Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) (18 page)

I loved him more fiercely because of her.

I loved him recklessly. It was all I could give him after what I’d taken from him. Every day, I chose to ignore any lingering doubts that I had. I did not allow them to sully my love for him. But I was still aware that, even if I didn’t acknowledge them, they had every right to be there.

Finding a way to forgive myself was a constant battle. But it was a battle I fought alone. I didn’t voice my concerns to Adam. I never hinted at the self-hatred that I still felt  … that I would probably always feel.

I didn’t tell him these things, because he didn’t deserve to carry those burdens. I did. We would make this work because he wanted it to work … not because it should.

I wanted it, too. I wanted it with every fiber of my being.

As I turned the key in the lock and pushed our door open, I wanted something else with every fiber of my being. I wanted everything not to be so damn hard. And I wanted to not have to tell him about the phone call that had changed both of our lives.

The TV was on just as I’d expected, but Adam wasn’t in front of it. As I was kicking my heels off by the door, he rounded the corner from the kitchen with a bowl of sliced apples in his hand. I looked him over from head to toe. I couldn’t help myself. It was my natural reaction to him.

His broad carefully sculptured chest was just barely concealed in a t-shirt I had never seen before. A cat wearing sunglasses hung perilously from a tree branch. ‘Hang in there, pussy’ was scrawled across his chest.

He gave me a wicked grin and sidled over, “Hey, babe. You had to work late, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nice shirt.”

He shrugged at me. “Moral support.”

“How’s your little project going?” I asked.

“Good. We’re all but done. That cat is advanced. The instructions said it could take four weeks. Rubber Cat’s got it down in five days. Come check it out.”

I followed him through the living room and our bedroom to the adjoining bathroom. The new assembly over the toilet was a donut of litter surrounding a big hole. The idea was that it would give Rubber Cat the impression of a litter box but he would end up squatting over the hole. The hole fed directly into the toilet and would result in victory. I would still have to remove the contraption to go to the bathroom, but it was a vast improvement.

“That’s great,” I said, looking it over. “Has he used it?”

“Yep,” Adam said proudly. “He did a number two earlier. We just need to film it next time and claim our winnings.”

I was so tired that I couldn’t even remember at this point what our winnings were. I nodded and smiled weakly.

“Babe,” he said, “you’re tired.”

“I need something to eat,” I said, eyeing his apples. I wasn’t sure what, but I definitely needed
something
. I was tired and grouchy, and couldn’t remember if I’d eaten lunch. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to bring up Brittany and the phone call.

He pulled me close and wrapped his warm arms around my waist. “Change your clothes,” he said. “I know what you need.”

I walked into the closet as Adam headed out of the bathroom. After changing into a tank top and a pair of boy shorts, I found him in the living room. I plopped down on the couch next to him and curled my side into the space under his arm.

“Here,” he said holding a large serving spoon under my nose. The sweet smell of Biscoff and Captain Crunch filled my nose.
He really did know what I needed.
I smiled gratefully and took it from him. As I nibbled a few of the Captain Crunch nuggets off the blob of Biscoff, I decided that it was time to tell him.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he responded, winking at me. “What’s up?”

“Uhhh, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay. Hit me with it.”

“Well …” I couldn’t manage to form the words. How did one go about spilling something like this? I was pretty sure that no one had been faced with this situation before.

“Is this a boat-rocking conversation?” he asked, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.

“Yeah, it really is.”

With the one hand that wasn’t wrapped around my shoulders, he pulled his shirt away from his body and looked down. “Moral support, remember? I’m good at it.”

“Okay, here goes. I know we don’t talk about this much. And I don’t want to. It’s painful for the both of us, but it’s about the accident.”

Adam stilled next to me, but his face remained stoic. “Go on.”

“Remember when I said that it was the phone that distracted me.”

“Yes,” he said, removing his arm from around my shoulders and leaving me to feel a chill that I hoped was just from the air and not from him.

He began running his hands up and down his jean-clad thighs, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Well, remember when I told you that it was my friend Brittany who called me?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me expectantly.

“Well, it was the same Brittany that I introduced you to at Starbucks the other day.”

Adam hunched forward and rested his elbows on his legs. His head was now in his hands, and he clenched his hair between his fingers. I hadn’t even delivered the final blow, and I could feel his distress. “I remember her,” he said.

“So she called me today. She wanted to have coffee.”

“She did?” Adam’s head remained in his hands. I could almost feel his refusal to look at me. “Why? I thought you guys hadn’t talked in years.”

“She said that after running into us the other day she needed to get some things off her chest.”

Finally, he sat up. When he leaned back, he seemed to melt back into the couch. “And did she?” For some reason, he sounded whipped. Defeated.

“Yeah. She filled in a lot of the missing pieces. I know now how my dad was able to keep everything from me for so long.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said, though he didn’t sound so sure. “Did she tell you anything else?”

I twisted on the couch so that I was facing him. I put my hands on his leg and willed him to let me keep it there. “She did.” I stammered for a second before continuing, “God, I knew this was going to be hard, but it’s so much harder than I even imagined. How do I say this?”

He looked down at my hands and then placed his own larger hands over mine. Finally, he met my eyes. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know.”

“You already know what?” I asked.

“I recognized her at the coffee shop,” he said. His eyes remained on our joined hands.

I sucked in a breath. He recognized her? From Saint Patrick’s Day?

“What do you mean?” I whispered. I held my breath, waiting for his response.

“I know who she is, Allie. She was the one calling you.”

“Yeah,” I said on an exhale.

“With my phone.”

