Breathe Read online

  Screw fucking random chicks. Verbal battles with Joey is a better aphrodisiac. Maybe even better than booze.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself, Toby.

  My head spins at the reason why I’m here. Drinking. Calling my friend sponsor, I hope he doesn’t be a dick.

  “Tobes, my man,” he answers on the first ring.

  “Hey,” I let out. The guilt of last night weighs heavily on me. My body shakes as the urge to make a pit stop overwhelms me. I pull off to the side of the road.

  “What happened?” he questions. There isn’t an ounce of accusation or confrontation, just understanding.

  “One sec,” I respond, right before opening my door to puke. My lungs constrict as I retch out the fluids my body doesn’t have. The pills and water I drank before running after Joey wasn’t enough, and as my body convulses with each gasp, I keep heaving even as the contents of my stomach no longer exist.

  He always knows when I drink. Like with Nate, he’s a fucking psychic. “Last night,” I mutter softly into the phone after picking it up, not wanting to be weak anymore. The burn in my lungs from holding my breath becomes too much. “I fucked up, Francis.”

  Yeah, my ex-best friend’s ex-best friend’s ex-husband is the one who keeps my head on straight.

  “How much did you drink, T?”

  Again, the utmost concern is all that I hear. He’s too good to me. “I’m not sure. I can’t even remember everything. Whether it be from a full blackout or from selective avoidance, I fucked up.”

  I can imagine him nodding, mulling over how to respond. That’s just how he is. “How far are you?”

  “Barstow.” I only made it this far before giving in to call.

  “You waited that long to call me?”

  I cringe, hearing the disappointment in his voice. He’s right, I could have crashed. Alcohol runs through my veins more than blood. If you sliced me open, that’s the only scent that would fill your nostrils. That and self-loathing.

  “Yeah. Didn’t realize I made it this far, to be honest.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be driving,” he chastises.

  “You’re probably right. I have a fuck-ton on my mind. Like a new chef, giving Lo the main Su Casa location, and realizing how fucking dumb I am for drinking.”

  “Well, you’re beating yourself up enough for the both of us. Tell me more about Lo and your restaurant.”

  Of course, that’s what he wants to hear about. Since I barely utter her name, he tries lobotomizing it from my brain whenever it’s mentioned. “Nothing,” I divert. “My new chef is feisty, though.”

  “New chef? Why did you need a new one?”

  Man. I completely forgot it’s been days since we’ve really talked. “Debra walked out, I guess. I had a limited time to get a replacement and decided to show up at Culinary Con.”

  “Isn’t that some big ordeal that lasts all week?”

  “Not for me, it doesn’t. I got what I came for, gave more than I should, and now I’m trying to convince her to show up to work.”

  “Good luck with that,” he mocks. “If you say she’s feisty, then she must be a helluva catch.”

  “Yeah, if you crave being drowned by a fucking siren. She’s smoking hot, but that mouth... it’s going to get her into trouble.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing you dig that kind of thing.”

  “Not before now,” I argue.

  “That’s not true. Lo used to be a contender for witticism. She didn’t bow down until all that shit went down.” I nod my head at his response, not realizing he can’t see me.

  “I guess.”

  “That’s awkward,” he starts, a teasing lilt to his words. “Tell me, how do you feel?”

  “Like I died and came back to life just to experience the agony all over again.”

  “Nothing new, then? How about you come to dinner Sunday? We can catch up, and you can meet Gray and her friend.”

  “Teenagers? No thanks.”

  “Believe me, she’s not just a teen. She’s something else.”

  “Is that admiration in your tone, Francis?”

  “It’s a lot more than that.”

  “Color me intrigued.”

  “Oh, and Toby...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sors-toi la tête du cul.”

  “Huh? What’s with the French, dude? You never spoke French in high school.”

  “That was before I spent eighteen years in France where my family only spoke French.” He scoffs, then continues, “It means, get your head out of your ass before you ruin someone else’s life along with yours.”

  “Thanks... glad to have you as a friend.”

