When she didn’t move, I took her hand, flipped her palm face up, and put the leash in it. The sleeve engulfed her hand. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for my jacket back.
“Sebastian, please.”
I had to turn away from the tears streaming down her face. She was scared, and I was fucking done trying to get through to her. I walked away with her words ringing in my ears.
“It’s deeper. I know it’s scary, but you can’t heal until you face it.”
Heal? My mother’s death, her home, was the one place in me that would never heal. There’d always be a dark hole in my heart when it came to Boston, and if Georgina insisted on living there, then so fucking be it.
I wasn’t going to follow.
But she’d known that.
26
Sebastian
Justin idled at the curb in a convertible with the top down despite the fact that it was cold as fuck. I tossed my TUMI leather duffel in the back, and Opal leaped in the moment I got the door open. I rarely even had to put a leash on her, she was the most loyal fucking dog.
I hesitated before officially trapping myself in a car with Justin for the next few hours. “Somehow, you managed to convince me to go to the beach in December,” I said, “but I’m sure as hell not riding all the way through Long Island like this.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Justin said. “I’ll put the top up. All you had to do was ask politely.”
“That so? Let me try.” I straightened my shoulders as I pulled off my gloves. “Please, may I skip this weekend?”
Justin glanced up at me as he raised the top. “No, but I really appreciate you doing this for me, brother. Women like this don’t come along every day.”
It was always about a woman—in this case, a Swiss foreign exchange student whose time at NYU was almost over had invited him to a winter wonderland party in the Hamptons.
I shook my head at Opal as I removed my coat, sat in the passenger’s seat, and blasted the heater. “Winter wonderland my ass,” I muttered. “I could be sitting in the sauna at Equinox right now.”
“That’s no way to spend a Saturday,” he said, plugging in his iPhone before searching Spotify. “Nice to have a rental car for a change, isn’t it? Not at the mercy of the Uber driver’s playlist.”
“Let’s get on the road,” I said, trying to take the cell from him. “I can play DJ.”
“Are you kidding? You’ll never lay a hand on my phone again after you dunk-tanked it last month. Thank Jobs for waterproof electronics.”
I sat back in my seat as Ace of Base came through the speakers. It wasn’t unusual for Georgina to pop into my mind on the regular, but this time, she was deliciously naked in the shower, scrubbing shampoo in her auburn hair as she shimmied to “The Sign.”
I looked over at Justin. “What the fuck?”
He shrugged. “I’ve had this album stuck in my head ever since Georgina brought it up.”
Bullshit. He just liked to torment me. I looked out the window. It’d been weeks since I’d walked away from the vet, but I still had Georgina stuck in my head. Not just visions of her showering, but also the way she’d hugged me tightly on the curb, taking solace in my neck as she’d sobbed. I’d thought it was all for Bruno, but as I played the night over and over in my head, I wondered if I’d had it wrong. Maybe she really had wanted that job but had known what my answer to Boston would be. Maybe she’d cried knowing she’d been trapped. That I wouldn’t be able to come with her and face my past to start a future.
That I wasn’t able or wasn’t strong enough?
I’d been asking myself that since I’d left. Why did Georgina think my inability to sell the house ran deeper than saying goodbye to my mom? What could possibly be deeper than that?
We were still at the curb, Ace of Base on the stereo. The road opened ahead of us, Opal panted at my back, and the day was sunny if not wintry. Depressing, if you asked me. A perfect day was just a reminder that I wasn’t spending it with Georgina.
Justin had stopped using his phone to watch me.
“Well?” I raised my eyebrows. “What’s the hold up?”
“It’s a good thing you took my advice and finally shaved. You were getting pretty scraggly. But I have to say, it didn’t really work. You still look miserable.”
“Well, I am,” I said. “But what the fuck can I do about it? It’s going to take some time for me to get over Georgina if I ever do. Until then, I’m leaning into it.” Opal moved around in the backseat, then stuck her cold nose against my ear. I reached back to pet her. “Anyway, I miss the beard. It kept me warm.”
Justin looked thoughtful as he peered out the windshield. I braced myself for whatever words of supposed wisdom he thought himself qualified to impart, but instead he just said, “You can’t pull off a beard. Sorry.”
“If you don’t put the car in drive within the next five seconds, Opal and I are getting out.”
“So you can go upstairs and wallow some more?” He shook his head. “Let me pose you a scenario.”
Here we go. I sighed, wondering if Opal was swift enough to make a break for it with me, or if she’d hold me back.
“Just because I rented a car for the Hamptons doesn’t mean we have to go there,” he said. “There somewhere else you’d rather spend the weekend?”
“The gym. My couch with Opal. Satan’s asshole. Literally anywhere else.”
Justin chuckled in his knowing way, and it told me all I needed to know. He had something up his sleeve. “Think, Quinn. We can go anywhere else within driving distance.”
Ah. I got it. This wasn’t the first time he’d hinted at taking a trip. “We’re not going to Boston.”
“Why not? I hear Massachusetts is lovely this time of year. Not to mention you might get your life back there.”
A life I hadn’t even had a hold on before it’d slipped through my fingers. I’d refrained many times from calling up Georgina or driving out to see her new place. At first, I’d been too angry, but once that’d worn off, I’d stayed where I was because it wasn’t fair to either of us. No matter how much I missed her, unless she was coming back or I was going there, what was the point of making things harder? I only knew she was in Boston at all since she and Justin had kept in touch.
“I’m serious,” Justin said when I didn’t respond. “Why can’t we go? I know you’ve been thinking about it. You’re not pissed at her anymore—you understand why she had to go. And your sister told me you’ve been asking about the property.”
“You talk to my sister?”
“All the time, man. We’re in a virtual book club together.”
“Fuck.” I closed my eyes and dropped the back of my head against the headrest. “You’re like the chick in that movie Single White Female.”
“I know.” Justin unzipped his jacket and showed me his t-shirt, which read, I put the hot in psychotic.
I rolled my eyes, trying not give him the satisfaction of a laugh.
“I’m your best friend,” he said, all joking gone from his voice. “And as much as I want you in New York, I think Georgina’s right. I think Libby’s right. And I think you feel the same. You’ve put this off too long.” He raised the volume on the radio. “So unless you’re able to convince me a hundred percent that you’re not ready to go home, that’s where I’m taking you.”
Home. Home was not an unkempt house that was probably in disarray. It wasn’t Massachusetts or even Eastie. It was Georgina. Bruno. Opal. The family I’d been too stubborn—and yeah, scared—to allow myself. “I’m not showing up on Georgina’s doorstep.”
“We’re not going there for Georgina,” he said, opening the console. “We’re going to see the house.”
“What about your party?”
“Let’s say you owe me one Swiss girl.” Justin opened a map of the northeast and pointed to a circle he’d made, the sneaky bastard. I let my eyes wander over the familiar neighborhood in East Boston.