“Frank makes you stupid, Claudia. I swear, she never acts like this.”
“Gotta go,” I said, then yanked on Britney’s arm, leaving Frank and everyone else in the bar behind.
I was officially mortified.
Confessions
Frank
I watched as Claudia pulled Britney out the front doors, half tempted to chase her outside. If I thought for one second that it wouldn’t embarrass Claudia further, I would have done it.
Unfurling my fingers from the paper I clenched, I instinctively knew what would be there. Just like I thought, Claudia had given me her name and number, taunting me, daring me to dial it.
Pulling out my cell phone, I almost sent her a text message, but I hesitated. It was in that millisecond of hesitation that guilt pushed its way in. That was all it took to make me to refocus. Shoving my phone and the note into my pocket, I headed back behind the bar to finish the evening with my brothers.
Once the bar was cleared out and locked up for the night and the rest of the staff sent home, Ryan started in on me. The little shit had been waiting hours to have this discussion.
“Can we please have a serious conversation?” He washed a glass as he spoke, but his eyes met mine, and they looked almost sad.
When Nick stopped what he was doing and inched closer to where Ryan and I stood, I played dumb. “What are we getting serious about?”
“You know what,” Nick said, but Ryan waved him off.
“Let me handle this,” he whispered to Nick.
“Um, I can hear you, you know?”
“Of course I know,” Ryan snapped. “Now, listen. There’s something I can’t figure out, okay? And I don’t want you getting all pissed off and closing up on us when I ask you.”
I groaned, wishing that Ryan would cut to the chase already and stop beating around the bush like a fucking girl. “Spit it out. I can handle whatever it is you’re too chickenshit to ask.”
He dropped the glass into the soapy water and it splashed all over his shirt. Thank God he’d put it back on after last call. “What’s the deal with you and Shelby?”
That was it? That was his big dramatic question?
“What kind of question is that? How am I supposed to answer that?”
Nick said slowly, “I think what Ryan’s trying to say is, we can see that you’re not happy. We don’t understand why you stay.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question, or if I wanted to. I’d kept everything to myself for so long, not wanting to burden anyone with my mess, but maybe it was time to unload. I wasn’t good at asking for help, but maybe that’s what these two were here for. God knew I’d do anything for either of them, and I knew they’d do the same for me. I just hated the very idea of needing anyone.
Without a word, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey and snagged three shot glasses. We’d done the same thing for Nick when we needed him to talk to us about all the crazy shit that was going on in his life. He’d tried to keep the things our father was doing to him a secret from us, but we’d plied him with enough alcohol that he started talking. It was our thing, I supposed.
Nick picked up the shot I pushed toward him. “I’m sensing a theme here.”
“That we’re alcoholics?” Ryan picked his up too.
“No. That we confess our truths over shots of hard liquor,” Nick said. “It’s how we bond.”
“I need it if you want me to have this discussion with you,” I said, my tone somber.
“Drink up.” Nick grinned and tipped back his first shot. “Start talking, Frank.”
“Don’t push me,” I growled.
Ryan shoved my shoulder. “Just start talking. Hell, start from the beginning. Give us the CliffsNotes, but tell us something.” He tossed back his shot before filling his glass again.
Starting at the beginning wasn’t something I was interested in. Plus, most of that no longer applied. Too much time had passed between who we were then and where we were now. After downing my shot, I refilled my glass and knocked it back too.
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “Did Claudia give you her number tonight?”
“She did.”
“We’ll get to her in a minute,” Nick said, waving a hand. “Shelby first.”
I rounded the bar, pulled out a stool, and sat facing them. “I don’t know where to start.”
Both Nick and Ryan jumped in, shooting out questions, talking over each other like a couple of little kids. I raised a hand to shut them up.
“I don’t know how to end things with Shelby.” There. That was as good a place to start as any.
“But why? What keeps you so firmly rooted?” Nick asked. “You’re not being blackmailed, right?” He swallowed hard, no doubt remembering the hell he’d gone through before being reunited with Jess.
“No, it’s nothing like what you went through,” I reassured him, thinking back at the absolute insanity my baby brother was forced to shoulder on his own before he let us in.
Ryan’s face paled slightly. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”
I recoiled, realizing how much more trapped I’d feel if she were. “No. Stop guessing.”
“Then tell us, already.”
“I think about ending things a lot, but then I feel so guilty that I can’t get past it,” I admitted, embarrassed at how weak I sounded.
“Why the guilt? Because she was there for you after baseball ended?” Ryan asked. He was so sincere, I could tell that he really wanted to understand the position I was in, and he didn’t know any of the details.
“For one, yeah. She was there when no one else was. She literally picked me up from the floor when I didn’t want to stand anymore.” I sighed, recalling the dark time when I realized I’d lost everything I’d worked my whole life for.
“I can understand that,” Ryan said, and Nick nodded in agreement.
“But there’s more. You guys know she was raised by a single dad, right?” I furrowed my brow, wondering if I’d ever filled them in on that.
“I didn’t know,” Nick said. “I probably know the least since I was so young when this all happened.”