  “Believe me, I’m being kind. You’re really dumb sometimes.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “See you Sunday, man. Bring some wine.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Present

  Joey

  “I was worried about you,” Francis comments immediately when I come down from my room after a shower and change. I wish he wasn’t here, standing in the foyer like a caring person who has no reason to show me an ounce of kindness. Wish he didn’t see me this way. Ragged. Hungover. Disgusting.

  Vegas has that regretful film once you leave, lingering, permeating, slipping through every moral of yours until none are left. Yet all of us who shame the city of endless nights always return one way or another. Hypocrites, the lot of us.

  “I’m sorry,” I respond lamely. What do I say? I’m sorry I didn’t stay here and be with you, but I found another hottie and enjoyed him? Did I, though... enjoy him?

  Yes. My body doesn’t hurt in the wrong ways like it did in Paris. After that morning...

  This feels like I let loose, explored a man, and got too drunk. Am I selectively regretting or forgetting something important? Can’t believe I was so reckless while in the presence of men. Not all good men, I’m sure.

  “Did you have fun?” He doesn’t grill me or ask with malice. Like he cares, he sits on the sofa in the front room. With a wine glass in hand and soft features, he waits for my response. He’s so sophisticated. Too mature for me. Too much my friend’s dad...

  “I don’t remember,” I reply honestly. I don’t know why I find myself being open, but I am. He nods, his face curious as he pats the seat next to him. I make my way over, wanting to know how he makes me feel so comfortable.

  “I remember those days. The forgetting. Getting high and drinking until I got alcohol poisoning with munchies on the side. It’s not fun. Don’t do that.” He chuckles, fingering the edge of his glass, almost stuck in the past. “It didn’t last long, though; the reminder of what my life became kind of drowned that out.”

  This is the most we’ve spoken that hasn’t been flirtatious and hot. He’s giving me an opening, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take it.

  “Was it your release?” It’s a simple question. Simple for folks who don’t struggle. Ones who live blissfully where nothing seems to go on. But for people like him and me—the ones who hide their battles in smiles and charity events—it’s a gun, waiting for the bullet to be chambered, giving an ultimate destruction.

  “Until I met her.”

  “Who?” I question. Not out of jealousy or worry, but plain curiosity.

  “Gray.” It’s a simple one-word answer, but as I look into his raging storm eyes, I know it’s anything but. When I sit next to him, my leg bumps his accidentally. As I try to move from my mistake, he grips my bare thigh. Warmth spreads through me, starting from where our skin connects and causing a flush all across my body.

  “What do you mean met?” I attempt to direct his attention to anywhere but my thigh and the goose bumps he left in his path.

  “We just met,” he whispers, emotion sticking to every word like glue, molding to each letter, marking their memory like tree roots to the ground. Chills break out over my skin as confusion settles in. The ebb and flow of his pain, wrapped in the air, whizzing erratically like my hear
t, flows over me, absorbing me, telling me there’s so much more than I could imagine.

  Breathe, Joey.

  Letting out the stale air in my lungs, I ask him so many questions with my eyes, hoping he sees them and answers each one. Because while I may be brave on a good day, exhaustion overwhelms me and keeps me from spouting off each one.

  “Francis,” I mutter, not knowing how to force him to go on. How do you? It’s his story, his pain, his history. It’s not something that should matter to me. We’ve just met, after all. But I care, even if just for the sake of him and his daughter.

  “I mentioned my ex...” When I nod, he accepts this as a cue to go on. “She was the love of my life. Or so my seventeen-year-old self thought. Putting a smile on her face brought me the most joy I had ever experienced. Honestly, I was just a love-struck idiot.”

  I’m entranced, and he hasn’t said anything I haven’t heard from anyone who lost a first love. Regret. Hurt. Cynicism. His face doesn’t give a ton away either, just knowledge and acceptance. He burned his burdens, eradicating them from his soul, and rose from the ashes in return.

