Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(50)
Carmen was tall and imposing and exotically beautiful. She was smart and savvy and sarcastic, quick to anger and quick to judgment. More likely to roll her eyes than to offer her shoulder. She was guarded and self-contained. She challenged him constantly. From the first words she’d said to him, she had challenged him. And Theo had caught fire—not simply for her, but for his life. He loved to talk to her, to poke at her and get her ire up, to argue with her about books and ideas. And God, how he loved winning her over, finding the glorious softness, the openness and vulnerability that spiked armor was protecting.
She’d made him want to roar in the face of life.
He didn’t feel guilty, because he loved Carmen for entirely different reasons than he’d loved Maggie. She accessed parts of his mind and heart even he hadn’t been aware of.
And then she’d cut those parts out of him and stomped them into dust.
He sighed and tried to perk up. Refocusing on Eli, he gestured at the food on his plate. “You really should look into culinary school, E. This is what you love.”
Eli shook his head. “I’ve read all the horror stories about how expensive the schools are and how you end up with your degree or diploma or whatever and all you can get is some crappy minimum wage job doing prep, if you’re even lucky enough to get in a kitchen at all. I’ve already got debt to pay off. I can’t handle more.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
Eli half-chuckled, just a syllable. “Today, I want to go out and do something in Paris. Get my mind off my stuff. No reason to be sad and lonely in the City of Light, right? So let’s go to the Orsay or the Pompidou or something.”
Carmen and Rosa had been gone for a couple of weeks. Theo knew why Eli was still in Paris—to look after him. They’d argued about it; he didn’t need his kid to babysit him. He was depressed, yeah. He’d given up even the attempt to write, sure. And maybe he was sliding down the slope a little with the bourbon. But he was fifty years old—today—and he didn’t need his son to take care of him.
“I’m not in the mood, E. And we’ve been to the Orsay twice already.”
“New exhibit opens today. It’s your birthday, Dad. Let’s at least take a walk. Hey—we could go to that old books market in the Square Georges Brassens. And then maybe the Catacombs again. I love the Catacombs.”
“I need to write today. You should go out by yourself.”
“Dad.”
Theo glared at Eli. The subtext screaming out from that single word, that single syllable, was that Theo hadn’t even opened his laptop in two weeks. He had no words.
“Please, Dad. I need some company. I need to get my mind off missing Rosa, and you need to find something to fill your mind, too.”
“If you really love her, you should be there, not here. She probably needs you right now.” That was becoming an old fight between them. It hurt him, too, to think of Carmen going through her worry about her father, almost losing him, alone. But she wasn’t alone. She’d always said family was the most important thing, and she was in the bosom of hers. As was Rosa.
Really, what he wanted was for Eli to go back to the States and get off his back. Instead, he was going to spend the following week being double-teamed, he knew, because Jordan was coming back for a visit. With any luck, he’d get Eli to go home with his brother.
Eli sighed. “She’s with her family. And her dad is getting better. She said they brought him home. And we haven’t figured out the next step yet. I don’t have an apartment in Augusta anymore, so I’m where I need to be right here. Except that I want to get outside today.”
Theo gave up. “I’ll take a shower. Then let’s go look at old books and dead bones.”
oOo
“Dad. When you caught the girl, you were supposed to keep her!”
Eli swatted Jordan on the back of the head, upsetting his careful quiff. “Jordan, shit. Not everything in your head has to come out your mouth.”
Theo laughed. Things had been easier since Jordan was back. His attitude about everything was so bulletproof that it was hard to stay glum around him. This was a boy who’d picked himself up, dusted off his vintage velvet trousers, and walked through a ring of bullies to go back to class. Routinely. A little heartbreak, a dash of pining—these were nothing to him. And he wasn’t tolerating it in his father and brother, either. He didn’t nag at Theo to shake off his gloom. He’d simply refused to accept its existence.
In the days Jordan had been back in Paris, Theo had had hours-long stretches during which he hadn’t thought about Carmen or his writer’s block. Or bourbon, for that matter. The week was coming to an end, but he felt stronger and clearer.
They were sitting at a sidewalk café on the Left Bank at the end of a day spent combing through the nooks and crannies of a Paris most tourists didn’t see.
Eli was going back to the States with Jordan, and they’d all been talking about his plans—which were, for now, to go back to the house in Colson and get it open and running again in anticipation of the end of the year, when Theo would be home and back teaching. Eli was still unsure about his own job plans, and he was loath to make any until he understood something of his future with Rosa.
The conversation had turned to Rosa and what Eli perceived as a distance growing between them. She, like her sister, was focused on her family now. She was no longer as interested in trying to work out plans with Eli.