Filed to story: The Best Thing by Mariana Zapata
“Jonah, it’s Lenny again. I’m worried about you. Where the hell are you hiding?”
My best friend hadn’t said anything in two whole minutes.
In the first sixty seconds, she had narrowed her eyes, looked up at the ceiling, made a thoughtful face, looked back at me, narrowed her eyes some more, and then pressed her lips together, squinting so much that she probably couldn’t see anything.
In that same amount of time, I had crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to make a comment.
Over the course of the next minute, she had pulled her phone out of her purse, which had been sitting on top of my desk since she was in the chair across from me, and started pecking away at the screen. Luna didn’t let me down as she finally loosened her lips, sat back in the chair, and took a deep breath. Her eyes went wide a moment before those green eyes flicked back in my direction as we sat there in my office the following morning.
Her index finger came up a second before she held up her phone with her other hand and aimed the screen at me. “This is him?”
The image on the screen was of a deeply olive-skinned man with shorts halfway up his thighs, a green short-sleeved jersey stretched so tight across his chest it made you wonder how the hell he got it on and off, standing on a field with his arms loose at his sides. The man had biceps so big it looked like someone had shoved a ball under his skin, thighs wide and tight and lined with muscles that overlapped each other. The ultra-serious expression on his face, brows furrowed, mouth slightly parted, irritated the fuck out of me.
“Yeah, that’s Jonah,” I confirmed, looking back at Luna’s face because I didn’t want to look at his anymore than I needed to.
My best friend gaped, literally gaped, as she looked back at the screen. Her finger started pecking away at her phone again, and it didn’t take a genius to guess she was scrolling through more pictures of him.
I sighed. “You’re about to say something stupid, aren’t you?”
Fucking Luna nodded before she made yet another face—still at her screen—and asked, in total fucking disbelief, “You slept with him?”
“No, we just played patty-cake,” I answered her dryly.
Her phone went down, and I had her undivided attention again. Even her elbows went to her thighs as she leaned forward and asked way too carefully, “No, Lenny, for real. You. Had. Sex. With. Him?”
I blinked. I didn’t need that reminder. “Yes.”
“Him?”
I poked at my inner cheek with the tip of my tongue. “I’m not really feeling your tone of voice right now.”
This bish looked back at the picture of Jonah Collins and shook her head again like she couldn’t believe it. “I just… I mean…” She was stuttering. She was literally stuttering, and I just about rolled my fucking eyes at her.
I mean, yeah, I understood. Jonah was… a fucker, of course… a dipshit, dumbass, motherfucker… but he was beautiful. Handsome in a way that only few men could be, not feminine at all, but sculpted so perfectly from his perfect hairline to his roughly striking face… and then there was that body.
God, I hated his guts, no matter what I told myself about not feeling anything. Hatred. Hatred was a feeling. But it was also a verb sometimes.
“Him?” she asked again in disbelief.
“I think I might be starting to get a little offended by how surprised you sound, Luna,” I told her, totally joking, because really, I did get it.
“I always… you never…” She kept stopping and starting with her words as she grew flustered. “You’ve never said anything about a guy before, Len. Not once in ten years. I just thought you were… asexual or something for the longest time.” Her cheeks went pink as she whispered, “I thought you were a virgin until… you know.”
I blinked at her again, knowing she had a point. “Yeah, no.”
She gasped. “You never said anything! I thought for a while there you had something going on with that Noah guy, but then nothing ever happened, and I know you, if you really liked him, I bet you would have gone for it, and—did you lose it to him?”
My shady-ass past was finally coming to light. “I’m thirty-one. I didn’t lose my virginity to Jonah, Luna. Jesus.”
“Who then?”
There was a reason I’d never brought this up before: I just hadn’t seen the point. On the other hand, Luna had given me some intimate details of her and the guys she’d dated before so… it was the least I owed her. “This one guy I was friends with when I started going to college. He was in a few of my classes.” I shrugged, thinking about the guy that I had liked as a friend.
“Let me see a picture of him.”
I rolled my eyes with a snort. “Stalker, much?”
“Does he look like him?” she asked, shaking her phone at me.
I slid her a look. “No. And stop looking so surprised. You might start hurting my feelings.”
That had her groaning. “You know what I mean!”
I shrugged my good shoulder at her, honestly relieved that I had finally managed to tell her the entire story. At least 90 percent of it. Even though she was my best friend, she didn’t need to hear the bad parts. No one did. I knew there were plenty of things she hadn’t shared with me over the years. The same way I knew there were a handful of other things I had never told her either.
