Made For Us (25 page)

“Wow,” Anna said, reaching into the takeout bag and helping herself to some fries. “I don’t know which part of that statement bothers me more.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact that it’s over between you and Aidan or that he told you to stay away from his family. That’s just… Wow.”

“Tell me about it.” Zoe pulled up one of the bar stools and took her lunch out of the bag. “Grab a knife and split this thing with me, you know, before I have to ask you to leave.”

“Shut up. I’m not going anywhere,” Anna said, knife in hand, evil grin on her face. “Aidan’s not the boss of me.”

They broke into a fit of giggles. “I don’t want to make any more trouble than I already did.”

“Um…excuse me? How did
you
make any trouble? The way I see it, Darcy pitched a fit on a topic she knows gets everyone riled up, and she chose to do it with an audience in hopes of getting her father and brother to cave. You were an innocent bystander, my friend, who happened to get manipulated by a teenager.”

“Nice of you to say, but not quite. I defended her. Not that it made any difference, but I just don’t agree with the way they shelter her.”

“Most of us don’t,” Anna said and then moaned with delight at the first bite of her share of the burger. “I know I shouldn’t like this so much, but I do.”

“Junk-food therapy. Trust me, it’s a good thing.” Zoe finished her bite. “When you say ‘most,’ do you mean the remaining Shaughnessys or others who dare to have an opinion?”

“The latter. I get that they’re protective of her; she’s the only girl in a sea of men over there, but they don’t realize she’s growing up. My mom and my dad have both tried to talk to Ian, and I’ve talked to all of them, but they don’t want to listen. If they don’t watch themselves, they’re going to see her on a
Girls
Gone
Wild
video and then wonder why.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell Aidan the other night, but he just wouldn’t get it.”

“They’re stubborn like that.”

Zoe was just about to make a comment when her phone rang. When she saw Martha’s name and number on the screen, her heart stopped. This was it. She was about to find out just how through with Aidan she really was.

Picking the phone up, she stepped away from Anna and took the call and listened carefully to Martha’s words. Two minutes later, she was sitting back at the island, shaking and on the verge of tears.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Anna asked frantically.

“He let me leave,” she said quietly.

Anna looked at her oddly. “What are you talking about?”

“That was my boss. I asked to be taken off of Aidan’s job and she said she would have to talk to him about it first. I put up a fuss, saying that he wouldn’t want to keep me on as his decorator, but in the back of my mind, I really thought that he would, that maybe he’d had time to calm down and would try to…I don’t know…not let me leave.” Unable to help herself, she choked back a sob. “But he did. He told Martha he was fine with her sending somebody else.” Everything inside of her hurt as she finally let herself give in and cry.

Anna’s arms immediately went around her. “I’m so sorry, Zoe, so, so sorry. I don’t even know what to say!”

“There’s nothing you can say,” she said when she finally caught her breath and sat up from Anna’s embrace. “I can’t stay here. I thought I could, but I just can’t.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I think I’m going to go back to Arizona,” she said solemnly. She hadn’t realized it until just that moment.

“Don’t make any rash decisions,” Anna pleaded. “I know it all looks bad right now, but it’s going to get better. I promise.”

Zoe shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about it all weekend, and this phone call was the final confirmation. I never should have moved here.”

“That’s not true! Moving here was something you always wanted to do! Not here specifically, but you wanted to live on the coast. Why not try another city? There are plenty of options on the East Coast, and then we can still hang out!”

“You know that I love you, Anna, but…it’s just too hard. I don’t want to have to look over my shoulder and wonder if I’m going to run into Aidan, or any of the Shaughnessys for that matter.” She sighed wearily. “It’s for the best.”

“For whom?” Anna asked.

Good
question
, Zoe thought.
Good
question
.

* * *

Saturday afternoon, Zoe sat in Anna’s house and smiled. “I think we did a great job.”

Anna sat beside her, beaming. “I agree. I can’t believe we did all this.”

Bobby stood in the middle of the room and looked at the two women. “Um, excuse me, but I seem to recall being the guy who did all of the heavy lifting and moved all of the furniture. Do you think that
maybe
you can acknowledge that?”

