Page 16 of Love Lessons
I don’t even have to ask who he means, because I already know. And I dread that, too. O’Doul wants me to go up to Boston to sit down with the guy who got hurt in that fight in April. “Don’t know, man. Don’t really think he’d want to see my face again.”
“Not true. I asked Trevi’s college buddy if the guy would be open to meeting you. The kid said yes.”
Well, fuck. “Why’d you volunteer me for that without asking?”
“I didn’t. I just opened up the conversation. Besides, I think it would help you to apologize,” he says quietly.
“But I already did.” I wrote a card to him right after the fight and said I was sorry he’d gotten hurt. Actually, the PR guy did the actual handwriting, because mine is so bad nobody can read it. But we’d sent that sucker off just as soon as we’d heard that the kid needed multiple surgeries. I’d felt terrible.
Still do.
“You should go in person,” he says patiently. “Might do both of you some good.”
Ugh. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do. And of course, I feel bad…”
“You still dreaming about it?”
Christ, I should have never told him that. “Not very often. And, yeah, I feel like shit that it happened. But I can’t go set eyes on him just to makemyselffeel better. And he doesn’t want that either, right? If some guy ended my career, I’d make a dartboard with his face on it and invite whatever friends I had left to come over and play.”
O’Doul chuckles. “If it ever comes to that, I’ll bring the beer, man. But I have been in your shoes. Fighting is as hard on the mind as it is on the body. And you have to find a way to make your peace with everything that happens in this game.”
I know he’s right. I’m not okay with what happened. Not even a little. But I just don’t see how visiting that kid will ever change that.
My phone rings, and I pull it out of my pocket. “Aw, fuck. My dad wants to chew me out for that mugshot. Here, answer this and tell him I’m trapped under something heavy.” I hand O’Doul the phone.
“Hello?” he answers it. “Hey, Mr. Crikey. Yeah, this is Patrick O’Doul. How you been?” They chat for a second, and I start to relax. And then I hear my captain say, “Yeah, he’s right here. And he said he was looking forward to talking to you.”
Christ. I give O’Doul a glare, but he just smiles. Then he hands me the phone, picks up our empty beer bottles, and leaves me alone with my father’s anger.
SIX
A Kink for Lost Causes
VERA
“I want to hear everything,and we’ve got the time, right?” Charli asks.
We do have the time. We’re standing on the sidewalk on Wooster Street in SoHo, inching forward every few minutes in a long line of eager shoppers.
Charli is accompanying me to a huge sample sale. It seems like several hundred other people had the same idea. “Start at the beginning,” she says. “When did you break up with this guy?”
“About three years ago. Right after we both graduated.” I got an associate’s degree, but Danforth had gotten a bachelor’s. “Then he got into Harvard Business School, and I expected to move up there to be with him. I thought we had big plans together, but it turns out he only had big plans for himself.”
Charli flashes me a pensive look. “Hmm. Well, there’s a strike against him.” It’s a restrained comment coming from her. I love Charli’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She’s a scrapper like me. We understood each other from the first moment we met.
Hiring her was a great idea. And yet it puts extra pressure on me. These days when I’m fretting about my business, I’m worried about two people’s futures instead of just my own.
But it’s great having a confidante. “Danforth was my first love,” I tell her. “I still have feelings for him, even if they’re complicated. Seeing him last night was nerve-wracking. I wasn’t ready.”
“What did he have to say for himself?” she demands as we inch closer to the door of the showroom. “Did he grovel?”
“Not exactly,” I say carefully. “He said he’d been thinking about me and that texting with me has been fun. So he wanted to visit me in person. We just chatted for a little while. Mostly career stuff.”
I’d been so nervous, too. It had been surreal to see him sitting on my sofa again after all this time. I’d been jumping out of my skin, wondering what it all meant. “Then, when he was about to leave, he invited me to a big benefit he’s attending at the Met. The charity has something to do with solar research.”
“Oh boy,” Charli says. “I have so many questions. In the first place,pleasedon’t tell me you’re thinking of blowing off our trip to Italy just to be his date for a work party?”
“No way,” I say quickly. “I told him about our trip to Italy. But this gala is the first week of August. It’s after we get back.”
