Whatever It Takes (21 page)

I must have been daydreaming for too long because Sean elbowed me and said, “Was it
that
good that you’re reliving it now?”

I just smirked and shrugged, letting Sean believe what he wanted and that earned a loud yell from my cousin getting the attention of Mattie, Nicholas, and John.  Kevin was still concentrating on his shot.  He was a douche. 

“What’s the yelling for?” John asked.

“Gavin here was just reliving the hot sex he and Emma had last night.”

I punched Sean in his arm while the others made their own noises of approval.

“You guys are assholes,” I told them.

Truthfully, my cousins were the greatest bunch of guys an only child with no father could grow up around.  They treated me like another brother and I was sure if I told them about cheating on Emma, they wouldn’t pass judgement and try to help with the situation.  Still, I wasn’t going to spoil their weekend by giving them bad news.  I kept a smile on my face the rest of the day and had a good time with them. 

Emma

I awoke later that evening to Gavin stroking my hair.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” he sang softly.  “We have to be downstairs for dinner in an hour.”

I reluctantly opened my eyes to see my husband kneeling beside the bed next to me.  He was freshly showered, his hair damp and his chest still trickling beads of water.  I yawned and stretched and then allowed him to help me from the bed. 

A white towel was slung low on his hips and I stared, mesmerized for a moment by my husband’s physique.  Damn, he still had a great body.  His chest was nicely sculpted with outlined pecs leading down into a six-pack.  Just under, his hips led way into a perfect V, the ones women go crazy for.  A flash of desire ran through me. 

Gavin noticed my ogling and looked down at himself, searching.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re really beautiful,” I told him.

He half-grinned at me and then closed the small distance between us to lean down and kiss me.  It started out as a gentle meeting of closed lips and Gavin kept his hands at his sides until I opened my mouth and let my tongue meet his in a more passionate kiss.  I rested my hands on his biceps and then he reached around to clutch my backside with both hands. 

We continued until I felt his arousal through the thin towel and then I pulled away.  I couldn’t be intimate with him now.  The phone calls from his ex were still too fresh in my mind.  Recalling them was like a wet blanket thrown over the fire of my libido.

“I need to shower,” I said and then closed myself off in the bathroom.  If Gavin made any sounds of protest, I didn’t hear them.

A buffet dinner was being served outdoors that night, on the back patio that was the size of about half a football field.  Glowing lanterns hovered above long picnic style tables that were decorated in silver and pink.  A full service bar was set up along one end with the food at the other.  Gavin went to the bar to get us drinks while I took a seat across from Nicholas’ wife, Gina.  She was seated with their eighteen-month-old daughter, Chloe, in her lap. 

“Hey there,”  Gina greeted me.  “Where were you today?”

“Resting,” I told her, trying to adjust the skirt of my choral dress.  Picnic benches were not meant for formal wear.  “I was so tired, I just went to the room and crashed.”

“Well, you missed quite an afternoon,” she told me.  “The boys played horseshoes over by the lake and they ended up tossing Kevin into the water.”

I laughed with her, trying to imagine how the most serious of the Fitzgerald boys had reacted to that.

“He was so, mad,” Gina said, continuing to laugh.  “They threw him in fully clothed with his shoes on and everything.  He even had his cellphone in his pocket.  I thought he was going to kill someone.”

Chloe fussed in her lap, not liking being ignored.

“Well, hello, Miss Chloe,” I cooed.  She immediately stopped fidgeting and beamed at me.  “What’s going on, sweetie pie?”

I crawled my fingers across the table like a spider and landed them on top of her hand, tickling her.  An infectious giggle burst from her belly, making me giggle along with her.  I did the spider- hand thing over and over and she never got tired of it.  Gavin joined us and took his seat next to me, watching the little show the baby and I were putting on.  It wasn’t long until he was laughing right along with us.

“So,” Gina said, pulling out a snack to distract Chloe with.  “When are you two going to start having kids?”

A lead weight took up residence in my stomach and I took a sip of the amaretto sour Gavin had gotten me from the bar to procrastinate answering her.  Gavin saved me though by saying, “Isn’t that a question you’re supposed to ask the bride and groom?”

Gina started to come back with some clever retort but then she must have seen the chagrin on my face and stopped.  She gave me a “what’s wrong” look but I smiled and shook my head.  I couldn’t have been too convincing though, because she turned concerned eyes on Gavin.  He pretended not to notice.

The announcement that dinner was served saved us from any further scrutiny.  While Gavin and I were standing in line for the buffet, he leaned into my ear and whispered, “Can you at least try to have a good time tonight?”

Angry, I looked up at him and hissed through my teeth, “I am trying.  You think this is easy for me?”

Gavin opened his mouth to reply but then he smiled and kissed the top of my head.  I looked around and then saw who he was putting on a show for.  Uncle Dom was across the buffet, studying us with serious eyes while he spooned some green beans onto his plate.  I looked down and busied myself with doing the same.

I sat down to eat even more irritated now, eating my food quietly while happy chatter continued around me.  Gavin kept trying to play it cool, but each time he touched my leg or put his arm around me I tensed.  One of the times I actually jerked pretty hard, just as a waitress was leaning over to refill my water glass.  I bumped her elbow and a bit of water spilled into my lap.  She apologized profusely, even though it was my fault.  I told her not to worry about it and then excused myself to clean up. 

As I walked away from the table I heard someone ask Gavin if I was okay.  I wanted to scream out that no, I wasn't okay.  I felt like I was on a frickin rollercoaster.  I could feel a tightness in my chest and my eyes began to sting.  I hurried my steps before I started to cry.  Putting on this show in front of his family was turning out to be a lot harder than I had anticipated.

