Page 87 of Here to Stay
“Did they remove Blue?”
He shook his head, but his mouth was still a flat line. “No. Sofia explained she was just with my parents only a few hours a week. But they’re coming to check the house tomorrow.”
“Has she been working with the agency I told you about?”
His face relaxed a bit when I asked that, and he dipped his head. “Yes, she said she’s been in touch with her advocate and they would call the CPA worker on her behalf.”
“Good. That’s good. Sofia has her shit together, they’ll see that.”
He didn’t look too convinced, and then went back to the awkward staring into space.
“Rocco, are you all right?” I tried to grab his hand as I spoke, but he stood up and started pacing around the room.
“Things are about to really rev up at work. There are—”
He stopped moving and turned his back to me. He was starting to freak me out. His shoulders were tight and when he refused to look at me, then I understood. Before he said the words, I knew what he’d come here to do. I sat there in a daze, thinking that this could not be happening again.
When he turned around and focused on something over my head, my stomach flipped and I had to cover my mouth to keep from puking. “I don’t think we should keep seeing each other, Julia.”
I almost laughed, but I knew if I opened my mouth I’d start crying, and I was not going to cry.
“It’s better this way.” He sounded like he was dead inside, and I had no idea what to do.
I stood up and moved toward the door, not sure what I was doing. It was like he’d turned into someone else. I knew this could be from stress, from the issue with his sister, from his parents and how shitty they were, but I was hurt.
I wasn’t his fucking therapist. I was his girlfriend.
I took a deep breath and stood in front of him. I didn’t touch him but I stood close. “You’re going to look me in the eyes for this, Rocco.” I fisted my hands, so I didn’t grab his chin and force him to make eye contact.
But just my words made him flinch.
“No one is making you do this, Rocco.Youare choosing to hurt me.”
His face was like stone. “I’m under a lot of pressure, Julia. I have no idea what I’m going to do about work. I need to get Sofia away from my parents before a fucking tragedy happens. I have responsibilities. My job—”
“What about your job? We’ve always known there was a bit of a conflict there, Rocco. You’ll do your job, and I’ll do mine and then we’ll figure it out.”
“You don’t understand. I’m going to give them the recommendation to go ahead with the IPO, Julia. That means cuts.”
Even as he said it, I wanted to argue. To tell him that his recommending they ax the foundation was something we could work through. I was doing it again. I was shutting off my own needs so I could tend to one more person who found it so easy to trample on mine.
I thought about the moment when Matt told me he was going back to New York. I remember the anger, the frustration, the hurt—but this was something else. This was like Rocco had blown out my heart. I swallowed down the sob that was threatening to get out, and held myself together. I would not fucking lose it in front of him.
“This is how you do it, huh? You martyr yourself?”
He said nothing.
“You make it about other people so you can keep punishing yourself,” I said, hugging myself, suddenly feeling frozen to my toes. “I can’t fix this for the both of us and I won’t beg you. I deserve better.”
He flinched again and walked to my door and I let him go. He grabbed the doorknob and turned to look at me. “You deserve the very best, and that’s not me, Julia.” He laughed then, a hoarse, broken sound. “That’s not me.”
He walked out without so much as a backward glance, as I did everything I could to hold in the sob in my throat until he was gone.
I screamed. Hard and loud, and I knew he could hear me. But he didn’t come back, he left me there, because I was now a prop in Rocco’s theater of misery and isolation.
I don’t know how long I sat on the carpet crying, but after a while I walked over to the couch and grabbed my phone.
I tapped on the screen and after a couple of rings, José answered. “Hey, chula. I thought you’d be busy with Mr. Quinn, or is he still at the office?”