Nick and I were ten years apart, so he was just a little kid when I had moved out. And when everything went downhill for me in college, the last person I was going to talk to about it was a ten-year-old.
“Shelby’s dad was all she had. It was just the two of them her whole life. He was a great guy, really supportive and loving. I swear to God, I was actually working up the nerve to end things with Shelby,” I said, shaking my head as I recalled the memory. “I wasn’t happy in the relationship anymore. Not for any particular reason, though.”
Sighing, I admitted, “I just realized that I stopped looking forward to coming home and having her there. I started doing everything I could to put off going home. I’d run errands and get shit we didn’t need, all because I felt trapped and hated walking through that front door. One night, I’d given myself a pep talk the whole drive home, but when I walked in, Shelby was on the kitchen floor in tears, her cell phone at her side. It was her dad. He was really sick. We’d just had dinner with him a few nights before, you know? And we didn’t have any idea because he kept it from us. He thought he would eventually get better and not have to ever tell us, but he didn’t.”
I stopped and took a deep breath. Losing Shelby’s dad had been one of the hardest things I’d ever witnessed. It wasn’t easy watching a strong man you admired fade away to nothing, right before our eyes. It was beyond heartbreaking, and it happened so quickly.
“I’d never felt more powerless than in those months before he passed. But on his deathbed . . .” I tried to compose myself as I remembered how tired his eyes had been, but also how much hope they still held out for his only daughter and me. “As he lay there dying, he made me promise that I’d always look after Shelby. He begged me to take care of her, told me he was leaving her in my hands, and that he couldn’t imagine her with a better guy. He said he trusted me to always do the right thing by her.”
My head dropped, the obligation I felt toward Shelby and her father weighing on me like a Mack truck. Telling my brothers about it had relieved the pressure a little, but it could never remove it from me completely.
“I never told Shelby what he said to me. I couldn’t.”
“Jesus, Frank,” Nick said softly. “That’s some really heavy shit. And you’re walking around all day every day carrying all that on your shoulders?”
I looked up to see both my brothers watching me, their eyes filled with a mixture of sympathy and pain. I hated seeing it. I didn’t want them feeling sorry for me. Every decision I had made about Shelby was of my own doing. No matter the reasoning behind it, I was still responsible for my situation.
“Everything makes so much sense,” Ryan finally said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
He nodded. “But, Frank, I don’t think Shelby’s dad would want you two to stay together if you weren’t happy.”
“But she is happy,” I said quickly. “I mean, I think she is. Hell, I don’t know anymore.”
“You gotta talk to her,” Nick said, “really have a conversation with her about it. What if she’s just as miserable as you are, and you’re both punishing each other by staying together because you’re each too scared to leave?”
I shrugged, not knowing what else to say.
“I’m really sorry you’ve been dealing with that alone all this time.” Ryan reached out and gripped my forearm. “Don’t forget you have us.” He glanced at Nick before meeting my eyes again, his voice wobbling a little as he said, “We’re always going to be here for you, no matter what. Don’t keep shit like that to yourself anymore. We’re your fucking brothers. That’s why we’re here.”
“It wasn’t your burden to bear,” I said.
“It’s really not yours either,” Nick said, his voice stronger than Ryan’s. “You can’t live your life because of a promise you made to someone on his deathbed. I mean, I get it, that’s a lot of pressure, and you’ve always been a stand-up guy who wants to do the right thing, but this—” He swallowed. “This is too much to ask of anyone.”
It was almost humorous hearing that kind of advice come out of Nick’s mouth, of all people. Until recently, he’d let other people dictate his entire life and every decision in it. He’d almost married a girl he hated because of it, and here he was now, doling out life-altering advice to me like it was the most natural thing ever.
And it wasn’t. It was fucking weird.
But that didn’t make him any less right.
I just wished that I believed letting down Shelby’s dad was something I could live with. I wasn’t sure that it was. Obligation and guilt had kept me rooted for this long, what was the rest of my life?
“I agree with Nick.” Ryan rounded the bar and pulled up a stool next to mine. “You can’t do this to yourself. It’s no way to live.”
“I know.” And I did know. I just didn’t know how to get out of it. “But how do you end things after that long when nothing’s really wrong? She’s going to want to know what happened, and I won’t have an answer for her.”
My mind spun, imagining scenarios that hadn’t happened but probably would if I tried to break up with Shelby. “She’ll want to fix it, but there’s nothing to fix. How the hell do you explain that to a woman like Shelby? I’ve wasted so much of her time when she’s been nothing but perfect. Seriously, the woman is a saint.”
Nick tilted his head to the side, studying me. “Just because she’s a good person doesn’t make you a bad one for not wanting to be with her.”
“You can’t force yourself to have feelings for someone if you don’t,” Ryan added with a slight frown. “Sometimes feelings fade or change over time. That doesn’t make you a bad guy either. At least you haven’t married the girl while you’ve been so unsure.”
I bristled at the thought. “I’ve been dodging that bullet for quite a while now, but she’s getting impatient.”
“Of course she is. She’s a chick and she wants to get married. Even if it’s for the wrong reasons,” Ryan said matter-of-factly. I had forgotten for a second that he was a fairy-tale romance specialist.