I made my way back into the house and went in search of a restroom, begging the tears not to fall until I was behind a closed door.  Gavin came up behind me and took my elbow, leading me into a small sitting room off the main hall. 

"What is going on, baby?" he pled.  "I don't understand, you've been running hot and cold since we got here."

I put my face in my hands.  "I don't know," I sobbed.  "I'm not trying to spoil anything, but this is so hard, Gavin.  I don't know why, it just is."

"Tell me what to do," he said, gathering me into his arms, letting me cry into his shirt.  "Whatever you need.  I'll do it."

"I don't know," I repeated, clutching at him. 

His body stiffened and I lifted my head to see what had disturbed him.  His uncle was standing in the doorway.  I turned away, pulling myself from Gavin’s arms and wiped hastily at my face.

"What the hell is going on with the two of yeh?” he demanded, coming further into the room.  “You’ve both been out of sorts since yehs got here.”  He looked back and forth between the two of us, waiting on an answer.

“It’s nothing,” I lied, taking a handkerchief he offered me.  I dabbed at my eyes, and forced out a laugh.  “We had a silly fight on our way up.”

“Horseshit,” he accused.  “A silly fight wouldn’t have yeh carrying on like this.  Now what’s the trouble.  I want the truth, yeh hear?”

Gavin stared at the ceiling, his arms crossed in front of him.  While I tried to come up with something that would sound plausible he just blurted out his confession.

“I cheated on Emma.”

Uncle Dominic’s face went white and then before I could blink he had his hand around Gavin’s throat, slamming him into the wall.  He raised his fist like he was going to hit him and I yelled out, lurching forward to stop him.  Gavin’s face was a complete blank, but his jaw was clenched like he was preparing for his uncle’s fist to make contact.  It didn’t though.  He held it in the air for a beat and then dropped it, releasing Gavin’s throat at the same time.   He raised his hand up again, but this time to point a finger in Gavin's face.

“Yer father would be ashamed of yeh,” he growled and then left the room quickly.

I watched him go, my hand over my mouth, and then turned back to my husband.  I had never seen him look so completely and utterly destroyed.  Not even when his mother died.  He stood still against the wall, his eyes refusing to meet mine and then he took off.

I chased after him, through the long hall and out the main entrance. 

“Gavin, wait!” I called but he ignored me, continuing in long strides down the drive and off to the side of the house in the grass.  It was difficult for me to keep up with him on my heels so I stopped to take them off.  “Gavin!”

He kept going but I continued to follow, running more easily now in my bare feet.  Finally, at the edge of the property, he leaned against a tree and then I saw his moonlit silhouette drop to the ground on his knees. 

I slowed my steps, giving him a few more seconds to himself before I could reach him.  When I finally did, my heart broke for him.  His head hung down into his chest, his arms lay limply at his sides, and he cried.

Gavin

My uncle had just said the words I had been forcing myself not to even think about since the moment I fucked around.  Putting all of my thoughts and energy into thinking about Emma, I refused to allow myself to consider how my father would have reacted were he here.  I knew he would have been mortified but hearing my uncle actually say the words literally brought me to my knees.

My mother and my uncle made sure I grew up knowing as much about my father as I could.  They would show me pictures, tell me stories, and constantly remind me how proud he had been the day I was born.  My mother told me about his love for boats, baseball, and Ireland.  My uncle would tell me about his love for my mother.

My parents met when they were twelve, my father having just moved here from Dublin, my mother a native to their neighborhood.  My uncle said that when my dad first saw my mother he told him he was going to marry her.  “At only twelve, yer father said that me,” he told me.  They became friends first, my mother’s father a strict Italian man who would not allow his daughter to date until she was sixteen, but then right on her sixteenth birthday, my father took her out on their first date.  From that day on, they were inseparable and they married when they were nineteen.

My father believed a woman was to be cherished and held in the highest regard.  “If there was one thing your father would want me to teach yeh,” Uncle Dom had told me, “it would be that when yeh take a wife yeh treat her like a queen until the day yeh die.”

Hearing my uncle tell me now, my worst fear, that my father would be ashamed of me was like a punch to my gut.  My uncle could have clocked me right in my face and it would have hurt less than his words.

While I cried into the grass beneath me Emma stood before me and pulled me to her.  I pressed my forehead into her belly, wrapping my arms around her waist.  As I cried she ran her hands through my hair and lightly scratched my scalp while whispering words of comfort.

We stayed like that for so long and then Emma shifted so that she could get on her knees in front of me.  Then she moved back to lean against the tree, encouraging me with her hands to lie in the grass and put my head in her lap.

She stayed quiet and let me grieve and  just continued to stroke my hair.  Finally, my tears stopped but I stayed quiet until my breaths came out steady and even.

“When my mother died, do you know what she said?” I finally began, staring up at the stars above us.  “She said she was sorry that she couldn’t find another man to love to be a father to me.  That my father was the love of her life and she knew, even though he died when they were both young, she’d never find someone she’d love as much as she loved him.  And even though I was raised by a single mother, I grew up into such a fine young man.  ‘Your father would be so proud of you’ she told me.

“For as long as I can remember,” I continued, “I’ve felt like I’ve had something to prove.  Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve accomplished, I always wondered if it’d make my dad happy.  I still do.”

She listened as I told her this story for the first time.  In the year since my mother passed away, I never told her about this conversation I had with her the day before she died. 

“And out of all the things I’ve done, I could have fucked up any of one of them and I could have lived through it, knowing my father would have forgiven me.  But ruining our marriage-” my voice cracked and the tears started to fall again.  I didn’t give a shit that I was crying.  I deserved the humiliation.  “My uncle is right, he
would
have been ashamed of me.”