Secondhand Purses (12 page)

Son of a bitch.

I stepped back and slammed the door shut in his face. I heard a crash out in front of the apartment, but I didn’t give a shit.

How the hell had this happened?

The knocking started again, becoming intense pounding.

A growl started deep in my throat as I stormed towards the door, tearing it open, ready to give him a brutally honest piece of my mind.

I swung the door open so quickly the momentum knocked me a bit of balance and I started to fall, before I felt strong arms grab me and break the impending impact. I looked up into the eyes I had studied intensely ten years ago. The eyes that had haunted my dreams and caused my nightmares.

“We really must stop meeting this way.” A sexy as hell smirk formed on his perfect lips as he righted me.

My breath caught as I thought of a happier time when I’d heard those words. And I reacted. I stepped forward, putting one hand on each shoulder and fixing the simple heartfelt smile of a teenager in love on my face. Just when he relaxed and smiled back down at me, I brought my knee up and made such wonderfully strong contact that I was pretty sure that children were no longer a consideration for this man.

As he lay writhing on the ground in agony, I barked out a harsh laugh as I turned to walk back into my apartment. Before slamming the door one last time on him, I turned and glared down at him over my shoulder.

“It’s Alex, now.”

Shit. Nick was back.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What the hell. How had this happened? How had he found me?

I was no longer feeling weakness in my legs as I paced the length of my apartment, somewhat hyperventilating that this blast from my past decided to darken my doorstep.

I had come so far in forgetting him. Well, okay, maybe not forgetting him, but certainly trying to. That might have been a lie, too.

Why did he have to come find me? It had been ten years. I would have been perfectly fine living my entire life not finding out how freaking gorgeous he had become. I mean, seriously. He was every woman’s dream who had a pulse, and maybe even some who didn’t.

I was so lost in my thoughts and somewhat stuck in the past, that I didn’t realize that Nick had come into my apartment and was standing right behind me listening to me sputter on about his reemergence in my life.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt his hand on my arm, spinning me around and forcing me to look him in the eyes. Eyes that looked as if they had murder on their mind. Eek and gulp.

“Vicki, what the fu-“ He leaned forward, glowering at me as he started yelling, but I cut him off before he could get too much steam under his belt.

“Oh, no. You do
not
get to barge in to my apartment, man handle me and start screaming at me. You think that after ten years that you know who I am and you think you have any claim over my time? No, Nick, you do not.”

I had walked towards him as my voice raised in volume and tone, so far back that I had him pushed against a wall. I was completely in his face with ten years of pent up anger and humiliation.

“What the hell happened to you, Vic? You used to be so sweet and adorable, and, well, friendly. What happened to you here?”

His eyes were filled with confusion and concern, as if he really gave a damn about my well-being.

“Why are you here, Nick? Why?” The wind had gone out of my sails a bit.

I walked away from him to my living room and sat on the couch, with my head in my hands. I was having a hard time reconciling the boy I knew against the man in my apartment.

I felt the couch dip next to me. I looked at him out of the side of my eye, studying his face. He looked tired, really tired. Worn. Something was wrong.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked it softly and tried to take any bite out of my question.

He shook his head and laughed a little bit.

“What’s wrong with
me?
I just got attacked by a crazy madwoman who doesn’t apparently know what her own name is and is for some reason really angry with me. I should be the one who is upset.”

“Why the hell do you think that
you
should be the one with the right to be upset? You must be smoking some seriously good shit if you somehow have made yourself to be the victim here.”

“Vic…”

“Alex.” I interrupted him with acidity in my voice.

“Fine,
Alex
. Where were you?”

Huh?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was here in Atlanta, you knew I was getting moved here by my parents.”

“No, that day. That last day. Where were you? I waited for you. Next thing I know I hear a noise and when I left our spot at Nonna’s, I found a pile of destroyed cakes and cookies and stuff, but no Vicki. So, I’ll ask again, where were you?”

Tears filled my eyes as I looked at him, shaking my head at him, silently begging him to stop talking about that night, about the rejection I’d heard.

“I was there, Nick. I heard it all.”

“I don’t understand, heard what? Why didn’t you come to me? If you were there, where were you?”

“I came out the back of the house, and was heading over to our little spot. I heard two voices, both raised. That ass wipe cousin of yours, Eddie, was there. I heard every word that you two said. Everything, every single word. I wish I could un-hear it, but that’s not possible. I wish I had stayed in the kitchen five minutes longer.”

