New York Billionaires Series

“I’m sorry about that.”

The same eyes narrow. “If you’re saying this just because you pity me now…”

I laugh, unable to help myself, because it’s just what I would have thought in his shoes. The pride running through me is just as strong in his veins, bred into us by parents who saved I love you’s for special occasions and told stories about the family legacy for bedtime.

“Anthony,” he complains, putting his glass down.

“No, no,” I say. “I don’t pity you. Sorry.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“Because we’re so similar. Christ, Isaac. That’s why I’ve stayed away!”

Confusion is stark on his features. I gesture to the armchair again, raising my glass of scotch. He has a seat, still staring at me.

“Look, two years ago I went to an optician because it was getting harder to read. Instead of being prescribed glasses, he sent me to a doctor. Turned out I’m losing my vision.”

He stares at me. “What?”

“I’m losing my eyesight. It’s deteriorating rapidly, or so they tell me.”

There’s no pity in his gaze, and that fortifies me. Isaac’s reaction is a benchmark for my parents. If he can take it, so can they.

“You’re not serious,” he says.

“Serious as death,” I reply, smiling wryly. “Wish I wasn’t, though.”

Isaac looks down into his glass. Turns it around in his hands, once, twice. A memory strikes me, of him doing just that after we got into Grandfather’s liquor cabinet. He’d been twelve. Sitting just like that with his contraband in hand, and I’d thought he was the coolest, taking charge and knowing what to do.

“That’s why you’ve stayed away,” he says.

I nod. “Couldn’t bring myself to tell you until now. Couldn’t say it, really. Out loud.”

He lifts his gaze to mine. “I hope you take this the right way, Anthony,” he says. “But I wish your fiancée had cheated on you instead.”

I laugh at that. Here we are, both of our lives in shambles. “Yeah. So do I, to tell you the truth.”

Isaac comes over for dinner the next day. He’s the one who makes the call, showing up thirty minutes later. I open my fridge for his perusal and he shakes his head. “Nothing in here goes together. Did you use a delivery service?”

“Picked it out myself,” I say.

“Well, it sucks. Let’s order something.”

One night won’t fix everything between us. I know the things I’ve said in the past, the anger and irrationality, hanging up on the phone… it won’t be undone by sharing what’s been going on.

But it’s a start.

After he leaves, I take out the trash and wipe down the kitchen counter. Fetch the cane from its hiding place and put it back on the kitchen counter.

Isaac knows. Tristan knows. Only our two remaining business partners and my parents left.

My phone rings, and seeing the name on it, my heart does a double-take. It’s been three weeks. Three weeks, and it feels like I’m cutting out my own heart with this self-imposed exile.

I’ve questioned the necessity of it more than once.

But yesterday, after talking to Ivan about his journey with blindness, I’d been so drained I hadn’t made it out of bed for twelve hours.

I answer it. “Hi, baby.”

“Hello,” she says. One small word. I close my eyes, listening to the warm silence across the line. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” I say.

“Can you tell me about what you’ve been doing?”

I push away from the kitchen counter. Stretch out on my couch instead and imagine she’s lying beside me, tucked beneath my arm.

“I want to,” I admit. “I want to tell you everything. But I’m afraid that if I do, I won’t continue.”

“Continue making the changes?”

I close my eyes again. It’s Summer on the other line. Summer, who’s never run from me and my problems. Who laughs and loves freely. “Because it’s so fucking hard. As soon as I’ve… I’ve done one of these things, I want to get in a cab and go to you. I want to disappear into your apartment. Watch you organize your mismatched mugs on the shelf you have above the sink.”

“They’re collectibles,” she murmurs.

“But if I’m there, Summer, I’ll never leave. I know that now. I’ll sit on your tiny kitchen chair and ask you to explain the story behind every single one of those mugs because you’re irresistible when you light up because of something you’re passionate about. I won’t walk out the door and fix myself.”

“You don’t need fixing,” she says.Original from NôvelDrama.Org.

“I do. You showed me that, too.”

“I did? Anthony, I like you the way you are.”

“I like who I am with you too,” I murmur. “But I want to be that man all the time. I’m working toward being him, baby.”

She hadn’t seen it all. Hadn’t seen me snap at my family. At my business partners. At random waiters in restaurants. I hope she never has to.

And I can’t risk letting myself snap at her.

There’s faint sniffling on the other line. “I’ll be here,” she promises. “When you’re ready.”

“It won’t be long,” I vow. I wouldn’t survive this if it was long.

“I miss you,” she says. “So much more than I anticipated. Just sleeping at night feels difficult without you in my bed.”

“Fuck, baby, I know. Just hearing you mention a bed makes me excited.”

Her laugh tightens my chest. I need that sound in my life like I need air. Like that plastic cane, it shows me the way forward. “I miss that too,” she says. “A lot.”