Page 102 of Love Deep
Gerry nods, slowly. Solemnly.
“I don’t know if my mom just found out he’d cheated then. Or she’d lived with it since it happened. Maybe it happened throughout their marriage, and she just didn’t know what to do. She didn’t work. I think she would have been too frightened to divorce my father when I was a kid, even if she had found out.”
I pull in a breath and feel lighter for it. “I have compassion for my mother that I haven’t felt in a long time. Maybe ever. I think she did the best she could in the circumstances. It took me a long time to trust my gut, but actually, ever since that day when they told me they were divorcing, my gut’s never been wrong. I think my mom was a victim of my father’s bad behavior…” I pause. “And so were you.” I want him to believe me when I tell him the next bit. “I didn’t know.”
Gerry finally speaks. “He denied my existence my entire life.”
I pour out two more glasses of tequila, ready to hear his story.
“I hated you,” he says. It must feel good to admit it. And I can’t blame him. I would have hated me too. “I wanted what you’d had. I wanted a dad who wanted me. I wanted the perfect family. Growing up, my lack of father just wasn’t talked about. I craved him, though. I wanted a dad to throw a ball with, to have water fights with. My mom was a good mom. She worked two jobs. She loved me.
“Then things shifted when I was thirteen. My mom lost her job and she got really stressed. She told me later that that’s when she reached out to…” He grimaces, unable to even refer to our father. “When she’d told him she was pregnant, he fled. She never saw him again. And when she reached out, he wouldn’t take her calls. It wasn’t until she lost her job that she got lawyers involved.”
Since I was eighteen, I’ve thought my dad was a liar. But now I can add coward to his character description. And all this time, my mom has never told me what happened. Maybe she’s been trying to save face. Or maybe she’s been trying to protect me.
“She got another job, so she dropped the lawsuit for a couple of years. At that point, I knew what had happened. I knew I had a father and that he had another family. I guess it was just my age—I didn’t understand how the world worked. I just accepted things. I think she wanted to give him an opportunity to know me.” He lets out a cynical half laugh. “He didn’t take it, of course. I overheard them on the phone. My mom told him that he had two sons. Not one, and that you had a brother. He hung up.”
My stomach churns at the lies. At the cowardice. At the lack of fucking character. The guy I idolized for so long. The man who called me his sidekick. The man I thought hung the moon was nothing like the man he’d pretended to be.
“Before then, I’d never really pictured him or you. I accepted he wasn’t in our life without question. But from that day, I couldn’t get you out of my head. You were easy to find on social media, after I learned your last name from the court papers my mom had.” He sighs as if he’s finally given up the fight, like he realizes there’s been too much misplaced bitterness. “I went to the same college. Even managed to get myself in the same dorm. I was sick of missing out, and I was determined not to anymore. I wanted what you had.”
It all makes sense now. I wish we’d had this conversation earlier.
“Turns out we both like music. I’m not sure if it was my passion before I started in the business, but it is now. I love it. And managing the bands—that’s what I loved most. Spotting potential in artists and delicately shaping it so they fulfill their potential…” He nods and smiles for the first time since I ordered the tequila. “I should be grateful to you. My job is genuinely my calling. Anyway, when we both ended up working at EMG, I thought my time had come. I could take what you thought was yours. Make sure you had less to make up for all the time when you had far too much. Much more than I had.
“And after EMG, you set up your own fucking label. Man, I waspissedabout that. You were going to get to work for yourself and not have to put up with asshole managers who didn’t give a fuck about anything but being spotted out with the latest singers.”
I chuckle at his frustration. The music business is full of people whose only ambition is to be seen as close to the talent. I’ve never understood it.
“That’s why I became a manager. I didn’t want to have someone telling me what to do whenyoudidn’t have to put up with that shit, either.”
Jesus, even when I thought we’d followed different paths, he’d chosen his because of me. I’ve never felt so sorry for a man as I do for the one sitting in front of me.
“Anyway, I’m good at what I do,” he says. “I got the opportunity at Re because of my own merits.” He sounds slightly defensive.
“I know,” I reassure him. “There’s never been any doubt about that in my mind.”
He nods, his eyes flitting around the room, like he can’t quite take the compliment.
“Our father is an asshole,” I say, pouring out another shot of tequila. “But I’m not him.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he says. “Never having the perfect family, or thinking you’ve got it and discovering it’s all been a lie.”
“Pick your poison,” I say. He looks at me, and I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I swear there’s something I see that wasn’t there before. A softness… or maybe a lack of bitterness.
We both reach for our glasses and raise them in the air and tip them back. It feels like the beginning of a truce or something.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Juniper
New York couldn’t be more different than Star Falls. And yet, somehow, it still feels like home. Fisher was right about everyone belonging in New York. There’s an energy that makes me feel like there’s a place for Riley and me here.
Fisher. God, I miss him. I close my eyes in a long blink in a futile attempt to wipe him from my thoughts.
Riley squeezes my hand a little tighter as people come toward us on the sidewalk of Park Avenue. “There’s just so many people!”
I laugh. That’s an understatement. “You’re right. A little more than Star Falls, right?”