He still looked at me as if he was really confused as to what happened.

“I don’t understand. I remember that Eddie was there and we were talking, but then I heard a crash, we went and look and there was frosting and crap on the ground but you were nowhere. What did Eddie say to upset you? We both know he’s a dick.”

“It was you, you hard headed ass. It was what
you
said, not what Eddie said. I don’t give a rat’s patootie what that dipshit said. He never mattered to me, he was like all those other idiots manufactured by the football program at the school. But you?
You
were supposed to be different. You saw beyond the exterior and realized that maybe what was inside counted. You always looked at me as if you saw
me
. You didn’t see my weight, my clothes, my hair, my less than perfect everything. You saw me. You said you loved me.”

“Technically, I said ‘me too’.” His eyes glinted with humor. I punched his left arm with a little more force than necessary. It made me feel moderately better at the grunt he let out when I made contact, as well as the way he rubbed his arm with his right hand while glaring at me a little.

“Fine, you said ‘me too’. But you knew what you were saying it to. That was my best day ever. Still is. But then you killed it.”

“What the hell did I say to make you run scared?” Nick had stood up, running his hands through that beautiful hair I’d always loved.

“Help me out a little, here, Vic. I mean, Alex. I mean…what did you hear me say?”

“
We’re not lovebirds, and if you tell anyone I’ll break your nose.”
I sneered at him as I recounted his words. I wasn’t sure if I had it perfectly correct, but it was the gist of what I’d heard that day. It was certainly what my heart heard.

His eyes widened in shock. He started shaking back and forth.

“
That’s
what you heard? That’s what made you run from me? To never let me know how to reach you? You changed your phone number, you closed down your MySpace. Do you know that every year since I’ve tried to find you? I would ask Nonna but she said if you’d wanted me to be able to find you, you’d have made it easier. And that if I really wanted to find you, I would be able to. I never
stopped
trying to find you, not for ten freakin’ years! But no wonder I couldn’t, I was looking for my awesome, sweet, wonderful Vicki. Not this cold person named Alex that I never knew.”

“How dare you? I mean, seriously? You broke my heart. Broke it. Irreparable damage. And you have the balls to try to turn this on me?”

“V-Alex, we
weren’t
love birds. Did I love you? Yes, hell yes. But was I all gooey googley eyes over you? No. I wasn’t. And neither were you because you weren’t the googley eye type of girl, thank God. If you had been like one of those fake girls, fawning all over me, I wouldn’t have been interested in you at all. You were the first girl who talked to me like I was just another guy. You gave me such a hard time, you confused the hell out of me, and you made me laugh. You liked me for who I was, not for how I looked or the fact that I was on the football team. So no, we were not love birds. You were my best friend and the most important person to me.”

Crap. I felt about two inches tall as he said this to me. But still, I heard what I heard and I wasn’t going to let that go. I wasn’t ready to let it go, I had held on to it too long, it had become a part of who I was. But damn, seriously, it hurt so bad to hear him.

“You broke my heart, Nick. Maybe we weren’t ‘love birds’, but there was love. You know it as well as I do that there was love between us.”

“I’ve already admitted that, Vi- Alex.” He interrupted, frustration evident in his voice. I held my hand up in his face.

“You
knew
there was love and you
knew
that was what Eddie meant. We both know that’s what he meant. We both know that what you were really telling him was that there was no love. That you didn’t love me. Don’t blow smoke up my ass, Nick. You owe me more than that.”

“Really? I owe you more than that? Well, you owed me a chance to explain myself. Ten freaking years ago. You want to talk about love? Well, you obviously didn’t love me enough to let me explain myself, did you?”

We both stood there, only three feet apart but with ten years between us, both staring at each other, silently begging the other to say whatever words would fix the hurt we’d both caused. It was too late.

I cleared my throat.

“Um, well, thank you for coming by. I appreciate you explaining everything. But, was that the only reason you came by?”

Nick paled a bit and I could see him struggle to swallow past something that appeared to be stuck in his throat.

“Have a seat, Vic, I mean, Alex. Dammit, I’m never going to get used to that.”

I eyed him suspiciously as I sat on the very edge of the couch, as far away from him as I possibly could get. He sat down next to me and I flinched as he reached for my hand, pulling it away from him. I did not like this one bit. Something told me I was not going to like the next thing that came out of his mouth.

“Seriously, Nick, you are freaking me the hell out. Just say what it is you came here to say.”

