Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(81)

“There’s nothing like passion,” she told me last time she took him back. “You wouldn’t understand, Westie, you’re too young, but passion is what we’re made for. Without it …” She shrugged, cast her eyes at the ceiling, searching for the right words. “Without it, we’re just animals.”

This about a man who’s gut-punched her. A man who split my lip when I tried to protect her because he was smacking her around, calling her names, slapping her silly while she cried and begged him not to, not to hurt her so bad, “Please, honey, don’t.”

The love of her life.

And I look just exactly f*cking like him.

The hostess, Jessica, sticks her head through the door. “Sixteen’s ready for the check, eight’s stacked the menus up by the edge of the table, and I took a dessert order for you on twelve. If you don’t get back out there, I’m telling Sheila to fire you.”

“Coming.”

I open the outside door, drop the half-finished cigarette on the concrete step, and grind it out under my shoe.

Jessica waits until she actually sees me moving before she heads for the front.

I take the check to table sixteen, get table eight’s order, deliver dessert to twelve. Then I check on my other tables. The whole time, my mother’s words are drilling a hole between my eyebrows.

The love of my life.

I’ve dedicated almost ten years to trying to be the man my father should have been but isn’t. A man who will put the family first, no matter what. Keep them safe, keep them fed, keep them happy.

I never wanted to be her love. Her kind of love—it makes you weak. It drags you under.

But tonight, more than any of the past twenty-two nights I’ve spent without Caroline, I can’t help thinking there’s more than one way to drown.

Another waiter passes me and says, “Jessica just gave you six.”

“Thanks.”

When I take the water pitcher over, I find my econ teacher at the table. A plump woman, she once brought along four kids and a bag of powdered-sugar doughnuts to a study session and let them go to town. She’s with her husband tonight, dressed up nice. She shows me off a little. “One of my best students last semester,” she calls me, and she says she hopes to have me in her seminar next year.

I take their order and wish them a happy Valentine’s Day.

I like her, so I make an effort to uncurl my lip when I say it.

Back in the kitchen, I put the order in and pick up appetizers for another table, a four-top. I push through the kitchen door with a plate in each hand, two more balanced on my forearms, thinking about another dinner with another woman old enough to be my mother.

Two years ago on Valentine’s Day was the first time I ever set foot in the Tomlinson house. Mrs. Tomlinson had a candlelight dinner prepared at the resort kitchen, and she said she’d pay me two hundred bucks if I played waiter for a couple of hours.

I served the food and stood in the corner where she’d told me to stand, watching them eat—this man who’d taken me under his wing and the woman he married. His love.

This man I wanted so badly to be like, because he had everything I wanted. Respect, money, security, skill.

Mrs. T wore a black dress cut low in the front, her tits half hanging out, diamonds dripping from her ears, down into her cleavage, sparkling on her fingers. She cooed at her husband, talking about their wedding day.

“The happiest day of my life,” she said.

The next week, I f*cked her in his bed. She wanted me to take her from behind. I climbed on top of her, did her until she scratched at the sheets, arched her back, came with a yowl like a cat.

I remember holding her hips, pushing into her. A mindless pistoning piece of meat.

No better than an animal.

My mother’s love is a disaster, but I wasn’t doing any better for myself until I met Caroline.

I came to Putnam thinking love was a weakness and sex was a tool. Maybe I was right. I think, with the life I’ve had, I’d have to be some kind of dumb-f*ck not to be at least a little afraid of the way I feel about Caroline.

I’ve been worried that deeper is an undertow that will take away my control and leave me as helpless and deluded as my mom. I’ve thought if I let that happen—if I let myself get distracted by Caroline, broke the rules, said f*ck it to my common sense—then I couldn’t respect myself, because I’d be no better than my father. No smarter than my mom.

But here I am, hustling steaks and salads and quinoa cakes to one couple after another, smiling and being charming even though I f*cking hate this, I hate all of it, I hate everything when I’m not with Caroline, and I’m thinking the whole time, What’s it going to take, a mallet to the head? A neon f*cking sign?

I love Caroline. I want her. I want everything she’ll give me, and it’s not going to stop. It’s never going to stop.

And I’m not my father.

I look just like him, but I’m not him. I’ve known that for a long time.

What I need to get through my head, maybe, is that I’m not my mother, either.

I’m not in love with a woman who doesn’t deserve me. I’m not throwing myself at passion like it’s a drug and I need a hit, begging it to take me in, shoot me up, wreck me if it has to.

I waited more than a year to even kiss Caroline, and I had plenty of time before then to learn what she’s all about.