Tonight, as she sat in that restaurant alone waiting like some idiot for Oz to bring his behind on, was one of those other times.
But she did meet him. And fall in love with him. And now she had to tell him something. Something he probably didn’t want to hear. Which made it bad enough. And he didn’t even give her the curtesy of showing up? It was too much.
“Hey, Glo.”
She was sipping from her drink again when she heard her name. When she looked up, and saw Alex Drakos and his wife Kari walking up to her table, she smiled. “Hey there! What’s up?”
“A kidnapping in plain view,” Alex said.
“Say what now?” Gloria asked.
“Don’t mind him, Glo,” said Kari.
“All of those perfectly fine restaurants I have at my hotel, the best restaurants in town, and I’m talking Beard award winners, she drags me out to this one.”
“Damn right,” Kari said with a smile. “I get tired of The Drakos. I live there. I work there. I’m married to the man who owns everything there. A girl gotta have a break sometimes.”
Gloria laughed. Kari was her mentor, somebody she deeply respected.
“Am I right, Glo?” Kari asked her, grinning too.
“You are so right,” Gloria said. “I don’t even live at my diner, but I get tired of that place too.”
“Thank you!” Kari said, her hands spread out. “Thank you! Now do you get what I’m trying to tell you, Alex?”
“No, I do not,” Alex responded. “Two women agreeing against one poor, defenseless man is supposed to convince me? Not in this life,” Alex said with that charming smile Gloria always liked about him, and the ladies laughed.
Although Gloria was on a first name basis with Kari, that same familiarity didn’t automatically transfer to Kari’s husband. To Gloria, the billionaire Alex Drakos was a peer of her father’s. He was Mister Drakos to her.
But then she noticed Mister Drakos looking beyond her table, as if he saw somebody he knew. He placed both hands on Kari’s arms. “Excuse me, hon, I won’t be a minute,” he said to her, and went over to greet a group of rowdy businessmen at a nearby table.
“Where’s the baby?” Gloria asked.
“Jordan’s babysitting. He loves it. He treats that little girl like a princess.”
“That’s so sweet,” Gloria said. “Jordan’s reliable like that.”
But Kari didn’t like what she was seeing in Gloria’s eyes. She sat down at the table and stared at the younger woman. “What’s wrong?” she asked her.
Gloria found that question odd. She hadn’t mentioned any trouble, and they were just laughing. “Nothing’s wrong,” she responded. “Why would you ask something like that?”
But Kari never played games. She had gotten to know Gloria too well. “You have a problem,” she said, as she continued to stare at her. “You know what that problem is?”
Did Oz tell her something? Was he sharing information about their love life with his sister-in-law? “What’s my problem?” Gloria asked her.
“Your big-ass eyes tell your story up and down the line, girl. You can’t hide a thing!”
Gloria, relieved that it wasn’t deeper than that, couldn’t help but smile.
“Now what is it?” Kari asked, serious again. “What’s wrong, Glo?”
Gloria knew Kari wasn’t going to let it go. When she wanted answers, she found a way to get those answers. “Looks like he’s going to stand me up again,” she said.
“Who’s standing you up?” Kari asked.
Gloria looked at her as if it was obvious. “Oz,” she said. “Who else?”
But Kari frowned. “Oz? What do you mean?”
Now Gloria was confused. “I’m saying Oz is late again, after he was the one who insisted on having dinner tonight. And usually when he’s late, it means he’s not coming at all.”
“But, Glo,” Kari said, shocked that she didn’t know it already, “Oz isn’t in the country. He’s in Greece.”
Gloria was stunned. “Greece?”
“Yes! Something happened over there and he hopped his plane and took off this morning. And when I say he took off, he took off. He barely said goodbye.”
Gloria couldn’t believe it. He got on his plane and took off for Greece and didn’t even bother to phone her? She knew their relationship wasn’t great. She knew they had their share of issues. But it had apparently descended right back down to those same depths she thought they were coming out of.
Kari leaned back. She was concerned. Gloria could see it in her expressive eyes too. “He didn’t phone you. Did he?”
Gloria shook her head. Embarrassment was the least of her problems. “No, he didn’t phone.”
Kari looked as if she was weighing the options. “I can make excuses for him,” she said to Gloria. “Because I know for a fact that whatever happened in Greece was very serious. So serious he was getting call after call even before he could get out of the penthouse good. He’s probably been on that phone ever since he got on his plane and it hasn’t let up for one second. It was that serious, I kid you not.”
Then she paused. “But then again,” she continued, shaking her head, “ain’t nothing that serious, girl, that he couldn’t pick up that phone and give you a call too. That’s not a cut him some slack because he’s too busy doing his duty conversation. That’s a dereliction of his duty conversation. He has a duty to you. To his woman. First and foremost. And don’t you ever claim it’s anything else, Glo.”
Gloria nodded as tears began to appear in her eyes. That was why she loved Kari. She never tried to sugar coat the truth around her, not even if it made her beloved brother-in-law look less than the wonderful person they both knew he could be.
She grabbed a napkin off of the table and wiped beneath her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. “Does it get any better?” she asked Kari.
Kari shook her head. “No,” she said.
Gloria looked at her. “No?”
“No,” Kari said even more bluntly. “If you let his ass get away with it this time, he’ll try to get away with even more the next time. And the time after that. There’s a funny thing about men, Glo. They can love you to death, and I’m certain Oz loves you, but a man will treat you the way you allow him to treat you. You remember when your stepmother Roz left your father. She left him over that same shit. Because it never fails to come true. You allow a man to treat you like crap, he’s going to treat you like crap.”
Gloria looked at Kari. “I’m sure Mister Drakos never treated you like crap.”
“We’ve had our shit, too, now, don’t get it twisted,” Kari said. “But no, he’s never treated me like crap because I didn’t allow him to treat me like crap. That’s why I drug his ass out here to this fine restaurant. I don’t allow that shit, and he knows it.”
“What do you recommend I do?” Gloria asked her.
“Get out of the allowance game,” Kari said bluntly. “While you still can.”
“Sorry about that.” It was Alex’s voice as he made his way back over to his wife. Gloria quickly began wiping her tears away. She did not want him to see her crying over his deadbeat brother.