“So he’s back?” she asked, focused back on her screen.
“Yeah.”
Her green eyes went wide as she sat in the chair, eyes moving back to her phone while she processed my news. “What are you going to do?” she asked after a second.
“See what he says,” I answered her simply. “I don’t really have another choice.” It wasn’t like I could pick him up by his ankles and give him the shakedown over the side of a skyscraper so he’d tell me why he was here or what he wanted. Unfortunately.
“What does Grandpa Gus think?”
Fuck me. I straight-up grimaced at her.
That was what it took to get her to shove her phone back into her purse, drop her mouth wide, and gasp, “You haven’t told him?”
I thought about lunch the day before and winced at how I’d talked myself out of telling him anything, even after he asked me if I was constipated from the faces I’d been making. “No…”
“Lenny!”
“I was going to, but he was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to ruin it,” I explained, knowing it sounded about as lame of an excuse as it really was.
Luna’s mouth was still open as she shook her head for about the tenth time in the last ten minutes. I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t believe I’d been that much of a coward either. “You know, I never thought the day would come where I’d be the one calling you a chickenshit.”
I rolled my eyes before glancing back down at the claim I had been in the middle of filing so I could get reimbursed for a faulty leg press that I’d had to pay to get repaired. “You know, I never thought the day would come where I would be calling you a smart-ass, Luna, but look at that, miracles do come true,” I muttered in return… even though we both knew she was totally right.
I was being a chickenshit. A big one.
And she hadn’t been the first one to call me out on it. Peter had too the night before after I’d told him about my surprise visitor, and that was because at this point, other than Luna, he was the only other person who knew what I was avoiding.
That was: telling Grandpa Gus something he should have known months ago.
The truth… not that I had ever technically lied to any of them. I just hadn’t said anything, period. That was the only factor that worked in my favor: that none of them had known. Until now at least.
Grandpa was going to be even more pissed he was the last person to find out.
Luna had canceled on me the night before because her daughter hadn’t been feeling well still, and we’d planned for her to come by the gym in the morning while her father-in-law watched her Ava, which was how and why we were here, in the office at the gym with the door closed, with her making crazy faces at me because I had sex with one of the most attractive rugby players in the world.
Luna Ripley, one of my top five favorite people in the entire world, gaped again before bursting out laughing. “Rip said something similar a few days ago, but what can I say? I’ve mastered my craft by learning from the best,” she said, referring to her husband.
Her husband.
Jesus.
We were old enough to be married now, I remembered, deciding to focus on that for a second. Well, she was married. This was who we were now. Making and canceling plans because of kids. Real, human children.
Fuck, I still hadn’t gotten used to that.
Her comment got a groan out of my throat as I shoved aside this thing with Grandpa Gus and Jonah that loomed over my head. “Bish, I know you’re not talking about my pal Rip like that.”
“Bish, we both know who I’m talking about,” she claimed, bringing a smile onto my face as I signed my signature on the bold line of the form.
“Hey, don’t talk about Grandpa like that either.”
That got her laughing one more time. “I can’t believe it though,” she said after a moment. “How have you not told him? He always knows everything. He knew I was pregnant before I did, remember? Now that I think about, I’m surprised he didn’t hire a private investigator or anything.”
I’d forgotten that, but she was right. She’d been around the ageless vampire long enough to know how the man worked. And he hadn’t hired a PI because I’d asked him very, very nicely.
It hit me then that he had let me get away with not telling him about Jonah.
“After he got mad, initially, he just never asked. Then last night, he left as soon as I got home because it was pickleball night, and I was in my room by the time he got back. This morning he was arguing with the tech people for our internet service, and we barely said two words to each other,” I tried to explain, hearing my own bullshit and cringing at it.
Excuses, fucking excuses. I was a total chickenshit now. Seriously.
This person that was the closest thing I would ever have to a sister snorted across from me, thinking the same thing.
It was my turn to make a face at one of the best people in my life. “I don’t know what the hell you’re snorting about.”
She was smiling—she was always fucking smiling—as she glanced at her ancient watch, then stood up and shook her blue-haired head, hand gripping the strap of her purse. “You know what I’m snorting at, Len.” She smiled even wider. “I need to go. I’m meeting up with Rip for lunch, but text me later.” The little shit wiggled her eyebrows. “You know, after you tell Grandpa G about you-know-who. Hehe.”
I scowled as I got up and kissed her on the cheek, getting one back. “Tell him I said hi. Are we still on for lunch next week?”