“Nonna’s dead.”

cHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Vic…Vic? Earth to Vicki. Are you okay? Can you hear me? Sweetie, talk to me.”

He sounded a million miles away. I was having a hard time breathing, the two words he blurted out tearing through my heart like razor blades. I felt like I was bleeding to death from the inside out.

I sat still as a statue. Memories and words were flying through my brain.

I saw the age marks on Nonna’s wrinkled hands as she piped crème filling into a just cooled cannoli. I saw her the strength in her arms defy her age with the speed that she could whip up batter.

I heard the slight Italian accent that somehow had been passed down from her grandmother, the passion with which she would speak about things like what type of flour was best, the benefit of using unsalted butter when you were baking.

I could see the smudges of flour on her face, as she wiped her forehead in a fruitless battle against the heat in her kitchen in July, because she didn’t believe in air conditioning.

I would never see these things again in person, because I was too busy and too prideful to see her. I never believed she wouldn’t be there. I always thought I had enough time.

I could hear Bryn’s words from yesterday.

“
This woman was your grandmother and you have never made the effort? Why? You obviously adore her.”

What had I done? Why hadn’t I given up even just one weekend of my time to go see her?

“How?”

“How, what?”

“How did she… die?” A sob broke from my throat as I said that last word, as if saying it out loud, acknowledging it, made it real.

He shrugged, with watery eyes that betrayed his true emotions despite his attempt at a macho air of nonchalance.

“No idea, honestly. The coroner just chocked it up to old age.”

“How old was she?”

“You didn’t know?” He asked this incredulously, which I totally got. I mean, we were so close and I still had no idea of her age. I shook my head, no, slowly.

“She was ninety seven.”

“Oh.” Wow. That was really old. I mean, I knew she was up there, but her attitude and that infectious energy she had made it seem impossible that she could actually be that old.

“How old did you
think
she was?”

I had to think a moment before I answered. I needed to explain in one answer how it was that I had no idea how old this woman was who almost meant more to me than my own mother, because she knew me better.

“Ageless.”

He mulled my answer over for a moment or two, before nodding in agreement. We sat there in companionable silence, each mourning the loss of the amazing, seemingly invincible Nonna in our way.

“Did she suffer? Please tell me she didn’t suffer at all. I couldn’t stand to think of her in any form of pain.” I grabbed his arm, begging him with my eyes to lie if he had to. I couldn’t bear to think that she had been in any type of pain. He looked down at my fingers that were gripping his arm in surprise, then his eye softened.

“No, she didn’t feel anything.” His voice was thick and gruff with emotion. He cleared his throat, turned away from me and quickly swiped at his eyes before continuing. I waited quietly for him to continue.

“I found her.” His voice broke on this admission and my heart broke for him as he said it. I knew they were close, she was his aunt, but meant so much more to him.

“Oh, Nick.”

He shook his head at me. I somehow knew he needed me to put a stop to the sympathy if he was going to get through this.

“We were supposed to go out for lunch, my treat, to celebrate me opening my own repair shop. I had moved up near her to keep an eye on her, but I told her it was because I was a fan of the salt air. We only lived about a street away.” Nick took a breath and looked away from me.

“I was there, at her front door, at eleven thirty, just as we had agreed upon. But, when I rang the doorbell, nothing. I waited and waited, ringing the bell every few minutes. Nonna was never late. She was obnoxious about being on time for all things.”

“
A late person is a rude person.”
We said simultaneously, laughing at the shared memory. I reached for his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze, encouraging him to continue.

Nick drew a deep breath and plunged back in.

“I finally tried opening the door, figuring it would be locked. But it wasn’t. That scared the shit out of me. I envisioned all sorts of worst case scenarios. I walked through the house, calling her name. Nothing. I finally knocked on her bedroom door. The door opened on its own a little, as I knocked on it. I thought she was sleeping. She was in her nightgown in bed. I figured she and the girls had been up playing poker again, smoking cigars and drinking wine. But then I realized I didn’t smell that nasty cigar smell in the house.”

“Wait, cigars?”

He barked out a laugh.

“She wasn’t the sweet, quiet old lady you thought she was.”

I shook my head, smiling at the image of the poker playing dogs, just replaced by a bunch of wrinkled old women smoking cigars and taking shots of whiskey.

“I approached her bed and saw her resting with a slight smile on her face. In bed next to her was a letter from you. I couldn’t help but pick it up, I recognized the handwriting in a heartbeat.”

