“You’re still going?”
“Aye. I need to settle some things first, but I don’t have much time. I’ve got a lot of people to talk to, and I need to catch them all before they go on New Year’s holiday.”
If the crazy road he hoped his future might lead him down was to be paved, it needed the proper foundation first.
He just hoped that, after what everyone on social media had witnessed, the people he needed to speak to would still be interested in hearing him out.
Chapter 30
If an empty pizzeria could give hugs, Sal and Enzo’s place was doing its best. Unfortunately, it was the A for effort best and the kind of reluctant yet obligatory side-hug siblings had to do when mothers screamed at them to hug it out after a major fight.
Always taken for granted but also always there. In the morning hours before the pizzeria was open to the public, Marisa had no problems breathing in the reliable yeast or shuffling her boot around until she found a patch of floor that wasn’t sticky.
Sal had just taken out the latest batch of pizza dough to finish proofing on the counter and had done the much-needed good work of wordlessly restocking her Dr. Brown’s supply in the fridge.On the top shelf this time. An angel, that man.
After several days of staring at the walls of her apartment, she’d finally had to admit defeat to her sad-sack emotions and venture outside. Besides, she’d used up her last pack of ramen and had vowed to stay as far away from sugar as possible.
Or any of the other sweet memories that seemed to strike out at her with every room she went into.
It was funny. Marisa had never been one for the dramatic and had always prided herself on hobbling through whatever horrors life threw her way, but this time, things felt different.
It felt almost permanent and unshakable in its reminders of just how much of a sucker she really was.
The chair in her living room where Alec had let her care for him after a misunderstanding with the boys, her sad menorah that still sat untouched, all drippy and frozen from the last time Alec had put candles in it, the doorframe of her bedroom where Alec had stood in nothing but his boxer briefs and that delicious smirk that made her insides go all a-flutter . . .
Dammit.
Marisa’s eyes began to mist over again as the shame of her foolishness rose hot and heavy, even after she’d done her best to put it all from her mind, put him from her mind.
She couldn’t speak to him. Didn’t want to hear any excuses regarding his regrets or guilt.
She had quite a bit of her own to deal with, not the least of which was what the hell she was going to do with her life now that Sweetest Heart’s Desire had been embroiled in the confectionery world equivalent of a holiday sex scandal.
Marisa hadn’t bothered to reopen her online shop after she’d shut things down for Christmas. Any orders that would come in were likely only out of pity anyway.
And she was doing damn fine hosting her own pity party, thank you very much, in a pizza parlor no less.
But God, it all hurt. Hurt. Like a chunk of her had been ripped out and lit on fire as part of a public spectacle level of hurt. She’d always thought she could handle loss a bit better than most people, but that had been before Alec had rolled the stuff around in an extra-thick layer of rejection and betrayal.
No one alive could have swallowed that and come out topside.
A thousand questions still plagued her, not the least of which was why oh why, but she told herself she’d just need to be content with not knowing. Answers wouldn’t change what had happened.
They wouldn’t change the way her heart had been torn into a million fragile pieces with each one crushed beneath some absurd designer planter.
None of it seemed to make any sense on the surface, and perhaps that was what stung worst of all. The words, those hateful, awful words, had been his, but for the life of her, she couldn’t reconcile the truth of them with the man she’d come to know, the man she’d come to care so deeply about that this whole nightmare felt like a part of her had turned the knife on herself.
It was another reminder that she hadn’t known Alec at all. How could she after only a few short days of mutually agreed-upon falsehoods?
The whole thing made the betrayal that much thicker, until it turned into a vile sludge behind her breastbone.
The sharp tsss of the cream soda was the first jolt she needed to send her morose thoughts packing for a bit. What did she care that it was still solidly in the a.m.? Poor life choices and poor dietary choices often went hand in hand, making both a bit more palatable.
And she desperately required palatable.
The second jolt she needed came in the form of a sharp knock on the glass window next to the flipped-over Closed sign. Eden stood there, eagerly shaking her leg in greeting because her arms were full with three distinct colors of takeout bags.
Sal grunted his approval at the off-hours intruder, and Marisa went to let her in. Yup. Total freaking angel.