“I will, and, yes, we’re on.” Luna slid me a smile and held her palm up between us, and I smacked it. “I know he’s an asshole, but he’s a really hot one, Len. Almost as hot as Rip. I’m so proud of you.”
I groaned and waited until she was halfway down the short hall before I called out, “I love you, Luna!”
“Love you too, Len!”
I smiled to myself as I shoved my chair back and looked down at the claim form I’d just signed before grabbing it and heading out of the office. It didn’t take more than a second to find Peter hanging over the top edge of the cage’s walls, looking into it as two men, who I couldn’t recognize from this far, circled each other.
On the way toward the gym next door, I waved at the small group of men and women on the mats, covered in sweat and breathing hard following whatever exercises they had just gone through.
It didn’t take me long at all to leave the building and head toward the one next door. Inside, the ceilings opened up just as high, with row after row of equipment and machines lined up perfectly to maximize the space. I lifted a hand at all the people I recognized as I headed straight toward where the fax machine was at the front desk. It only took about three minutes to send the fax and get a confirmation back—because the company didn’t believe in scanners—and I made a quick stop at the front desk slash juice bar to check on the two employees there and make sure they didn’t need anything. They didn’t. Bianca had bags under her eyes, but that wasn’t saying much since I did too most days, and the other girl looked fine.
At least I had work stuff going for me without issues, I thought, as an image of Jonah’s face filled my brain for all of a split second—specifically an image of Jonah’s face after I’d told him that I didn’t care about his excuses anymore. Just as quickly as that picture entered my head, fucking tiny little freckles on his nose and all, I shoved it away.
Seventeen months.
I had nothing to feel bad about. Nothing.
Back out to the training building, I managed five steps inside my office before coming to a stop.
Someone was sitting in the chair in front of my desk.
Someone with short hair so dark it could have been dark brown or black. Tall, based on how high up he sat in the seat, with wide, muscular shoulders, and a thick neck. Shit.
There were a couple other dark-haired men at Maio House but none of them had shoulders that size or trap muscles that bulky. The tallest man who trained in this part of the gym was six foot three. I took everyone’s height and weight when they first joined. When they were finally forced to start cutting weight—which meant that right before they had a fight, they had to lose a few pounds to make it to their weight class because usually everyone was fifteen to twenty pounds heavier than they needed to be, and that was on the average side—I helped them keep track of it so that it wouldn’t be too much that had to be cut in too short of a time period. I had known guys who had to drop out of fights because they had gone a little too crazy with sodium levels, and no one wanted to lose an opportunity, especially over something so stupid.
But that was all beside the point. Because it only took maybe a second for me to figure out who was sitting there. Think of the damn devil and he will appear, or whatever the saying was.
Jonah Hema Collins wasn’t the devil, but I couldn’t say he wasn’t much further down the list than the red guy was on people I would rather never see.
How the hell had he gotten inside again?
I reminded myself for about the hundredth time over the last couple of days that there wasn’t anything the Fucker could say or do that would hurt me. There was nothing that would change my life too much. There was nothing that could happen that I couldn’t fight, because I would if I had to. I came from a long line of people who were really good at fighting. And that gene hadn’t skipped a generation with me.
The man I’d known hadn’t seemed like the kind of person to do something shitty… but everyone changes. That, and I wasn’t sure I had even gotten to know him that well in the first place, from the way he’d turned out in the end. You know, like an asshole.
I was going to be an adult. I was going to keep allllll this shit to myself and punch my pillow when I got home. That’s what I was going to do. Be an adult, even if a little part of me died from forcing myself to be decent since it wasn’t like that came all that naturally to me.
If I couldn’t make it until then, there were a couple bags right outside my office I had access to.
Seriously, who the hell had let him in?
“Good morning,” the man sitting in the chair said as he turned his head to look at me over his shoulder, like he had either heard or sensed me coming in.
He could take his morning and shove it up his—
There went my speech. But I wasn’t doing this for me, was I? Damn it.
“Hi,” I told him, giving him my best Lurch impression.
I rounded the edge of the desk, knowing my hip was just a few inches away from his elbow as I did it. It wasn’t a big room, but it wasn’t that small either. It was just that he wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a small man unless it was Andre the Giant we were talking about.
Jonah the Asshole didn’t wait until I was seated to say, “I’d like to sign up for a membership.”