They both laughed and Anna stood up and hugged her brother. “Yes, yes, we couldn’t have done it without you. You’re our hero.”

Zoe couldn’t help but join in and walked over to make it a group hug. “There’s no way we could have done it without you.”

“That’s better,” Bobby said with a laugh and hugged both women tightly before stepping away. “Please tell me there is beer in the fridge.”

Anna nodded and shoved him in the right direction before facing Zoe. “So how did Martha take the news of your desertion?”

“Better than I thought. She understood and promised there would always be a place for me with the firm if I ever wanted to come back.”

“I hate this, you know,” Anna said and took the beer that Bobby was handing to her. “I still think it’s a wee bit drastic to go all the way back to Arizona.”

“I’ve got a lot of friends there and I’ve spoken to the woman who bought my firm and I’ll probably go work for her to start off with. It’s exhausting moving across country, so it will be nice not to have to job search in the middle of it all.”

“Won’t you reconsider, Zoe? Please?” Anna pleaded.

“I have to agree with Anna, Zoe. You shouldn’t have to move across the country. The Shaughnessys are a big family, but I really don’t think you’d have trouble avoiding them. Aidan’s a creature of habit, and now that you know his schedule, you’ll know how to avoid him.”

“You’re sweet, Bobby, but it’s not that simple. In the almost four months I’ve been here, I’ve had to deal with far too much. Between Aidan and the house…”

“But you have that great apartment now!” Anna said. “It’s amazing and you’ve done so much work to it to make it your own; it just doesn’t seem fair.”

It wasn’t, but Zoe wasn’t about to get into that. “You can always come and visit me,” she finally said. “I’ve already started packing. Not that there’s much since the whole house-dropping-in-the-ocean thing. But still, I’m making progress. I may leave some of the basics behind for the next tenant. You know, paying it forward and all that.”

Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “Damn you,” she muttered and pulled Zoe in for another hug. “And damn Aidan for causing this.”

“It’s not all his fault, Anna,” Zoe said, amazing herself by defending him. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. It is what it is. Let’s focus on how amazing this place looks. You picked some beautiful colors and all of those candles are the perfect touch.”

“Yeah, just in time for the next tropical storm,” Bobby said, taking a pull of his beer.

“What storm?” Zoe asked.

“It’s not going to be much of anything. More of a rain event than anything, but still, this place is prone to losing power so the candles will come in handy.”

“I got them because they make for romantic lighting,” Anna corrected.

“Please, I don’t want to think about you and romantic lighting. Any man who comes near you, I’m going to have to kill.”

Anna laughed. “Yeah…okay. You keep thinking that.”

“Anyway,” Zoe interrupted with a laugh, “when is this rain event supposed to happen?”

“Wow, you really don’t watch any television, do you?” Bobby asked with a grin.

“Nope, not since my house made the news. I kind of avoid it like the plague.”

“Understandable,” he said, nodding his head and still chuckling. “It’s actually going to roll in tonight. I’m surprised it hasn’t started raining yet. But it’s gonna rain all night and all day tomorrow.”

“So weird,” Zoe said. “This weather makes me crazy. It’s sunny and dry in Arizona. We didn’t have this constant stream of storm threats like you have here.”

“Keeps it lively,” Bobby said with a wink.

* * *

“I hate you!”

“Oh yeah? Join the club!” Aidan felt as if his head was about to explode. It was a Saturday afternoon and he was at his father’s house, hanging out with his sister while his father was out on an emergency inspection.

“I don’t care!” she screeched. “Why do you have to be such a jerk?”

“Why do you have to be such a damn brat?” he yelled back. It was the first time he’d ever really yelled at her and by the look on her face, she was just as shocked as he felt.

“I am so tired of all of you! Zoe was exactly what this family needed, what I needed! You have Hugh and Quinn and Riley and Owen, and I have nobody! There was finally a female in this family and you made her go away!”

“She wasn’t family, Darce,” Aidan said, trying to calm down. “We were just dating. She wasn’t going to be your sister or anything.” That wasn’t true. Aidan had seriously thought about a future with Zoe—before he’d acted like a major-league jackass. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to give his sister that kind of ammunition.

