcus and I haven’t been on the best terms since our blow up. We stay professional with clients, but it’s still tense. I don’t even want to remember how catastrophic of a day today is turning out to be, which is why when Lance calls, I’m relieved.
He offers to meet me in the Seattle neighborhood of Cascade, where our assisted retirement village project is located. While on his routine check monitoring the construction progress, he unveiled damage that needs my attention.
So much for forgetting just how messed up my life currently is.
I avert my gaze to the driver beside me at a red light minutes before I arrive. What initially captures my attention is the glossy black 1950’s Chevrolet. I know it’s a Styleline Deluxe because my father used to have the exact model. Pietro Giannotti was the car enthusiast and while I couldn’t care less for him, the car beside pulls me in for all the wrong reasons.
It was mom’s favorite car to drive around in. The elegant Mafioso spin as she liked to call it. Even with her declining health, she insisted we drive up to New Jersey’s Coast for at least a week during the summers. Like in 92’. I still recall sitting in the backseat with the windows rolled down, that sultry humid breeze the closest I’d ever get to Sicily again before my twenties. My father with that constant brooding stare towards me in the rearview mirror and a lit cigar. My mother complaining to him about the clouds of white smoke and glancing over at me with an apologetic smile. I remember the constant changing of stations on the AM radio with my father wanting to be informed with talk radio while my mother only loved opera.
Every pedestrian turned, ogling the car. Other motorists honked in appreciation.
It was a show car, which is why when the man’s gaze meets mine I give a curt nod. This stranger can’t feel my racing heart or the way my sweaty hands grip the wheel at the memory. That was the last time we made it to the coast before my mom passed the following year. My anger at the discovery of my father’s affair had me take a baseball bat to the car. I had only managed to dent the bumper and a