Was he trying to piss me off? I wanted to ask him. I would have, if I had known I could get the question out of my mouth without going back on the promise I made myself. Because unlike some people I knew, when I said I would do something, I did it. I didn’t disappear—
Stop.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all, Luna would tell me. But she had never warned me how fucking hard it was to live up to that. And I definitely didn’t have a single nice thing to say about any of this. Especially not for this asshole in my office who was busy looking at me with a clear, guileless, totally earnest and open expression as he gazed at me over his shoulder.
And that just made me madder.
He wanted a membership here? Okay. Fine.
I pulled my chair out, lowered myself onto it carefully and then rolled it forward once more. Then and only then did I look up at him at the same time as I reached out between us, taking in that face that was almost model-gorgeous. Almost. Except he had been too busted up over the years to be something so… basic.
Fortunately for me, it didn’t take much effort to remember that maybe I wasn’t going to be a complete asshole, but that didn’t mean I had to like him. Or that I had to be nice. Just… polite. Out loud. The things I thought in my head were a different story.
Fuckface.
And it was with that thought that I watched as he scooted forward in the seat he had taken without permission or an invitation and reached out with that big, big hand. I watched in slow motion as his fingertips—long and with signs at the joints that said that nearly all of them had been broken at some point—brushed over the back of my hand so gently it might have been nice… if I didn’t borderline hate him.
For the rest of my life, I was going to blame the fact that he genuinely surprised the shit out of me on why I didn’t immediately slap his fingers away.
Jonah Collins took my hand with those strong fingers—while I sat there like a dumbass—flipping it over in the blink of an eye, so that my palm sat upward on my desk, and then set his own palm on top of it. His hand swallowed mine, making it seem a lot smaller than it actually was. The same way it had so long ago.
Before he’d left.
Before he’d changed my life for the better.
And also pissed me off in a way that was beyond fucking words.
I jerked my hand out from under his.
Fisting my hand, I set it on my thigh for a second before returning it to my desk because fuck it. I wasn’t going to hide shit from him.
He was the one who did the hiding.
Those honey-colored eyes were still on me, and I could see the deep, drawn breath he took in. I didn’t care if I hurt his feelings. He’d hurt mine enough. And he was real fucking lucky I was being this mature. That I was willing to let him be here in the first place.
But before I could say anything else, his shoulders pushed back and his chin went up again in that way I had only seen him do on the rugby field… pitch, whatever it was called. Like he was pumping himself up to deal with me. I ignored how that might have made me feel.
“Have lunch with me,” the Fucker said softly in that accented voice that I wasn’t attracted to anymore.
I said “no” instantly.
His shoulders stayed back as he tried again. “Brekkie?”
Breakfast? Why was he doing this? “What the hell do you want, Jonah?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. The man let his eyes drift over my face slowly, and I was pretty sure he held his breath. “I understand that you’re mad—” That was as far as he got before I stopped him.
“Mad?” I snapped before I could remind myself that I needed to keep it cool. “You think I’m mad?”
If anything, the word pissed would be more accurate for how I’d felt a year ago. Months ago, even. But not now.
He sat up just a little, but just enough to make those big, flat muscles flex under the long-sleeved white T-shirt with a tiny Adidas logo that was gripping his shoulders for dear life. The asshole made sure he was making total eye contact with me, keeping that fucking face nice and even as he responded way too calmly, “Yes. I can see you are, Lenny. You have that face you make when you’re bothered, squinty eyes and all,” the man from New Zealand answered in that way that was so second nature to him, I couldn’t believe I had liked the shit out of it in the past. “I want to talk to you about it. Explain.”
Why the hell was he acting like… like… it was just a matter of talking? Like I’d want to pick back up on the way we had been with each other where we teased each other? This asshole was going to make me burst a fucking blood vessel.
Breathe, Lenny. This isn’t about you. Be decent. You don’t have to shit out sugarplums for this dipshit.
With a breath in through my nose and right back out, I managed not to bite down hard on my back teeth as I got my shit back together. Again. “Unless it’s about something relating to Maio House,” I told him carefully, “or about what you still haven’t wanted to bring up on your own, there’s no reason for us to talk, Jonah. I’ve said everything I needed to say already. I told you how I feel about anything you might want to explain.” I paused. “I don’t care.”
His tongue poked at the inside of his cheek as he shifted his weight around. He fisted his hands again as he leaned forward, managing to keep his voice and features even, like this wasn’t going downhill and I wasn’t shooting down his bullshit. “I understand you don’t want to hear it.” Those eyes my favorite color in the world moved over my face again, slowly, so, so slowly it made me uncomfortable. “But I need to explain,” he said, never blinking, or breaking eye contact or doing anything but laser-beaming that gaze on me. “I want to tell you what’s happened.” He swallowed. “I need to tell you.”
