Page 21 of Finally Mine
When he showed up at her house, I went home with him. I knew he would hurt her. He wouldn’t just use that pain and intimidation on me. He would use it on my mother. And you know what? She would have fought back. She would have called the cops, pressed charges, and gouged that asshole’s eyes out.
And that’s why I went home with him. Because I wasn’t her. I couldn’t do those things. I deserved to be beaten and broken.
But I pictured it. I pictured what would happen if he spread his violence. And I started plotting. I started saving what little money I could. I stashed it in a tampon box. And I started envisioning a life without him. He cheated on me when he wasn’t too drunk to get it up. I knew every time he came home smelling like sex.
He called me names, threw food at me, hit me when he remembered I existed. I started fighting back, pathetically. It made him laugh.
I was nothing. Less than nothing.
And I let it all eat at me until I would rather die than spend another night with him.
It took me years. Years. Life wasted. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’ve never had a job or lived on my own. Hell, I’ve never paid taxes or had health insurance. I don’t know what to do, where to go, who to be.
When I was sixteen, I had a plan, I had dreams. I knew what I wanted.
I can’t even remember those dreams. What does someone do without dreams? The only ones I have now are nightmares.
12
Aldo: How do you feel about lunch with your fiancé?
Gloria stared down at her phone and tapped her fingers on the keyboard of her mother’s elderly laptop. It had been a week since she’d had dinner with Luke and Harper. A week since Aldo had driven her home. A week since he held her in the dark as she unloaded a decade’s worth of tearful regret.
She’d convinced herself that Aldo Moretta wasn’t in the market for a fixer-upper like her. He was just being kind. The man had a giant heart shoved into the confines of his expansive chest.
And now he was asking her to lunch. A pity invite?
“It’s better than writing a resume for a loser with absolutely no experience at anything besides baking pies and washing dishes,” she muttered. Her resume had her name at the top, her mother’s address underneath, and nothing but a high school degree on it. She was rotating between shame and frustration.
Gloria: Lunch would be great. Where? When?
The response was instantaneous, and she wondered if he was sitting there waiting for her response.
Aldo: Meet me at my office in half an hour?
Half an hour? What was she going to wear? She hadn’t even showered yet. Where was her deodorant?
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” she muttered under her breath, and she dashed down the hallway to her bedroom.
* * *
Lewiscki and Moretta Associates—ofcourse he was a partner—was housed in a yellow brick building on the far end of Main Street. It was a quick four blocks from her mother’s house, and once Gloria had given up trying to dress to impress, she made it with a minute to spare.
She parked on the street and got out, looking at the glass front door and debating whether or not she should go inside. Her phone buzzed.
Aldo: Come inside. I’ll show you my fancy corner office.
Gloria looked up and saw him grinning at her from the second-floor window. He waved. She waved back mechanically.Just a pity invite. Don’t get your panties in a twist, she reminded herself.
She took the stairs to the second floor and hesitated for only a second or ten outside the Lewiscki and Moretta Associates door. “Oh my God. Just open the damn door, Gloria.”
She did as she told herself, the metal handle cool to the touch, and walked into chaos.
It was an open workspace with desks and flat surfaces crammed everywhere. There were blueprint-draped work tables, desks buckling under computer equipment and files. Even the industrial gray carpet was camouflaged beneath ignored paperwork. Phones rang. Faxes beeped. And a dreadlocked IT person dismantled a copy machine in the corner.
A woman with short, jet-black hair cropped close to her scalp swore at a huge computer monitor while an early twenty-something associate ran from the conference room lugging a laptop, tablet, and stack of files thicker than the entire Harry Potter series.
Aldo, the calm in the storm, approached.
