The Offer (34 page)

Lach looks up
from his beer, his face tired from our day of monotonous
brainstorming. “What?”

I grab my beer
off the kitchen counter and sit down across from him in my living
room. “Justine is a woman I took to the opera once.”

“The opera.”
He snorts, giving a rare smile. So glad it was at my expense.

“Yes, the
opera. She comes from money. A lot of it. In fact, it was my father
who set us up. He still believes that you’re supposed to date money
to get ahead, and from what I understood, her family has a lot of
money and power. She’s a gorgeous gal and you’re not too ugly a
man, so maybe you can wine and dine her and see if we can get an
investment out of her.”

He considers
that. “What kind of money and power?”

I shrug and
take a sip of my beer. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask.”

“Aye, I see.
Too busy shagging her.”

“Actually,
no,” I point out and there’s that bloody pressure in my heart. “No,
I wasn’t interested in her.”

“She’s
gorgeous and has money and you weren’t interested?” he asks. “What
makes you think I will be?”

“Because,” I
tell him. I exhale loudly. “I was with Nicola at the time.”

“Ah,” he says,
knowing far too much about her already. I haven’t really shut up
about her to be honest. Perhaps that’s why he always looks like he
wants to kill himself.

“Actually,” I
go on, “we weren’t dating at that time but…but that’s when she
really started to get under my skin, you know. The whole time I was
with Justine, I was just thinking about Nicola. Looking back, I can
see that I was already a goner. Just too stubborn at the time to
see it.”

“What’s your
excuse now?”

“What?”

“You won’t
stop talking about this bloody bird. If you’re not talking about
the building it’s her and I’m sorry, but in my professional
opinion, you need to either move the hell on or get off your
stubborn arse and go do something about it. Stop being such a
pansy.”

“Your
professional opinion?” I repeat.

He gives me a
look. “Hey, I’m in rugby, right? And aside from some of these
scars,” he touches a few faded ones on his cheekbone, “I ain’t bad
to look at. Which means, I get more pussy than you probably
do.”

The old me
would have challenged that but having a pissing contest with my
cousin doesn’t seem right.

Not right now,
anyway.

I’ll come back
to this one later.

“And,” he
adds, “with all the pussy comes all the problems. Go sort your shit
out soon or I’m going to start using your head as a rugby ball. I
need the bloody practice.”

I frown at
him. “So uncouth.” But I don’t push it. We may be the same height,
and I may almost have the same amount of muscle as he has, but he
doesn’t seem to give a rat’s arse about messing up his face,
whereas I do.

The only thing
holding me back from what he suggests, from what Taylor suggested,
is the same old story. My goddamn pride. My goddamn fear.

What if I go
after Nicola and she turns away? She may not want to see me again.
She may never trust me again. Even though right now I have nothing
left but this dull, hollow ache inside, like some vital part of me
has been removed. I also have the unknown on my side and that
dangerous side of hope. In the here and now, I can bitch and moan
like a little girl as long as I never do anything about it. I can
just imagine that maybe one day, in due time, it will all work
out.

But I
don’t want to listen to
my
motto. Not this time. I’m not leaving this to sort itself
out in due time, to take that chance that things will work
out.

Nicola is
worth so much more than chance.

I need to have
no regrets.

You know
that part of the movie when the hero gets dragged through the mud,
or kicked off the team, or captured by the crime syndicate, and all
hope is lost and yet you know, no matter what, somehow it’s all
going to come together and the hero is going to get his big fat
happy ending. And while he’s being tortured or the town turns
against him or his wife walks out on him, you feel for him but
you’re kind of spurred forward by the knowledge that
everything
will
work out in
the end. It just has to.

Well, I wish I
could say the same could be applied to my own life. Because I feel
like I’ve fallen off a cliff, been kicked through the mud and been
tortured and there’s no sense of hope or a happy ending in
sight.