To give him credit, everything about his body language, from the way the tendons at his neck were straining to what looked like anguish flicking within his eyes, said he was being genuine. He genuinely thought he wanted to talk to me. He wanted to tell me whatever it was that he felt he needed to say.
He believed his words.
But just because he believed them didn’t mean that I did. Because I didn’t. He’d had his chance. Chances. I had given him more than enough time to do something as simple as email or text me back, and he hadn’t. Sure I blocked his number, blocked him on every social media website possible, but I hadn’t blocked his emails… and they still hadn’t shown up.
“I don’t care about why or when or how anymore, Jonah. What I want is to know what you’re doing here.”
“I’m here to talk to you.” He set that big hand back on the top of my desk, just inches away from my keyboard. “Give me a chance to explain. Please.”
What was it that he wanted to explain? Why he had disappeared? Why he hadn’t called me back? Why he hadn’t wanted to be part of… my life? Why he’d decided to come back now?
Did he think I was a fucking mind reader? Because I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t.
His fingers slid half an inch closer, his fingertips touching the edge of my keyboard. I couldn’t help but take in those endless, brown fingers with their neat, short nails, and the scarred and forever slightly swollen knuckles. He slid it even closer to me. “I know I’ve made a mess of things, but I want to explain—”
I tore my eyes away from his fingers. “There are a lot of things I want that I know I’m never going to get. That’s how things work sometimes.” I shoved my chair forward even though I was already as close to my desk as I could get. “I have a phone call I need to take in a minute, so…” I glanced toward the door to give him a clue. Get the fuck out.
Jonah opened his mouth just as the phone literally started to ring—I didn’t know who was calling, but whoever it was was my new favorite person—and then shut it. A breath later, he got to his feet, bringing him up, up, up so that he towered over my desk. And then he irritated me even more with his next words.
“This conversation isn’t over, Lenny.”
And before I could tell him that it sure as hell was—at least until he told me what the fuck it was that he wanted—he was gone.
But I hadn’t missed the expression on his face or the tension in his shoulders as he walked out.
I couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t fucking stand him, I thought as I picked up the ringing office phone and brought it to my ear. “This is Lenny.”
“This call is from the IRS. Don’t hang up—”
I rolled my eyes and hung up, still feeling more than a little grateful. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to be ready to deal with him… but I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know what he was doing and what he was planning on doing.
What I did know right then, without looking at the clock, was that there was a conversation I desperately needed to have. One of the most important conversations of my life. Even if I was dreading it more than I had ever dreaded anything.
Then, after that talk, I really did need to get an answer from Jonah the Jackass about what the fuck he was doing.
I eyed the clock on my computer for a second and got to my feet. I couldn’t put it off anymore. Now or never.
Fucking shit.
Grabbing my phone off the top of the desk, I dialed the number from memory as I headed around my desk and picked up my backpack from where I left it leaning against the coat rack that was older than I was. I could do this. The phone rang three times before the man on the other end picked up.
“Want to meet up for lunch again, child of the corn?”
“Hey, Grandpa. Yeah.” I pulled my keys out of the backpack pocket and headed out of the office, wiggling a finger at the people standing at the edges of the mats while they waited for their turn to do whatever it was they were training. “I’d rather come home for lunch though. Do you want something specific?”
He made a funny little cooing noise that wasn’t meant for me, telling me he wasn’t totally paying attention before replying with, “Double of whatever you’re bringing.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in thirty,” I told him, shouldering the outside door open.
“What’s wrong?” Grandpa Gus asked suddenly, and it didn’t escape me the fact that he asked what was wrong, not asking if something was wrong.
He knew me too well.
And, God, he was going to lose his shit after we had our talk. Fuck.
Knowing that made it hard to keep toeing that line. “Nothing life-or-death. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
I didn’t like the way he said “okay,” but if I didn’t like it, I deserved it.
Fuck!
Thirty-five minutes later, I opened the door to the house I had lived at on and off my entire life, holding a bag of burritos and tortilla chips in one hand.
And I was sweating my damn ass off despite the fact it was in the high forties outside.
But as I went through the back door connected to the kitchen that had been completely remodeled a few years ago and then through the hallway that led to the living room of the house that Grandpa had bought a thousand years before I’d been born, I listened.
Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Usually the television was on, or there was something playing over the speakers in the living room, or somebody was making some kind of noise, but there was none of that.