“I’m sick of all of you! Has it ever occurred to you that I might need a female to talk to? That it might be helpful every once in a while to speak to an adult woman who isn’t my guidance counselor or a teacher?”

Actually, it hadn’t. “We’re not perfect, Darcy. We’ve all done the best we could.”

“Well, your best sucks,” she said and flopped on the couch and crossed her arms over her chest. “I have been begging all of you for years, but you all thought you knew better. And you know what? You don’t! I can’t talk to any of you because you refuse to listen!”

How did his father live like this day in and day out? “Don’t you ever get tired of whining?”

Darcy jumped to her feet. “Don’t you ever get tired of being an asshole?”

That was it. He’d hit his limit. “You know what? You can sit here and whine all you damn want, but I am
not
going to have you talk to me like that! You talk about wanting to be treated like a grown-up and yet you’re acting like a baby right now! You want to go to a party tonight? Well, forget it. Not gonna happen. You can sit up in your room and scream and cry and call me every damn name in the book. But in the end, you’ll still be sitting in your room. There’s a storm moving in, and I know for damn sure that Dad did not say you could go.”

Darcy glared at him and silently cursed him to hell. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing her cry. Instead, she spun around and walked calmly to her room. Once her door was closed and locked, she began to formulate a plan.

“Who does he think he’s kidding?” she murmured, pulling a change of clothes out of her closet. “That was an Oscar-worthy performance and now he’ll sit down there and not bother to check on me for hours. So stupid.” Stuffing the clothes into a satchel, she grabbed her phone from her nightstand and called her best friend Chrissy. When she answered, Darcy said, “I’ll be there, but I need you to pick me up down the block.”

Fifteen minutes later, she shimmied out her bedroom window and gave the house a one-fingered salute. “Screw you, Aidan.”

* * *

“So this is a tropical storm,” Zoe said later that night as she looked out her window. Seemed like just rain and wind to her, nothing to get in a huff about. Turning away from the window, she looked around the apartment. There were boxes everywhere and it was depressing. Her Chinese takeout had gone cold and she was bored out of her mind.

There was only so much packing she could do in one night, and the thought of turning on the television was equally unappealing. “Maybe I should read,” she murmured and went in search of her Kindle. “I could read about other people’s lives and how they all get their happily ever afters. Only in books do those things exist.” But still, she curled up on the sofa and indulged just for the sake of something to do.

When her phone rang later on, Zoe was amazed to see how late it was. Almost eleven. “At this rate, I can go to bed and call it a day.” The phone rang again and reminded her why she couldn’t go to sleep just yet. The number wasn’t familiar but she answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Zoe?” a small voice said on the other end.

“Darcy? Is that you?”

“Can you come and get me?” The reception was bad and her voice kept fading in and out. “…party…people drinking…”

“Sweetheart, where are you? What’s going on? Have you called your father?”

“I…I can’t…Aidan…fight…doesn’t know…”

Her words were all broken up and Zoe had no idea what to do. “Okay, okay, text me the address because I can barely hear you and I’ll be there soon, all right?” The line went dead and for a minute Zoe feared that Darcy hadn’t heard her words. But a minute later her phone beeped with an incoming text and she sighed with relief.

Zoe really didn’t want to get involved, but she didn’t want Darcy to be stranded someplace. With nothing left to do, she called Aidan. He may not like it, but it was his family and his problem to deal with.

Just like he wanted.

The call went directly to voice mail and Zoe cursed. Of course there was a possibility that he really was on the other line or that his phone was off, but she couldn’t help but be annoyed at the thought that maybe he was purposely not answering her call. Not leaving a message, she dialed Ian’s number. The answering machine picked up, and this time she decided to leave a message. Where the heck were they?

“Ian, it’s Zoe. I just got a call from Darcy and I’m really concerned for her. I’m going to go pick her up. The weather’s really bad and I was hoping to reach you or Aidan, but I can’t seem to get either of you on the phone. I just wanted you to know that I’m going to get her and I’ll bring her home as soon as I can, okay? Um…okay. Bye.”