CHAPTER 10

Adam

Allie’s mouth made a perfect ‘O’ as she put the final pieces of the puzzle together. “You already knew,” she said. Her whispered accusation hung in the air between us.

“I knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.

Her voice ached with hurt, but I was glad that it was finally out there. I’d been hiding this bit of information for too long, and it had been weighing on me.

My reasons for not telling her had been justified, but I could understand why I was in deep shit with her. Keeping secrets .... hiding the truth ... it was exactly what we had promised not to do.

“I didn’t think you would handle it very well, and you’re not, are you?”

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head.

I hated the sorrow in her eyes. I wanted to take it away, once and for all. I was tired of all the drama that surrounded us. I wasn’t surprised by it. Far from it. But I was still tired of it.

Allie looked lost in thought. She was on the brink of tears. God, I didn’t want her to cry any more. I’d probably been wrong to push her into giving up her antidepressants. She’d been off of them since we had gotten back together. But on days like today, she probably still needed them. She had dealt with a lot of shit in a very short amount of time.

Her head snapped up. “When did you figure it out? When you saw her the other day?” she asked.

I shook my head, knowing she wasn’t going to like my answer. “No. I’ve known since the day we got back together … the day after Lizzie’s trip to the hospital.”

She stared at me and said nothing.

“At The Shelter. You talked about the accident ... and the phone call. Of course, I already knew … it was in the papers … the police report. It was no secret that you were on the phone.” I didn’t meet her eyes so that I could go on. “You told me that your friend had called you from Greenville. I was on Greenville. You said that your friend had met some older guys in a bar. I’d been at a bar. You said that she called you because she wanted to introduce you to some guy. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was the guy.”

“You should have told me,” she said. A flash of anger passed over her face. “I’ve spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“Come on, Allie. I’d just gotten you back. I mean, that very second. You had been running from me for over a month. I couldn’t give you another reason to walk away. I couldn’t take the chance.”

Alexis

I nodded at him. “But you’re not upset?” I asked. He didn’t seem to be.

“I’ve had a while to deal with it, and it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t matter who called who or whose phone it was. It doesn’t change anything.”

He didn’t say it, but I thought it.
It didn’t matter because the outcome was the same.

I had spent all afternoon worrying that he would hate me for it all over again … or worse, he’d hate himself. I’d worried that he would start playing the ‘what if’ game and not be able to stop. What if he hadn’t gone to Greenville that day? What if he hadn’t met Brittany? What if he hadn’t lent her his phone? Would his sister still be alive today?

I’d been asking myself those very questions. Just like I’d been asking myself for months, ‘What if I hadn’t reached for my phone? What if my purse hadn’t been caught on the seat? What if I had stopped to put the top up on the car when it had started to rain? Would Joy still be alive today?’

And it was because I had been asking myself those very questions that I couldn’t be mad at him.

Because he was right.

If he had told me that day in the bar that it had been his phone … just after I had finally decided to give us a real chance … I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I probably would have walked away again. The situation was just too awful. Too weird. There were too many coincidences to absorb.

“Is that why you’re late tonight? You were worried about telling me?” He squeezed my hands and gave me a reassuring smile.

“Yeah. I really was,” I answered.

“Awww, Allie.”

I knew he wanted to say more, but we were both having trouble finding the words.

And so we didn’t say anything at all. Instead, I crawled over onto his lap and curled up into a ball. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in tight.

We could pretend to be normal. There were times when it almost seemed like we
were
normal. Just your average couple, getting to know each other and living in the moment. But we weren’t. We were anything but normal. It’s impossible to live in the moment when your head is still stuck in the past.

I wondered again … for what seemed like the millionth time … if it would always be this hard. He was worth every bit of it. We were worth it. But would it always be this hard?

_________________________

“So this is your big debut?” I asked a visibly nervous Carly.

The bar we were in was nicer than their usual venue. It was also twice as big as The Shelter. The Shelter was Carly’s brother’s bar down in Tribeca. It was dark and dirty. And it was small. But it was home to the boys around me. It was where Carly had met Burke. And if the band ever made it big, they would have to give credit to The Shelter since they had developed quite a following there. Many of the usual crowd were here tonight. As I looked around, I recognized a lot of faces. But there were a lot more that I didn’t recognize. The audience was going to be much larger than the band was used to.

Carly bounced nervously from one foot to another. She nodded and then took a long drink from the beer in her hand. I’d always thought Carly was a cute girl. No, better than that … she was pretty. But she downplayed her sexuality so it definitely wasn’t the first thing you noticed. She was more tomboy than Tom cat.

It was why I found her relationship with Burke such a conundrum. He was walking, oozing sex, and unfortunately he attracted the same. Every girl who approached him after a show was a carbon copy of every girl who had tried before. They were always scantily clad and overly made-up … but incredibly easy on the eyes. In fact, it was usually the case that Burke could have practically any girl in the bar. The groupies who flocked to him made that clear. But he never ceased to amaze me because it was always Carly in her jeans and t-shirt and with her restaurant ponytail that he wanted.

Tonight was different. She’d pulled out all the stops. Gone was the ponytail. Her thick, dark hair had been straightened to within an inch of its life. It brushed her shoulders and framed her face perfectly. The cowl neck of her fitted, metallic gold top dipped low in the front and bared more cleavage than even the Posh Spice costume.

“You look hot tonight. You ready for this?” I asked.

“Yeah, she does, and yes, she is,” Burke answered for her. Carly just nodded again and continued to slam her beer.

“I have an idea,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her over to the bar on the far wall.

“Four shots of Patron Silver,” I told the bartender.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Carly asked.