I stare. I’m seething.
“Abuse is abuse. Physical, emotional.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“Again, I apologize, Violet.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Really.”
I put the mug into the dishwasher. “I have a couple calls to make. Go ahead and have some breakfast. You okay to go do the dress shopping thing in about an hour?”
“Sure,” she says. “Unless you don’t have time or don’t want to…”
“Just gimme an hour.” I try to give her a smile, but it probably doesn’t come across as genuine, so I huff and head to my home office so I can check in on things for tonight, so I can get some space and sort my head out.
So I can refrain from hauling Iadanza in and beating his face to a pulp.
So I can stop myself from stepping in front of her on that counter, pulling her to me by the hips and kissing her. Feeling her in my arms, my hands in her hair, taking her sounds into my mouth.
I knew that first night in her apartment that I felt protective, but this sort of protective instinct, it’s a little boggling to me. It’s got to be because I feel so responsible for what happened to her.
Maybe I shouldn’t.
Maybe I should just set her up somewhere new where he can’t fucking find her, hire her some personal security for back and forth to her job until the two-week deadline is up and see how things shake out after that.
Maybe I shouldn’t take her shopping and then have her on my arm tonight.
Maybe I should distance myself from this.
I’m feeling like I’ve got a personal stake in all of this and really, I don’t. Except that Raymond Iadanza fucked me over for money and I have to deal with that. But it’s only because I made it completely impossible for him to not be in the position he’s in right now.
Why? Because he won her and fucked her over, I guess. I’m pissed at myself for even participating in that and now I’m on a mission to – what?
I don’t know. That’s the problem. What’s my end game here?
I grind my molars in frustration.
Speaking of Fuckface, I need to know what he’s up to. He’s not trying to borrow money from anybody I know. I’ve got his name circulated among other men like Hennessey. He’s barely left that apartment.
He hasn’t skipped town either, so I’d like to know what the fuck he’s up to. I’m paying for Wes Traynor to tail him all weekend. I’m thinking I’ll have him tailed until this is over – however I end it.
I originally wanted to drag it out so he would feel the pressure.
Now I’m feeling like I’m being put through it, too.
It’s only been a little over 36 hours and I’m wishing I’d only given him a week instead of two so I can get this fucking thing with him over with.
No. I have to learn more patience.
I know I do. I’ve been better the last few years, but I’ve got a long way to go in the patience department.
My grandmother told me I was the most impatient person she had met in all her years, and she tried to drill it into me that sometimes you had to wait for things for reasons that didn’t make sense – until later when sometimes those reasons would be clear. She was a tough old woman, and she’d had a rough life, held a lot of wisdom. She told me when I was a kid that when she died she’d try her best to convince The Big Guy to let her be an angel who’d watch over me and not just so that I wouldn’t feel alone – also, so she could teach me patience. Because she was sure the patience she’d shown with my impatience would surely earn her some wings.
“Hindsight is 20/20, my boy, but you don’t have to always wait for stuff to be over to catch that. Watch for signs around you, Killy. Watch and see those signs to know you should slow down and think. Sometimes you have to wait for things. So while you wait, you plan. You plan your next move. You ready yourself through dark times for a brighter future. What you don’t do is get impatient and angry, it serves nothing.”
She’d lost her first husband a month after her honeymoon and married another man who was a womanizer and a cheater, so she raised her three kids including my mother alone. One of her sons wound up dead in a motorcycle accident just like my father and the other died of cancer. And there was my mother, a weak person. My grandmother was always frustrated with my mother’s weakness.
My grandmother hadn’t told us she was dying of Cancer; she hid it. Didn’t seek out treatment, either. Pissed me off so much. She was a stubborn woman, but I fuckin’ loved her and I was so angry trying to figure out why this fighter wouldn’t fight. And in hindsight, she spent a lot of time in her final months trying to get certain ideals to penetrate through my shield of anger about my home life. About the shithole I lived in. About how my mother wound up with loser after loser with no care for herself, our apartment, the food she fed us or the clothes she put on us.
And after Nan died, life got worse. Much worse. Fewer clothes. Less food. Holes in our shoes. Because we didn’t have anybody but our mother and she wasn’t good to anyone, she was that broken.
Luckily, I’d not only practically raised myself and my little brother by that point, but I was old enough to keep doing it. My part time job at the pizzeria bought us shoes, jeans, paid for school trips. My boss always sent food home with me, too. And then I started bookmaking and the money got better. And I was smart with it.
And through it all, through the early days without her, through the days after my mother was killed, Nan did show me signs that she was up there teaching me lessons. And I tried to emulate her strength in being there for Willie while making plans for my future while I waited to finish growing up.
As an adult, I seem to hit just about every red light wherever I go, whatever route I take. Unless I’m in my own condo where I have a key for an express elevator, the elevator always takes forever. I always find myself with long lines ahead of me. In life, it seems I am constantly faced with challenges that let me know I have to be patient to get what I want.
Is it Nan that’s making the lights go red? Maybe. Maybe not. But the seeds were planted, and I pay attention and do my best to use waiting times and drawbacks to my best advantage. It’s paid off many times. I watch, I pay attention. I plan.
Two weeks, as planned with Raymond. I have to be patient to get what I want.
But just what do I want here? That’s the question.
***
I knock on her door an hour later and hear her call out for me to come in.
She’s sitting on the desk by the window. Not the chair. She’s perched on the desk the way she’d been perched on my counter before.
“You good to go?”
“If you want to,” she replies, voice mostly meek.
She looks like she’s flipped out, but trying to hide it.
I lean against the door frame. “Yeah, I’m ready. You need time, or?”
“I’m good.” She heads to the closet. She returns, wearing a purple jacket, freeing her ponytail from the collar and then she grabs her bag and loops the strap over her shoulder.
I resist the urge to grab her hand.
What is it with these urges I keep getting where she’s concerned?
The inner monologue should be telling me things I don’t want it to tell me, things about how she’s been with Iadanza for three years and I shouldn’t let any emotion get in the way beyond the need to save her from him and the need to punish him for doing what I intended him to do – be indebted to me and in a way that’s reason for punishment because he knowingly fucked me over.