Stepbrother Dearest(66)

Sully texted me.



Have fun tonight!



I’d tried to convince her to come out with me, but she said she had a date with an electric razor for her monthly “lady parts” grooming night. TMI for sure, especially when in reality, they weren’t lady parts at all.

We’d rented a small private room with a bar for the party. This would have seemed like an epic night were I not so preoccupied with finishing the book.

I finally caught a cab.

“West 16th Street.”

I slammed the door and immediately wasted no time getting my kindle out.



***



After we left the steakhouse, my funk was back in full force. Greta had gone to get us some drinks while I went to buy more chips.

I sat down at a table to wait for her when out of nowhere tears just started streaming down my face. It made no sense because there hadn’t even been a preceding thought. It seemed to just be the release of everything that had been bottled up. This was the last place I wanted to break down. Once the tears started, they wouldn’t stop.

In a self-punishing way, I added fuel to the fire and started to focus on things that made it worse. I sometimes blamed myself for coming into the world and making Randy’s life miserable. I wondered if he and Mami’s marriage would have lasted were it not for me. Deep down, there was always an underlying hope that things would turn around, that he and I could look each other in the eyes someday and see something other than hate—that he would tell me he really loved me even though he didn’t know how to show it.

That would never happen now.

I looked up to find Greta standing there watching me as she held a drink in each hand.

I licked a hot teardrop off my lips. “Don’t look at me, Greta.”

She put the drinks down and immediately pulled me into her.

In Greta’s arms, the tears were multiplying. My hands dug into her back in a silent plea for her not to let go yet. I eventually calmed down.

“I hate this. I shouldn’t be crying for him. Why am I crying for him?”

“Because you loved him.”

“He hated me.”

“He hated whatever he saw in you that reminded him of himself. He didn’t hate you. He couldn’t have. He just didn’t know how to be a father.”

It surprised me how close to being right she was despite her not knowing my secret. Randy hated what he saw in me that reminded him of Patrick.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you. The screwed up thing is, after all the shit we went through, I still wanted to make him proud of me someday, wanted him to love me.”

I let out a deep breath because I’d never admitted that to anyone.

“I know you did,” she said softly.

Looking into her eyes reminded me that I was staring into the soul of the first person who’d ever actually succeeded at making me feel loved. For that, I would be eternally grateful to her.

“Where would I be tonight without you?”

“I’m glad I got to be the one with you tonight.”

“I’ve never cried in front of anyone before. Not once.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“There’s a bad joke in there somewhere. You know that, right?”

We laughed. I loved her laugh.

“You make me feel things, Greta. You always have. When I’m around you, whether it’s good or bad…I feel everything. Sometimes, I don’t handle it too well, and I fight it by acting like an *. I don’t know what it is about you, but I feel like you see the real me. The second I saw you again for the first time at Greg’s when you were standing in that garden…it was like I couldn’t hide behind myself anymore.” I touched her face. “I know it was hard for you to see me with Chelsea. I know you still care about me. I can feel it even when you’re pretending you’ve stopped.”

It was the most honest thing I’d said to her all night. Greta always wore her heart on her sleeve, and even though she was trying not to make it obvious, her discomfort around Chelsea had been evident. (Although, Chelsea seemed to be oblivious to it.) I couldn’t have imagined how I would have handled it if the situation were reversed.


My tears had finally dried. As we continued to sit in the wake of that embrace, her lips were begging me to kiss them. I wished there were a magic eraser that would have allowed me to experience it just once and delete the consequences immediately after. Of course, that would never be possible. I didn’t think there was anyone worthy of those lips anyway, least of all me. So, I just stared at her mouth, wanting to kiss her but knowing I wouldn’t.

Maybe she read my mind, and I scared her off, because she got up like a bat out of hell.

The next thing I knew, she’d run off to the roulette table, slapped some of her money down on the number 22, and the rest was history. This girl had a major horseshoe up her ass.



***



Nineteen-thousand dollars. I didn’t know what shocked me more: that she won for a second time tonight or that she’d managed to turn my evening around with that awesome play on 22. The mysterious text wasn’t preoccupying me anymore. Instead, I was once again stoked to be here and vowed that for the rest of the night in these final hours together, we’d have the time of our lives.