I whipped my head to look at him in surprise.

“I, uh, well. Let’s just say I’d seen that writing before and leave it at that.”

“Okay?”

“I read the letter, trying to get some sort of clue about what had happened to you. I read about some raspberry and ganache tart thing you had created, and some steal of a purse you found on EBay. I laughed at that, because Nonna was all about finding used purses. I remember looking down at her, sleeping so soundly through the pounding on the door and with me standing right there. She looked so peaceful, happy somehow, lying there with your letter next to her. I looked closer, and realized that her chest wasn’t moving. I noticed her color was gone. Her vibrancy was gone. Everything that was so, well,
Nonna
about her, was gone. I ran out of the room and called 911. Called to get someone there to help me.”

I just sat there, immobilized by his words. She had spent her last moments of life reading my letter. My meaningless letter was the last thing she saw. Tears were pouring down my cheeks uninhibited as the full impact of the loss hit me. Even though I hadn’t really made an effort to see her, I couldn’t imagine a world without her.

I felt Nick shift closer to me, and cautiously put his arm around my shoulder and pull me closer to him. I stiffened at first, but relaxed into him after a moment, needing the warm comfort being offered to me.

About fifteen minutes later, my tears dried and my head started pounding. That’s why I never cried, it always led to a migraine.

I rubbed my temples and turned my head to look at Nick. Apparently he had been crying too, if the moisture in the corners of his eyes were any indication.

“When did this all happen?”

“Three weeks ago.”

Three weeks. So I’d missed everything. I’d missed every opportunity to pay my respects and say a final goodbye.

“I can’t believe I missed the funeral.”

“You didn’t miss a thing, there wasn’t one.”

I whipped my head around in shock.

“What do you mean, no funeral?”

“She’d made it clear she wanted no funeral. She hated going to them, so she didn’t want to be forced to go to her own. She had left instructions with her lawyer of everything that was to be done. She’s buried in her wedding dress next to her husband and son.”

I felt a little less sadness to realize that Nonna was finally with the husband and son she had lost. Wherever they all were, they were together as a family for the first time.

I realized that Nick’s arm was still around me. That wasn’t a good idea. Not a good idea at all. I slipped out from under his arm as I stood up, walking to the kitchen.

“You want some water or something? Uh, something to eat?”

The crooked smile that I used to love on the boy was devastating on the man. Damn, I was going to have to be careful, here. It would be too easy to fall back in love with him.

“Sure, I could eat.” He groaned as he stretched, reaching his arms back as he did so. Yummy abs. Crap. Memo to self, nothing on Nick is yummy. Nothing.

He came into the kitchen as I pulled out the fixings for a sandwich. He watched me work, handing me things as I asked for them. It was too easy to go back into this easy comradery that we used to have.

Nick groaned his appreciation as he bit into the sandwich.

“Still have a hollow stomach that is a bottomless pit, do you?” I laughed, remembering how he could put away zeppole.

He smiled at me, wiping a drop of mayo from the corner of his mouth with back of his hand.

“Great memory, and always of the most flattering things about me. Nah, I’d just been travelling for the past twelve hours, and haven’t taken a break for food. I’m a starving man.”

“Twelve hours?”

“Well, yeah. Once I was able to figure out where you live, after combing through Nonna’s paperwork, I booked the first possible flight. Which means I had two layovers even though normally a flight from Boston to Atlanta would only be maybe three hours tops. It was brutal, but I got here. Mission accomplished.”

“Um, thanks for coming out all this way to tell me that Nonna had passed away. I don’t know why you felt the need to come all the way down to Atlanta to let me know, but I appreciate the personal touch. And I appreciate you letting me know about, you know, that day.”

“That’s not the only reason I came here, Vic. Sorry, Alex.” He rushed that once I glared at him for calling me that horrid name I hated.

“So, why did you come?”

“To bring you back.”

What?

“Bring me back? To what? Why would you be expecting to bring me anywhere?” This seriously made no sense at all.

“Bring you back to New England. Specifically to Onset, Massachusetts”

He chuckled at my horrified expression.

“Alex, you need to come back. Nonna named you in her will. We need you in order to finalize this.”

“She…she named me in her will? Why? I was just one kid from one summer?”

“You were so much more than that and you know it. You were her grandchild. If not by birth, then definitely by choice. You were the grandchild that her heart chose, and she never let you go.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

It appeared that I would be going home to Nonna, after all.