“What wrong reasons?”
“She thinks it’s the next natural step in your relationship. Whether she’s truly happy or not isn’t the issue. She thinks that by now you two should be engaged, buying a house, getting ready for marriage, and planning how many kids you’re going to have.”
Ryan was right. Shelby was absolutely on that page when it came to us, but I kept doing my damnedest to steer her off it.
“How do you get her to back off? When she brings it up, what do you say?” Nick asked
“I keep telling her that I don’t know if I want to get married. That I’m not sure I believe in it.” I looked down at my empty glass, avoiding their eyes.
“And she buys that?” Ryan asked incredulously.
“It’s not like I give her much room. I close off and go silent if she pushes too hard. I never know what the hell to say without hurting her, and I don’t want to lie.”
“But staying with her is a lie,” Nick said in a quiet voice.
“I know I should have the strength to walk away, but the thought of hurting her after all she’s been through in her life fucking kills me. I may not be in love with Shelby, but I care about her feelings. The last thing I want to do is hurt her.” It was fucked-up logic, if it was even logical at all, but it was the truth.
“I feel for you, brother.” Ryan clapped his hand on my shoulder. “I really do. But I want better for you. You deserve to be happy. You know that, right?”
Of course I knew that.
Or, at least, I thought I knew that.
Hell, maybe I didn’t think that I deserved to be happy at all. I’d made a promise to a dying man, and I was breaking that promise every single day. I deserved to be miserable, not happy.
When I didn’t say anything, Ryan said, “The shit part of it is I feel like I’m only pushing you on this because of Claudia. If she hadn’t walked in our bar, I’d still have my head in the sand, pretending your life was none of my business.”
The mention of her name made my entire body warm, especially near the area of my pants that held her phone number. Her face flashed in my mind, the flush of embarrassment staining her cheeks as she gave me the scrap of paper. She couldn’t get out of my bar quick enough. It was as adorable as it was infuriating.
Nick nodded. “I feel the same way.”
I jerked my head up, unable to remember what the hell we were talking about.
“What way is that?” I pretended not to have just been in another Claudia-induced fog.
“That Claudia is the reason we’re just now getting to the bottom of this. I knew you were unhappy, but I never knew why. I never thought about really pressing you for an answer. I always figured you’d kick my ass,” Ryan said with a grin.
I wanted to be shocked and surprised that Claudia was the reason the two of them were suddenly on my case, but I wasn’t. As much as I tried to deny it or pretend there was nothing between her and me, I was only lying to myself. And although I had no fucking clue what it was exactly, I did know that there was something.
“What is it about Claudia that has you both so invested in my love life all of a sudden?” I asked the question, hoping they’d give me some insight. It was like I couldn’t see anything clearly anymore—everything was coated in a layer of fog I couldn’t see my way out of.
“First of all,” Ryan said, then pointedly tapped his empty glass on the bar top. Nick lifted the whiskey and poured us all another round of shots. “I’ve never, and I mean never, seen you look at someone the way you look at her. Your entire face lights up. You make fun of me for being a walking chick flick, but you’re a fucking girly romance movie waiting to happen whenever she walks through our doors.” He downed his shot and burst out laughing like he was the funniest fucking person in the room.
Nick joined in, laughing hard before he
downed his own shot. “It’s true. You actually smile when she comes in. And you flirt. You,” he repeated, bursting out laughing again. “You actually flirt. It makes my night seeing that shit.”
“It’s like watching a baby deer on ice for the first time,” Ryan added, tipping back his head as he swiped at his eyes.
I should have known he’d reference a fucking Disney movie. The two of them should have started a damn comedy tour with how hilarious they both thought they were.
I glared at each of them. “You both know I can kick your asses, right?”
“Worth it,” they said in unison.
Assholes.
Ryan calmed himself down and looked at me sincerely. “Bro, seeing you with Claudia made me realize just how unhappy you’ve really been. You come to life when she’s around. That’s the only way I can explain it. You’re not like that when you’re with Shelby. It’s like you’re going through the motions, which makes complete sense now. Everything you do for her is out of obligation. I totally get it. I just don’t want that for you.”
“I refuse to throw away my relationship with Shelby for a woman I don’t even know,” I said, doing my best to think rationally.
Nick shook his head. “How you feel about Shelby has nothing to do with Claudia. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”
“It suddenly feels that way. Like I’m only now really wanting to end things with Shelby so that I can see if there’s something there with Claudia. That’s fucked up. I refuse to be that kind of man,” I said with a snarl.
“What kind is that, exactly?” Nick asked.
“The kind who breaks up with his girl for another one. I could never live with myself.”
“But it’s not about that. You said yourself that you’ve been unhappy for years. Maybe you met Claudia so that you’d be forced to take action in your life. She’s your catalyst,” Ryan suggested, sounding like a self-help book.
“How do you feel about her? I get that you don’t even know her, but there’s a spark, right? A connection of some kind?”
That sounded so strange coming from Nick. I would have bet money that kind of question would only come out of Ryan’s mouth.