Cal was right about the last point, but I didn't trouble him with that information. He'd also been dropping not-so-subtle suggestions about me answering one of Riley's texts. I wasn't doing thateither.
I wiped my hands on my thighs and loosened my tied-and-retied bun. My hair was tangled and in desperate need of washing, and I devoted entire minutes to dragging my fingers through the slightly oilystrands.
"You talking to the girl at the park is considerably easier than things with me andRiley."
"What if I introduce myself and we hit it off, and everything is marvelous until I find out she has an old crush on the other guy? The one with the flippy hair," he clarified. "What do I do then? Do I put her out like yesterday's news? Or do I accept that her life didn't start when she met me, and therefore she has experiences and relationships that have absolutely no bearing on meorus?"
After all these years of living in this skin, I knew my soft spots. I knew that Ialwayswanted to be the best, the first, the favorite, the most. Whatever it was, I wanted to be it. It came from never beingitwhen I was a kid, and then never being able to claw my way into the top spot as I grew up. College, med school, residency—I was always a few steps short of where I wanted to be. I woke up and fought harder every day because I was going to get there eventually, but I couldn't do the same with my heart. Notagain.
I scooped my hair into a ponytail before responding. "I guess it all depends on whether you believe she's ready to move on from that crush or she'll hold out hope—even a tiny glimmer—that the flippy hair guy—who turns out to be her brother-in-law—will want her someday." I held up my hands and let them fall. "Could you live with that? Wondering whether you're her first choice every time she looks at him over the sweet potato casserole at familygatherings?"
"I don't think so," Cal said. "I don't think I coulddothat."
"Neither can I," I replied. I forced a smile. "But you should still talk to her. Maybe she doesn't like chinos or flippy hair that much, but you'll never know if youneverask."
Cal scoffed, nodding. "And maybe Riley's really done with the sister-in-law," he countered. "You'll never know if you don'tlisten."
"Maybe you're right," I said, rubbing my fingers over my brows. And it was possible. But I was too exhausted and broken to see from thatperspective.
The one thing I knew to be true was that I needed to be loved all the way through. I wasn't acceptinganythingless.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Riley
Patrick knockedon my open office door and poked his head inside. "We're talking through the North End project,right?"
I glanced up from the laptop screen I'd been staring at without seeing. "Yeah. Sure," I replied. "Whateveryouwant."
He nodded to himself. "I'll grab Andy, and we'll get started in a few," he said. "Hey, one more thing. Can you tell me about that RISD student,Trevor?"
"Huh-who?" I asked, rubbing my temples. This fucking headache had been trailing me for days. Nothing seemed to chase it off, and I was damn close to asking Nick to examine my head. That would be somecomedy.
"Trevor," Patrick repeated. "I don't remember his last name, but the email you forwarded said you'd met him when you were down in Providence for RISDWeekend."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Whatabouthim?"
"I like him," Patrick replied. "I think we'll invite him up for an interview. Presuming he's half as good as his portfolio suggests, you might have an apprentice thissummer."
"Delightful," I replied. "Talk to me when it's done. Until then,vayacondios."
I turned back to the screen, not trusting myself to look at anything else without devolving into a drooling pile of useless skin and bone. I thought I'd known shambles but this, this was true and total disaster. I couldn't breathe around it, couldn't find up or down. I wasn't sure I remembered how to put one foot in front of theother.
Eight days. That was how long it had been since Alex walked into her apartment and out of my life. Every one of those days felt like cold, screeching eternities. Forevers enclosed within colorless mornings and darker nights. There was no reprieve. Nothing eased the ache of this, of knowing I'd hurt Alex and ruined everything we'dcreated.
I'd put one thousand miles on my car this past weekend, aimlessly driving highways and back roads until I couldn't focus any longer. I'd gone in search of anything—distraction, nostalgia, an antidote to my self-inflicted agony. But none of itmaterialized.
My usual haunts offered no solace. The sports bars, Rhode Island, comic book stores. Everywhere I went had been tinted with Alex, even if we'd never been there together. She was my first thought and my last, and alive in all the thoughts in between. I couldn't go more than a few hours without wanting to share an observation with her, or ask heropinion.
And it wasn't the same as when Lauren lived in all corners of my life. That was like the burn of a brutal paper cut. This was like sawing off my own hand, inchbyinch.
It was no better when the work week had rolled around. I was empty and angry, and Tom's announcement during the Monday morning meeting that he was holding four offers on the Eastern Pond property had served as an unnecessary reminder of the catastrophe I'd set inmotion.
It should've been a strange moment when my siblings and I grappled with gaining closure on our childhood and the loss of our parents. A finality of sorts. And it would've been the right moment for all of that if I hadn't walked out of the meeting. Not because I couldn't handle talk of the house but because I was long overdue to hammer the shit out ofsomething.
That, or punch myself in the fucking face. Anything to bleed out the complete horror of losing the woman I loved to my ownstupidity.
The rest of the week had been a blur of hard, sweaty work—any bit of demolition I could find in our collective portfolio of properties—and when there wasn't any of that left, there were batting cages. I was shit when it came to hitting the fucking balls—there was certainly a metaphor for my life somewhere in there—but it felt good to direct all of my energy into the swing. Like every slice through the air served as a kinetic offering tothegods.
