Torture to Her Soul
Page 113

"Yeah, but you'd still love me if I gained, like, seven hundred pounds, right?"
A small smile tugs the corner of his lips as he regards me, just enough to show off a hint of his dimples. "Right."
"See? No problem."
"Sure, until you had a massive coronary from the clogged arteries. I already worry about you getting diabetes with as much chocolate as you eat."
I roll my eyes instead of commenting, taking another bite as he laughs. I swallow it down with what's left of my Coke just as the waitress comes speeding by. She skids to a stop, grabbing my empty glass with a smile. "Refill, darling?"
"Yes, please."
She turns her attention to Naz. "Another beer?"
He shakes his bottle. Empty. "Sure."
The waitress scurries away, returning moments later with our drinks. The cap is already off Naz's beer bottle, but he barely gives it a look before taking a sip.
I smile, unable to help myself, as I stare at him. His mind drifts again, his attention elsewhere, but I don't mind. Not really. It gives me a chance to watch him like he usually watches me.
I'm sure, if people knew us, if they knew our history... if they read the fine print that accompanied our story... they'd wonder how I could even be here right now. How I could sit at this table, across from this man, and breathe the same air he breathes, sharing the same space that he occupies. They'd wonder how I could look at him and feel anything besides hatred. How I could see him and not wish him dead.
The truth is, sometimes I wonder those same things.
It makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me. Is it some sort of sickness I've caught? Delirium. Delusions. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, or maybe it's a disease I was born with. Not contagious, but genetic, something my mother passed on to me. I see an echo of her in myself. I'm stumbling down the same path she long ago got lost on, a path that reaffirmed her undying love for a man that had been marked for death.
I wonder if this is how she felt, facing the realization that the man she'd chosen to give herself to was the same man who took so much away from her. I wonder if she felt as I feel, if she saw what I see: a flawed man, a tortured soul, a shred of hope inside what everyone else finds utterly hopeless. I wonder a lot, but I'll never have any answers, never get a chance to ask my questions, thanks to the man sitting across from me.
Some days, I'm still so angry about what he did, about how he hurt me, but other days… days like today, when I watch him in silence and see a hint of the vulnerability he usually keeps locked away… I'm afforded a sick sense of relief. Relief that I'll never have my questions answered, that I'll never have to know just how fucked up we all really are.
I finish eating as he sips his beer, staring off toward the nearest television screen. Football is on, the noise from the crowd loud but the silence that surrounds the two of us is comfortable.
After my burger is gone, I shove my plate aside and gaze at the screen. I know nothing about sports. There's a green team and a blue team and they smash into each other like the waves of a tumultuous sea, mixing and mashing and doing whatever the hell they do to score points.
I don't know.
I don't get it.
"I need a job."
My attention darts right to Naz when he says that. "What?"
Sighing exasperatedly, he leans back in the booth, his eyes shifting to me. He stares at me, hard, but his expression remains passive.
After a moment, he shrugs.
"A job," he says again. "Something."
"Do you…? I mean, if it's about money, I…"
He cuts me off with a laugh and takes a swig of his beer. "We're good on money. Our children are good on money, as are their children, and their children's children. It isn't about money."
I gape at him. That was a whole hell of a lot of hypothetical children he just threw in there for a man who hasn't uttered a word to me about us potentially having a family since the last time we stepped foot in Sin City. "If it's not money, then…"
"I just need something," he explains, not looking at me now, his eyes drifting along the wooden tabletop between us. "You have school. You're going to have something someday, a career, and I've got nothing."
"You have plenty," I say, although I know exactly what he means when he says he has nothing. He has no focus, no goal, nothing he's working toward anymore. The man spent his entire adulthood hunting something, and now that it's been caught, he's just standing there, stagnant, unsure which direction to go.
"You asked me once what I would've done with my life had I not lost everything," he says. "I was thinking about that earlier… thinking about what kind of man I'd be if Johnny hadn't turned on me."
"Did you figure it out?"
"I don't know," he says, finishing off his beer before setting his bottle down. "I was a punk kid. Sure, I was in college, but who knows how long that would've lasted, considering I was already working odd jobs for Ray back then. I just wanted to be everything my father wasn't… I didn't want to have to work myself to the death just to pay the bills. I didn't want to turn out like Giuseppe Vitale. So I think maybe, regardless, when all was said and done, this is exactly who I'd still be. Even if Johnny hadn't done what he did, somebody, somewhere, probably would have, and I still would've become this man."
His voice has a dejected tone to it, like that realization knocked the wind from his sails.