Of course, all
these blows I’m taking, well, they’re right in my heart. But that’s
where they count, that’s where they hurt the most. And it’s kind of
ridiculous, here I am, nearly two months later and I’m still this
raw, gaping open wound when it comes to Bram. The rest of my life
has some ups and downs. I live with Kayla still while I’m
constantly searching for an affordable apartment. It’s actually not
so bad, and while I know Kayla really appreciates the rent I pay, I
know I’m also cramping her style. I mean, Kayla likes to have her
fun and more and more she stays out at whatever dude she’s seeing’s
place.

So I know that
having me and a five-year-old girl in her place isn’t exactly ideal
but she knows I’m working on it. My job at the Lion has been going
well enough. I mean, it’s a lot of work that I’m usually not
interested in, and James can be a real bitch of a boss sometimes.
But it gives me money and my savings account has grown and grown.
Even if everything inside me still feels like it’s constantly
collapsing and rebuilding itself, I’ve got some form of security
for the both of us.

I’ve also been
concentrating on my designing more and more. I’ll spend hours at
the sewing machine in the mornings and at night. Being creative is
great fuel and I have to admit, it feels good to be pleasantly
distracted. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep my mind from
thinking about Bram.

Which it does.
All the time. And I’m ashamed to admit it, even to myself. I don’t
talk about him with Steph or Kayla and when I do see Linden, I
notice he’s careful not to bring him up either. There have been a
few close calls though. Once I heard he was coming to the Lion with
Linden, so I went and hid in James’s office for an hour, pretending
to work on something. All very mature, I know, but at the moment I
care so much about keeping my heart alive that I’m shielding it
from everything in sight.

I just want to
stop feeling this deep, cold hole inside me when I wake up and
realize I’m alone. I want to stop imagining what it’s like to have
Bram hold me in his arms when I’m sad or run his hands over my body
when I’m not. I want to pretend I never had that connection with a
man who made me feel wild and free and full of life. I want so much
that I can’t have.

And so, I
trudge onward, that hero in the story, even though I haven’t done
anything brave. I’m just another broken-souled person on this
planet, waiting for time to pass. I don’t feel that undercurrent of
“everything will be all right.” I don’t see how I can possibly have
a Happily Ever After, that would mean things have to go back to the
way they were and how can I ever forget the pain that follows me
everywhere?

“Cheer up,
buttercup,” Steph says to me. I can’t help but wince at the word.
It reminds me too much of that damn yellow couch.

We’re sitting
in a booth at the Lion. Ava is across from us and coloring away in
a coloring book. Lisa called in sick and I had to work, so I had no
choice but to bring Ava in. Luckily James is pretty good about that
and she usually just hangs out in the back office with me. Steph is
on her lunch break and wanted to have a drink. Lately I’d been
leaning on my friend a lot, so I figured I owed her one.

“Sorry,” I
apologize to her.

“Don’t be
sorry,” she says, peeling the label off her beer. “I just hate
seeing you look so sad. You know, now. And all the time.”

“I’m fine,” I
tell her, and watch as she takes the label all the way off then
starts picking at the sticky bits that remain. “You and Linden
having problems?”

She stops and
looks up at me. “Huh?”

“Sexual
frustration,” I say, nodding at the bottle. “It’s why you’re
peeling off the label.”

“Oh,” she
says. She pushes her beer away, looking at it in surprise. “No. No,
Linden is Linden, you know? If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s
– ”

I raise my
hand. “Please. Just stop.”

She shrugs and
then picks up her coaster, starts twirling it around. And around.
And around.

“Are you
okay?” I ask her, noticing her foot is tapping on the floor as
well.

“
Hmmm?”
She looks at me. She says it rather absently but it’s a
little
too
absently.

“You’re acting
like a nervous wreck.”

“Mommy,” Ava
says in a lilting voice. “I drew you a bugosaur.”

She proudly
displays her coloring book. She hasn’t even colored in the pictures
that she’s supposed to, she’s just drawn green and brown blobs in
all the white space. Blobs with legs. Bugosaurs, I guess.

“Thank you,
sweetie,” I tell her and she goes back at it, tongue hanging out of
the side of her mouth.