  “She knew everything about me. My family, our royal bloodline, the inheritance...” he veers off. I flinch, thinking of how Dad always warned me not to date beneath me—that in doing so, they’d only love me for what I was financially worth.

  “I’m so sorry,” I finally say, my heart breaking with the realization that he was used. It feels like shit. I’d know.

  “Me too,” he mutters. Taking a much larger than necessary gulp of his wine, he squeezes his eyes closed. It takes several seconds before he opens them, his eyes—ones with too much experience—sinking deep into me, telling me more than words ever could.

  “What did she do to you?” I request. It’s so loaded. I know it from the little detail he told me the other day. The one about his near-death.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He laughs, but there’s no humor on his face. It’s a pitiful sound, one full of so much disdain. It’s surprising a man this kind could carry such a weight. “When we were in high school, I was dumbfounded when she asked me out. She asked me. Eleanor Graves, the most popular girl in school. The one with dark raven hair that was never curly. It was slick straight, like she flat-ironed it for days just to keep it so stiff. And her face, almost angelic with sharp cheekbones and a tiny nose. Some would say she was flawless... they’d be wrong.” He shakes his head sadly. Nostalgia doesn’t lace his tone, derisiveness does. “Not for the fact that she was a psychopath, but because she had a tiny scar underneath her eyebrow. It was always covered with make-up, but after you spent time with her and she skipped her cover-up, it was there. I always thought it was adorable, it reminded me of when a cat scratches you and you remember it years later fondly. She hated it, though. Whenever I mentioned how endearing I found it, she’d freak out and call me stupid.” He lets out a long exhale. His eyes are wide and filled with the need to talk faster, explain more. They run rampant and expose everything he holds within himself.

  “It’s okay to breathe,” I offer, hoping to calm the wildness seeping through his skin, inking the floor with all the indecision and regret.

  He closes his eyes, as if he’s already forgotten that it’s a necessary action to survive, calming himself with each passing second.

  “She was cruel, but I loved her. She was hateful, but I forgave her. She was crazy and in love with my best friend, but I kissed the ground she stomped upon, covering and forgiving each hellish thing she did. But it wasn’t love. That’s where I got it all wrong.”

  He finally releases my thigh, the imprint of his fingers on me has him scrunching his face in disapproval. As soon as he’s opened up, the conversation is over. He’s shut down the topic completely, every flutter of emotion he had is gone.

  “I’ve had too much to drink,” he chastises himself. “Ironic, really... since I just told my best friend to stop drinking himself to death.”

  “You still talk to him? The one who slept with your ex?” I accuse, shocked that he could forgive him. Whether that’s some kind of superpower or stupidity he wields, the jury’s out on that. Whether his best friend was a part of his ex’s love or not, he had to have given her ammunition for that, right?

  “Fuck no,” he curses, his voice lower and raspier than I’ve ever heard. I grip my chest from the hatred that spills out with those two syllables, realizing I made a major mistake in judging him. “That’s an entirely different story that we’re not ready to have.”

  He polishes off his wine and stands, offering his hand to me. “Let’s eat and save such dark topics for another time, hmm?”

  I stare at him in mouth-open-wide shock. How can he just brush over all of that? My heart is still racing from his admission, and he just ignores it like it didn’t change his life.

  Why does alcohol make people weird?

  And why do I want to beg him for more answers?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Present

  Toby

  “Do I really have to come over?” I ask Francis the following Sunday. He called me, telling me how excited he is to introduce me to “Ma coccinelle.” Whoever the fuck that is. This weird French shift with him has thrown me off.

  Nate, Francis, and I kept in touch after Ellie tried murdering Francis, but it seems his acclimation to France made him more French than American in the sense of language and accent. It’s like he’s an entirely new person, one I don’t really know anymore.

  After my happenstance with Jameson, I called Bobbie, my actual sponsor. The most worrisome part of that call was her telling me she hadn’t heard from Nate in a long time. He was on a bender, and he called her when he nearly caved. When she checked in on him, he seemed okay. After that, nothing. No correspondence at all. It worries me. Since leaving Hollow Ridge, I’ve been a bad friend and accountability partner.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve been drinking up until several months ago, and the guilt made me stay away. Nate has his own shit to deal with. He’s temperamental and in the worst situation. How could I bother him with my addictions when he’s riddled with his own?

