A Promise of Forever (14 page)

Jake ran out of the tavern after her but Katelyn was nowhere to be seen.
He was sure he had just passed her on his way in as she was leaving.
He was sure it was her on the other side of the crowd of people who had just walked in.
She looked as if she were spooked by something, running from the tavern as fast as she could.
He decided to try her on her cell phone as soon as he let Gianfranco know he was there.
He would check on that situation with him and call Katelyn.
He turned back toward the tavern, strode in toward the bar and spotted Gianfranco pushing a persistent red-head away from him.
Jake heard the woman ranting as he got closer; she was saying that Gianfranco went from being hot one minute to cold as ice the next.
What is wrong with everybody today?

He approached Gianfranco, put an arm around him and noticed that his friend was sucking down shots of whiskey as if he was on a mission; he hadn’t seen him do that in years.
“Want to tell me what’s going on because I’m really getting confused.
First, I see Katelyn run out of this place with tears in her eyes and a wounded look on her face, as if someone had just killed her dog, and then I come in here and you’re lip-locked with a red-head you obviously could care less about.
What’s going on, my friend?
What am I missing?
And whatever you do please tell me, that the two incidents are not related?” Jake asked.

Gianfranco was shocked by his own behavior but Katelyn deserved it.
He hadn’t meant to push Rita away like that; he only meant to hurt Katelyn the same way she had hurt him.
Now that he had time to think about it, it was immature and foolish.
He lashed out to get back at her.
It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with her lies but there she was wearing a dress that cried out ‘take me to bed’ and she wore it for Adam.
The only consolation was that he knew Katelyn didn’t enjoy the kiss Adam had planted on her lips.
Under any other circumstances, he would have walked over and punched Adam in his face; but he was still hurting from the whirlwind of lies that were kept from him.

Jake was right, though he’d never lost control before, there was something seriously amiss.
He’d kept his reserve in any given situation; no matter under pressure to do otherwise.
It was Katelyn; he couldn’t control the feelings he had for her or what he felt because of her.
He was never in control of his feelings while around her, good, bad, or indifferent.
She was his Achilles heel, more or less.

“Jake, you have no idea what kind of day I’ve just had.”
He paused briefly as he turned to the bartender who was vying for his attention.
He was signaling to him that a table had just opened, but before he could reply, his phone began to ring.
“Jake, I have to take this.
I’ll meet you at the table.
I have something to tell you privately,” he said before moving out to the corridor to answer his call.

It took another five minutes before Gianfranco got back to the table.
Jake was busy flirting with the waitress.
“I gather the news wasn’t good?” Jake inquired, as he hit redial on his phone for the sixth time.
“I’ve been trying to reach Katelyn on her cell but she’s not picking up.
It keeps going to her voice mail.
I’m worried about her.
Did you happen to talk to her before she walked out of here?”

Gianfranco nodded in agreement.
“She’s the reason we’re here.
I was waiting for that phone call to confirm what I already knew in my heart.
Do you remember Kevin’s wedding?” he asked before continuing.
“There’s something I never told you or Kevin.
Katelyn and I started an affair that night.”
After Jake nodded in affirmation, he listened, as Gianfranco continued; suddenly everything began to make sense to Jake and became clearer.
“I know you and Kevin warned me off and, believe it or not, I really tried; but I couldn’t help myself.
God help me, Jake, I fell in love with her.”

Jake was astonished, to say the least.
Kevin is going to be destroyed by this news
, as he cracked his knuckles.
“I remember Kevin calling me and telling me that Katelyn was pregnant by a guy she met at school,” Jake said.

Then Gianfranco remembered the call from Jake that had followed a few months later, as if it were yesterday.
He had relived that call in his head almost every day since.
Gianfranco had never suspected anything at the time because Jake was totally convincing about her rich boyfriend from California.

Jake interrupted his own thoughts; they were taking him in a direction he didn’t want to go.
He hoped, with all his heart, that his friend was not about to tell him what he was imagining to be true.
“Please, don’t tell me that you are Jenny’s father?” he asked hoping his friend would deny what Jake knew in his heart to be so.

“I am.
But before you punch me in my face, or lecture me about doing the right thing, let me tell you that I never knew that Jenny was mine, until today.
When you called with news that Katelyn was pregnant, I assumed, like you that it was someone she met at school.
I could ring her neck, Jake.
She kept my child from me for seven years.
I loved her.
I would have done anything for her.
I can’t tell you how it tore me apart when Kevin told me she had met someone at school.”
The waitress brought their drinks over and both of them gulped them down so fast that she ran back to the bar to bring the bottle to refill them.

“Are you sure that Jenny is your child?
I mean, it’s not like Katelyn to keep a secret like that, not from us.
She had to know that, even if things between you didn’t work out, you would still want Jenny in your life,” Jake said as he leaned back in the chair and let out a sigh.
This whole situation was perplexing.
“I don’t need to tell you what this news is going to do to Kevin.
He wanted to kill the guy back then.
What’s going to happen when he finds out the guy he wanted to kill is his best friend?”
Jake hesitated but only momentarily.
“I wonder why Katelyn never told you the truth.
I have no answers, my friend; but I think you should give her a chance to explain herself,” Jake reflected as he tried to understand Katelyn.