Hmm.
I kicked off my shoes and started creeping down the hallway, clutching the bag of burritos and hoping the paper bag wouldn’t make too much noise.
Still, there was nothing.
I narrowed my eyes and peeked into the living room to find it empty. I held my breath and listened. And that was when I heard it. Just the slightest, most quiet little noise…
“I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing,” I called out with a snort.
Nothing.
I rolled my eyes and climbed up on the love seat, one of the two couches in the living room, and hung over the back of it. Then I reached down and smacked one of the two bony butt cheeks sticking up in the air. “Get up before you can’t,” I laughed at my grandfather, who was on his hands and knees. Hiding. To try and scare the shit out of me.
He grunted and looked up with a frown. “You heard me?”
“Your sinuses are acting up. Your nose is wheezing.” I peeled my jacket off and dumped it on the armrest of the couch.
He muttered something like “damn it” under his breath as he struggled, just a little, to his knees and then up to his feet. At seventy-five years old, his bones only reminded him every once in a while that he was closer to a hundred than twenty now, but it wasn’t enough to make me sad. He had barely slowed down over the years, and he sure didn’t look his age. Grandpa was a vampire and would end up outliving me.
I got off the couch with a snicker and shook my head again as he came around. “How long have you been down there?”
“I heard you pull in,” he replied, still frowning at being caught as one hand went down to rub a circle into his left knee.
Because this was our game.
Hiding and scaring the crap out of each other. Or at least trying to. We’d been doing it for so long that we could both usually pick up on signals that said something was up. Example: the silence.
With a snicker, I dropped the bag of burritos on the coffee table and spotted the paperback sitting on the surface. It wasn’t just any book, but one with a bare-chested firefighter—or two—on the cover; I couldn’t tell from this distance. And just like always, it fucking made me laugh even though my stomach was knotted up at why I was home.
Because my seventy-five-year-old, four-time world champion boxer of a grandfather loved the hell out of romance novels, and it tickled the shit out of me. It always had and always would. And it was a perfect example of what made up his personality: a mixture of a thousand what-the-fucks.
“How’s the book?” I asked him, hearing the weirdness in my voice and pretending like I didn’t, as he lowered himself to the couch and opened the bag of food. I didn’t need to give him more reason to be suspicious.
“I just started it. It’s about two firefighters right after 9-11. I’ll let you read it before I return it.”
Yeah, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen after this upcoming conversation. “How long have you been down here?” I watched him pull out the container of guacamole and do a little shimmy in place.
Good. It was working. Guacamole always put him into a good mood. I’d bought it on purpose.
“Thirty minutes,” he answered, setting his treat aside. “I think we’ve got ten or fifteen more max before ‘The General’ is up again.”
The General.
Right.
I held my breath as he handed me over one of the burritos without glancing at my face, fortunately. I thought my plan was working. I thought I was buttering him up before I lit the firework that was his temper. I thought I knew what I was doing.
I didn’t apparently.
Because he let me get as far as ripping the foil off from around my veggie burrito and get all of two bites in before he turned to me as he chewed, raised his graying light brown eyebrows lazily, and went straight for the kill.
“What’s going on?”
Of course he’d known.
I wasn’t a coward enough to slow down eating to drag out the time, so I swallowed what I had in my mouth as quickly as I could without being too obvious. I took a peek at him, planning on making eye contact, but he was looking at the guac. So I did it. Just like when I was a kid, I counted to three and went for it: one, two, three.
“Have you heard of Jonah Collins?”
I would never admit it to fucking anyone, but my heart started beating faster as soon as I said his name out loud to my gramps.
He, on the other hand, didn’t stop eating, but he did narrow his eyes as he chewed, his expression still on the guacamole. “No,” he said after a moment, finally glancing at me in this squinty little way that confirmed he was getting wary. “Why?”
Yeah, he was on to me.
I didn’t know how to answer his question without just blurting everything out, and that wouldn’t be a good idea with Count Dracula next to me. I had to feed him information. Ease him into it. The guacamole he was currently dipping his chip into had been the lube to ease us into this just a little.
I dug through my purse and pulled out my phone and did a quick search, my fingers feeling heavier than normal as they moved. My heart was still beating too fast, but I ignored it. Once the search results came up, I held the phone out toward Grandpa Gus so he could look at the image on the screen.
He took the phone from me with his free hand and brought it closer to his face. “He’s a soccer player? No. He’s too big. Football? No. He’s not wearing pads or a helmet—”
Shit. I had to do it.