  “We haven’t seen each other since Eleanor’s funeral, Toby. Yes, we need to see each other and talk. Especially about you drinking last night when you swore off alcohol.” His tone is chastising as much as it’s full of concern. It’s not news that whiskey is my weakness when no one expected a thing.

  Being accustomed to alcohol on every front isn’t hard to hide when you matter so little. No one pays attention to the single uncle, son, brother... they care too much about their own lives to bother. So it’s not a surprise really, not with my childhood and fatherhood. If anything, that made it fateful. “Between you and Nathan, I’m not even sure how to keep you both sober.”

  “You’ve spoken with Nate?”

  “Yes, he called, strung out of his mind. He’s hurting.” The realization dawns on me; he’s suffering and I’ve been a shitty friend. If Lo knew I kept in contact with her brother just to avoid being a good friend, would she hate me even more? “Might as well start with you, and then I’ll go save him, too.”

  “Save me? You told me to bring wine,” I chide, unable to jab right back at him. He chuckles on the other side of the phone, light-hearted, unburdened, happy. Something I haven’t felt in a long time.

  “For me, idiot. You hate wine,” he argues.

  “It’s booze. And reminds me of her. Of course, I hate wine.” The apathy in my tone is laced with condescension and negligence. Not apathetic at all, if we’re being honest.

  “It was meant to end this way. You leaving, you discovering other venues, me getting my daughter...” he trails off. “Fate, Tobias. Definitely, fate.”

  I shake my head, knowing he can’t see me. If this is fate, as he claims, then why does my chest still ache as if the pain is physical and not emotional? I’ve never been one for destiny or God’s plan. I’m all about the details. There’s no proof this was set in stone ages ago. It’s easy to ref
ute a life that you absolutely abhor, and I’ve yet to accept my future. Whatever it may be.

  My mind wanders to Joey. The woman from last night, the one who smacked me in the face with her words as much as this whiskey hangover, is something else. She’s the only reason I’d love to believe in this exhaustive universe of fate.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” I grunt, hanging up soon after. My mind continues to replay what I can remember from our night together.

  “Bend over,” I hiss, my voice not even slightly slurred while my vision spots a little. She turns, her hips shaking in the little black dress she sports. The heels do everything for her figure, making the globes of her ass sit higher. And fuck, this woman has an exquisite ass.

  “You’re a bossy dick,” she grumbles, sashaying to make a point of how much control she has here.

  “Yet your cunt is soaking for me,” I challenge, wanting to ram my cock deep in her and feel her squeeze me until she screams my name.

  “Definitely not your doing,” she snarks, turning toward me with a smirk.

  I stalk over to her, and the sound of my palm smacking her left cheek echoes in the bathroom. “Bet you’ll cream as soon as I touch you.”

  “Is that a challenge, old man?” she taunts, wetting her bottom lip.

  “Bet your goddamn ass, Sous.”

  My mind tries to remember more, her moans, the way she felt around my cock as I sank into her. It’s crazy to crave the memories when every other time I’ve blocked every single one out. I couldn’t give a shit who was on the receiving end of my dick, as long as I had a good time. Until Joey.

  I get ready for the night, jeans—which I usually never allow myself to wear—an untucked button-up, my Richard Mille watch, which is my most prized possession, and my loafers. After grabbing Francis’s favorite Château wine, my mind settles on the fact that I’ll have to be sober for whatever conversation we have.

  Château is nothing I’d enjoy, that’s for sure. It costs way too much and only tastes good to wine drinkers. To whiskey connoisseurs like myself, it tastes like a flower arrangement crushed into a fucking vat of dirty water. Hard pass. I’d definitely drink, but I have to get the hotel restaurant up and going with Joey. Being hammered on the job isn’t exactly acceptable behavior.