“There’s no acceptable excuse for keeping my kid from me.
Think of all the times Katelyn wouldn’t accept help from any of us and how my child went without because of it.
Jake, I don’t need to tell you that my child could have had, and should have had, everything her little heart desired.
I would have been there for her; all those years wasted.
You know I would have been there.”
Gianfranco wanted to throw something, anything that could release some of the anger building up inside him.

Jake looked around the bar as the waitress filled their drinks again; he held up his glass to Gianfranco and saluted his fatherhood, hoping to diffuse the situation.
“On a lighter note, ‘Congratulations, Dad,’” he said before drinking from his glass.
“Give Katelyn a chance, go and talk to her.
She’s the only one who can answer the questions you have.”

Jake spotted the woman who had been in a lip-lock with his friend and wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.
It all made perfect sense now.
That show his friend had put on with the woman; it was for Katelyn’s benefit.
Gianfranco had no interest in the woman at all; he set out to deliberately hurt Katelyn.
He had never put it together before but he should have.

Jake tried to remember everything about the wedding and after.
He did and didn’t know why he hadn’t put it all together before now.
The way Gianfranco’s ears perked up whenever they talked about Katelyn.
The wedding, he remembered that night.
Both he and Kevin saw that look in Gianfranco’s eyes when he spotted Katelyn for the first time.
Gianfranco’s whole demeanor had been different; he seemed happier and somewhat giddy.
But he had always believed the Gianfranco’s interest in Katelyn had ended right after the wedding.
Yet, he should have put it all together when he announced Katelyn’s pregnancy to him.
Gianfranco’s reaction was a little off for someone who didn’t care.

“Let’s order a round of coffee.
I think we need to get you sobered up completely before you go and see Katelyn.
I don’t want you regretting anything you say in the morning.
If we hang around here and we keep drinking, the two of us are going to have to release some of that built up anger and I’m getting too old to pick fights, like the old days.”
Jake smiled and then asked the waitress for a round of coffee and the check.

“Do you believe what Katelyn did was wrong?”
Gianfranco asked, as he stretched out his legs and sipped his newly arrived coffee.
The bar was emptying and, though there were a few strays left, most of the patrons who frequented this place during the day were from the surrounding offices and had probably left for the day.
“
It’s still early enough; I can stop in and talk to Katelyn.
Jake is right; I’ll give her a chance to explain.
I owe her that much.”

“I don’t want to play judge and jury.
You might just talk to her tonight and make sense of all this.
I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and I hope you’ll do the same.” Jake said.

The music on the juke box was getting mellower and the tavern suddenly getting darker, which meant the crowd, would be starting to change.
Gianfranco wondered where Katelyn had run off to after she left the tavern and if she’d be home when he got there.
“Jake, will you try to her phone again.
She must be home by now.”
Both men were beginning to worry.
It was evident that Katelyn was upset when she left.

“If I do reach her, what do you want me to say?
Do you want her to know you’re going to see her?” Jake queried.

“No, don’t call.
I want to talk to her but this time we play by my rules.
She gets no time to prepare for me.
I don’t want to give her any length of time to think up anymore lies.
I’ll call my driver and I’ll have him drop you off on the way.”
The driver was waiting outside for them when they finished.
Gianfranco had the driver drop Jake off along the way.
He said good bye to Jake and gave the driver directions to Katelyn’s apartment.

Belle Harbor was a small beach town not far from Manhattan.
It had been a great place to hang out during their college days, when school let out for the summer.
When most of their friends were heading to the Hamptons, they headed to Belle Harbor.
Kevin and Katelyn were born and raised in Belle Harbor.
Their family owned a cute house that overlooked the beach and if you went up to the second floor, you could see the ocean from any room.
They were happy there, until the death of their parents.
It happened a year after Kevin’s graduation from law school.
Kevin did what was expected of him and stood by Katelyn.
He stayed in New York until she finished high school, in spite of the great offer he had to join a large law firm in Montana.
He hadn’t accepted their earlier offer because, after the loss of their parents, he didn’t want Katelyn uprooted and he wasn’t going to leave her behind.
He must have impressed the partners because, once Katelyn graduated high school, they came back with a second offer.

Gianfranco glanced out the window during the ride to Katelyn’s apartment and thought about all the good times they had here at the beach.
He remembered all the bars they frequented and all the trouble they got into.
It was a nice place but Jenny could have had so much more.
His child could have lived on an estate with horses.
He knew from Kevin how much his little girl loved horses.
If Katelyn wanted, he would have provided the house on the beach too, for the summer.

Katelyn lived in one of the few high-rise buildings, overlooking the ocean.
He liked her apartment, it was quaint.
Luck was on his side as the driver pulled up to the entrance of her building.
There was usually a guard at the door but there was a woman just leaving the building to walk her dog.
Gianfranco dismissed his driver for the night and shouted for the woman to hold the door for him.
“I forgot my key,” he explained as he reached behind the woman and held the door behind her.

“That’s a fancy car you have there.
Second one this week I saw here.
Do we have someone famous living in this building that I don’t know about?” she asked.

“I don’t know personally.
I had to work late tonight; company policy to send me home in a car.”
He knew that this was his company’s policy so he blurted it out rather than tell the woman too much.
He didn’t need to alert Katelyn with the buzzer or security because he was already in the building and he knew exactly where Katelyn’s apartment was.
When he reached her apartment on the 8th floor, he rang her doorbell.
The element of surprise was a great weapon.
He knew that Jenny had to be asleep by now and he wouldn’t be disturbing her.