“Nicola,”
Steph says uneasily.

I give her a
look. “What is it?”

“Are you still
in love with Bram?”

Where the hell
did that come from? I can feel my face go white as I wonder if I
was speaking all my thoughts out loud earlier. “What?” I can’t help
but gasp. I look over at Ava and she’s watching me, frowning and
pouting a little at the mere mention of his name.

“Do you love
him?”

I blink at
her. My heart thuds against my ribs, as if to remind me that it’s
still beating.

“Oh, Steph,” I
start to say, searching for words, for a way to deflect. “It’s not
that simple.”

“
It
is
that simple,”
she says, her eyes boring holes into mine. “It’s the simplest of
questions. You either love him. Or you don’t. There are no maybes
in love.”

Whoa. Steph is
being deep. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t want to get
deep. I don’t want to dive down there and pull out what remains of
him from far inside me.

“I…”

She’s staring
at me. Ava is staring at me.

And I can’t
lie.

I sigh,
slowly, softly. “Yes. I love him.”

Just saying
those words makes my heart seem to exhale.

“Good,” Steph
says, smiling smugly to herself.

“Good?” My
eyes nearly bug out. “Why is that good? It’s bad. It’s terrible. I
don’t want to love him. I want to be free of all that and move
on.”

She wags her
brows at me, that stupid smirk still on her face. “Love is good, my
friend, love is good.”

“What is wrong
with you?” I punch her lightly on the arm. “Why did you ask me
that?”

She takes a
long swig of her beer and says, “Do you know what the worst way to
start a sentence is?”

“I farted!”
Ava yells with a big smile. “That’s the worst way.”

Steph
nods her approval at Ava and then looks back to me. “Do you know
what the
second
worst way
is?”

“What?”

“Please don’t
hate me,” she answers and for a moment her smile fades and she
flinches, as if I’m about to punch her in the face next. “And
seriously, Nicola, please don’t hate me.”

She looks over
at the door to the Lion and my eyes follow. There, outside in the
sunshine, is the familiar silhouette of a man. He opens the door
and steps inside.

I feel like
I’m sinking and rising at the same time.

I feel
like I
definitely
hate
Stephanie right now.

It’s Bram and
he’s walking toward us and I’m gripping the edge of the table so
hard, I may actually break it in two.

She leans into
me, whispers in my ear, “I’m sorry. He had to see you and I knew if
I told you, you wouldn’t meet with him.” Then she quickly gets out
of the booth, exchanges a quick look with Bram as she walks past
him and out the door.

“Nicola,” Bram
says, his throaty accent jarring me to the core. He stands in a
sharp navy suit just a few feet away from the table, hands at his
side. His face, that beautiful, handsome face, is the most serious
I’ve ever seen on him.

“Bram?” Ava
says softly and I look to her, her eyes wide with wonderment.
“Bram?” she repeats louder.

“Hey, little
one,” he says, grinning at her and she immediately stands up in her
seat, flapping her arms up and down. It would be the cutest thing I
have ever seen, if it weren’t for the circumstances. I may have
just said that I was still in love with Bram, but that didn’t mean
I wanted to see him. It didn’t mean that it would change the past.
You can love someone and not do anything about it.

But Ava
doesn’t care. She runs to the end of the booth and practically
throws herself at him. He envelopes her into a big hug, picking her
up off the ground and I’m torn between being angry and wanting to
break down and cry. There are too many big things inside me, vying
for me to make a choice, to pay them all attention and in the end
I’m just a giant mess.

Bram carefully
places her back on the ground but Ava keeps jumping around, going
crazy. She’s smiling so big, her eyes are so wide, her breath so
sharp and shallow.

Her breath
shouldn’t be like that.

While Bram is
now staring at me, I’m staring at Ava in concern, watching her
carefully, trying to listen.

“Bram-a-lama…”
she starts to sing but she stops and tries to take a deep breath.
Her face is going white before my eyes and she rocks on her feet
back and forth.