“Look at his eyes,” I cut him off, ignoring the nerves bubbling up in my stomach.
Grandpa stared at the picture for a few more moments, his chewing slowing, and I could see when something in him clicked. I knew when those gray irises shot to me for a moment before going back to the screen. This man who wasn’t just my grandfather, my dad, my brother, and my best friend all rolled into one body, typed something on my phone with one hand, then started swiping at the glass. Over and over again.
I knew what he was doing. It was the same thing I would have been doing if our positions had been switched. It didn’t help that I was too much of a chicken to say the words that needed to be said.
He recognized the eyes on the screen. I’d been counting on it. He had seen them even more than I had. He had watched them change over the months from a greenish hazel to the lightest brown that reminded me of raw honey with its flecks of yellow and gold in them.
The most beautiful eyes in the world, I thought.
My favorite. Grandpa’s favorite too, I would say. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Peter’s too, now, even though he was partial to DeMaio gray.
“This is him?” Grandpa Gus asked after another moment in that tone I had only heard a handful of times in my life. Usually when he was furious. Which the last time that had been was… sixteen months ago. Yay.
I nodded, not that he saw it because he was staring at the phone. “Yeah, Grandpa. That’s him,” I confirmed, wincing at the squeakiness in my voice.
Lord, he was breathing in and out through his nose already. I needed to get this over with, quick, quick, quick. Now.
“I didn’t think I would ever see him again,” I started to explain. “I tried reaching out to him over and over again but never heard back. I just thought he didn’t want to have anything to do with… us.” Maybe that comment didn’t help, but… it was the truth.
Jonah hadn’t bothered trying to call, period. If he really wanted to get in contact with me, he would have found a way. He would have found someone to pass a message along. He could have called me from a different number. He could have set up a fake account and messaged me. There was always a fucking way if you needed or wanted something. Always.
And since reappearing, there had been breaks in his schedule. Bye-weeks. He’d had opportunities. But there had been fucking nothing.
Instead, all I had gotten were those four random postcards at first.
Grandpa’s fingers flexed around my phone, and I watched as his mouth opened to stretch his jaw and then closed. Fuck. I knew, I knew, he was seconds away from losing his shit.
“Who else knows?” Even his voice was hoarse. Just five minutes ago, he’d been hiding behind the couch, trying to scare the hell out of me, and now he was trying to sound like Batman. Before I could answer, he shot out another question. “Why are you telling me now?”
Now or never.
“Peter knows. I told Luna earlier. We talked about it—no. Calm down. Quit getting riled up. Your face is getting red, and you know it looks ugly when it gets red,” I told him, hoping teasing him would work.
It didn’t. I’d lost him. I could tell.
“And I’m telling you because he showed up at Maio House,” I rushed, but it was useless.
The old man shot up to his feet, his face hitting tomato red. “He’s not getting anywhere near—”
I sighed and grabbed the leg of his olive pants. “Calm. Down. Jesus, Grandpa—”
“Calm down?” he shouted, making me roll my eyes.
“Yeah, calm down. You’re about to burst a blood vessel, and I’m not driving you to urgent care if you do.”
Yeah, he wasn’t calming down. He wasn’t calming down at all. The redness was creeping down his throat. I knew I had to keep going. “And you know that’s not fair for you to say that. I don’t want him around either, but I’m not going to be the jerk here, and you’re not either,” I said to him, hoping he could hear the reason in my words because, surprisingly, saying those words hadn’t been as hard as I would have expected.
They were the truth. They were a necessity. I had to keep going. “If he wants to be here and is going to be responsible and do what he should have been doing, then he has every right—”
All right, that sentence had been hard as hell, but not as hard as the choke Grandpa Gus let out.
The drama queen, who was red from his hairline down to his neck, threw his hands up over his head. “Right my—”
I had to set my burrito down, knowing I wasn’t going to get any more in my belly anytime soon and curled my fingers tighter into his pant leg because I already knew he was about to start stomping around the room if I let him. “He does, and you know it. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it is what it is,” I tried to reason. “You know you’d be telling me the same thing right now if we were talking about anybody other than your best little buddy, and you know that.”
His best little buddy and my best little buddy. The best thing in my life. The best thing, period.
Grandpa Gus started shaking his head the second the fourth word was out of my mouth. If I thought I was stubborn, this man was the original outbreak monkey. I should have brought him a cannoli too to blackmail him into behaving. Too late now.
