I had to sit down on a big rock when I started to hyperventilate. My head was spinning, and I started to think maybe the lack of sleep and stress really had induced a heart attack. It took a solid ten minutes of sitting with my head between my legs, taking measured breaths in order for the pain to subside.
Afraid people might start to leave because I was gone so long, I started to walk back. I hadn’t been wrong. People were milling around and beginning to say goodbye to one another.
Riley came up to me first. “Thanks for everything this season, Rush. You’re not as big of an asshole boss as I originally thought.”
Somehow I managed to fake a smile and say goodbye on autopilot to most of the staff. I wouldn’t remember anything any of them said later because my brain was entirely somewhere else, but at least no one seemed to notice.
At one point, I found myself staring at Oak and his oldest daughter. She had to be about eight or nine now, and was showing off some dance routine to one of the female bartenders. It wasn’t his daughter who had caught my attention, but rather the way Oak was looking at her while she twirled around. So much love and adoration in his eyes. Sensing someone watching him, he looked up and our eyes caught. He smiled and patted his chest as if to tell me—this is life, man. I had to swallow a few times.
Gia made her way over to me, her dad standing a few feet behind her watching our interaction. When she had arrived earlier, I’d suspected she was nervous, but now it was glaringly obvious. She wrung her hands and looked anywhere but in my eyes. “So…I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
I stared at her. “You’re not leaving until Friday, right?”
Her guilt-filled eyes flashed up to mine before darting away again. “Yep. Friday.”
Tony shook his head from behind her and frowned.
So this was it? This was how it would go down? Like a goddamned pussy, I was going to let the woman I loved lie to me and sneak off.
“Gia…I…”
Her eyes came back to mine. They were filled with hope and optimism. But instead of giving me strength, they reminded me that I couldn’t hurt her again. Looking down, I said. “Nothing. I was just going to ask if I’d given you your check, but then I remembered that I did.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She stepped forward and gave me a hug that I could barely reciprocate. I had no balls left. In the end, I couldn’t even make it easier for her and be the one to walk away. She had to be the one to do it. In that moment, I felt ashamed to be a man.
Gia quickly turned away, and I got the feeling it might be to hide tears. Tony stepped forward and shook my hand as she walked to the door. “We’ll be around for another hour or two—in case you think of anything last minute you might need to talk to Gia about.”I sat in the middle of the restaurant floor alone. Everyone had left, including Gia and her lie. Looking around, I realized that I felt a lot like the restaurant right now—alone and empty.
I closed my eyes and started to think about my life.
The women—I couldn’t even remember any of the faces. Except Gia’s.
My father—I’d spent my life trying to prove to everyone that I didn’t give a shit about the man, yet all I ever really wanted was for him to want me.
My mother—Everything she’d sacrificed to raise me on her own.
Elliott—Most people wouldn’t believe me if I said I was jealous of him. But I was. From the time we were little, he had what I wanted, even if I would never admit it—love and acceptance from our father. And now he even had what I wanted more than anything in the world—to be the father of Gia’s baby. Life could be so damn cruel sometimes.
Pat—The father figure I had growing up who died way too early. How much he had meant to me growing up.
Gia—My beautiful Gia.
I loved her more than I thought I could handle. Yet here I sat letting the best thing that ever happened to me walk out the door. I fucking hated myself for it. I just wished there was some way to be sure that I could handle everything coming our way, that I wouldn’t resent her and the baby because of the constant reminder of my own childhood and the identity of the baby’s biological father.
Exhausted and feeling like I might not even be able to drive home soon, I went to my office to lock the safe before heading home. The lights were off, but sunlight shined through the partially covered window allowing me to see well enough, so I didn’t bother to flip on the switch as I entered. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been bright enough for me to see that one of the wheels had come off the bottom of my chair, and I almost cracked my head on the corner of the desk when I fell off of it. On my way down, I’d reached to grab onto something and knocked a stack of files off my desk, unleashing a torrent of papers that landed on top of me. Perfect, just fucking perfect.