“No. Stop shaking your head, nothing is changing. He’s here, and he deserves to be. We can’t force him to leave.” I didn’t want him to stay, but this wasn’t about me either, was it? No, but…. “He can stay if he wants to do the right thing. If not….” I held my hands up at my sides and shrugged, even though he didn’t see me do it because he was glaring at the ceiling.
The point was: nobody was getting forced to stay, much less asked to. No way. The ball was in Jonah’s court. He had gotten himself here, he could decide when he was leaving, at least until I had an answer and a commitment… and he brought it up. Which he still hadn’t.
Unfortunately, Grandpa hadn’t stopped shaking his head; his fingers had started tapping against his thighs, and redness still covered just about everything I could see above his neckline. “But he left you!” the man who loved me like hell reminded me like I could have forgotten. “That chucklehead left you,” he said it again, eyes bright.
One day, I’d be able to enjoy him calling someone a chuckle head, but right then wasn’t going to be the day. Not when my grandfather was huffing and puffing. Not when we were talking about something so important. Jonah Collins was important and always would be. Unfortunately.
Unless he died.
“He left me,” I tried to tell him, struggling a whole hell of a lot with getting that reality out. Acknowledging it. Tasting it. But even if something seemed good, didn’t mean it actually was. Saying it didn’t make it any less abrasive… but maybe one day it would. Maybe. “But not her.”
Me. Not her.
And I was fine with that.
Grandpa turned to give me his back as his hands went up to the top of his head, the red color deepening and making me want to roll my eyes even more. Those dark gray eyes were borderline crazy as he glared down at me like he didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore. Like he couldn’t believe I wasn’t agreeing with him.
And, honestly, a part of me couldn’t believe it either.
But I wasn’t the same Lenny I’d been before.
Just part of her.
And maybe Grandpa Gus remembered that but didn’t want to accept the fact that, for once, I wasn’t ready to raise hell—but deep down inside, I knew that later on, he’d come to terms with why that was. “What then? What if he decides to stay? Can you look at him every day if he does?”
I sucked in a breath through my nose and shrugged as I looked up at him from where I was still sitting on the couch. “No, I don’t know that I can.” I leaned forward and planted my elbows on my knees, my fingers going to massage my brow bones. “I want to beat the shit out of him. I want to rip his balls off and squirt lemon juice on his open wound.”
That got me a tiny, baby snort. And then I wondered where the hell I got being psycho from.
“But this isn’t about me, Grandpa, and stop breathing like that. You’re being so dramatic. It’s my turn today to lose my shit, all right?”
“He—” Grandpa Gus started to say just as we both heard it.
The one and only sound that would have stopped this blowout we were in the middle of.
Mo’s little kitten cries.
The same kitten cries that melted my heart every time I heard them. Even when I was tired and crankier than hell. Even when I was worried and overwhelmed. Even when I was scared and didn’t know how the hell I was still alive and who had been dumb enough to give me such a huge responsibility.
I stood up before Grandpa made a move to go to the stairs.
“I’ll go get her. You calm down in the meantime and remember all the reasons why you would hate going to jail if you got caught committing a felony,” I said before heading up to the second floor two steps at a time.
What a fucking mess.
Down the hall and two doors down, beside my bedroom, I walked right into the bright room and headed straight toward the crib. And as much as I was flustered, I couldn’t help but grin as I peeked over the railing a second before I picked Mo up.
“Hey, chunky monkey,” I said, smiling at the one thing in this world that scared the shit out of me more than everything and anything else ever had combined. I had cried a month straight when I had first seen the positive pregnancy test staring back at me. Then I had spent the next six months staying up at night, unable to sleep, because I’d been terrified that I didn’t know what the hell I was getting myself into. That I had made the wrong decision.
She was my seven-pound, eight-ounce surprise when she’d been born. The instant love of my life. The best thing I ever did.
She was the sweetest, happiest baby in the world. And I’d heard from multiple people who weren’t Grandpa Gus or Peter that she was the prettiest girl too, which I agreed with. Duh. She seriously cried like a kitten and now babbled all day. Was soft and sweet and smelled awesome, unless she’d shit her diaper. With dark brown hair and already fitting into eighteen-month-old clothes at eight months old, she was all chubby arms and legs that wiggled in the air as tiny little cries came out of her mouth.
But as perfect as she was, I focused in on my favorite part of her. Her honey-colored eyes with flecks of gold and brown in them. Big and already almond-shaped.
They were the eyes she’d inherited from her dad.
The same eyes Grandpa Gus had seen in the picture I’d showed him of Jonah.