Take a Chance on Me (14 page)

So he nodded at me in a show of graciousness and confidence as he walked toward the door. He sent Chance another faux grin, then waved more genuinely to my family, thanking them for their hospitality. “My car is just a few spaces down, Nia. The silver Mercedes,” he added unnecessarily and a bit too smugly, I thought.

“Okay,” I said.

My father wandered in the backroom, now that Grant was gone. My mother busied herself with cutting a tray of
pastichio,
a Greek variant of lasagna, into one-serving squares. And my brother looked deeply preoccupied with stacking imported jars of Kalamata olives on one of the shelves.

Chance crossed his arms, unmoving, and just waited for me.

I wanted to speak, but I needed to get him alone. “You know, your sister had been asking about the
amygdalota
, the almond cookies, the last time she was in here. Could you please give a small sample to her from me?”

Chance narrowed his eyes.

“It’s right here in the kitchen,” I said, waving him over, so he’d follow me. Reluctantly, he did.

I firmly shut the door between the kitchen and the bakery and then closed the gap between Chance and me.

I wrapped my arms around him but, though I could hear his heart beating through his shirt, he stood as still and straight as a steel rod. So, I stepped back.

“Chance, I have to go in just a minute. I need to—”

“What the hell are you doing, Nia?”

“I have to talk with Grant, okay? I didn’t expect him to show up here today. I didn’t expect you either.”

“You said he wasn’t your boyfriend anymore. Last night. In the sauna. Remember?”

Oh, yeah. I remembered.

“Yes, Chance, and that’s true…for
me
. But I didn’t have time to tell him that myself. I just left his place last night. You knew that. You helped me with my escape.”

He nodded curtly. “And your family? It seems they’re also unaware of your change of heart.”

“My family is…well, it’s complicated with them. They really like Grant. I don’t know that they’ll understand how I might suddenly be with you rather than with him.”

“
Why
wouldn’t they understand that?” he asked, his voice as stiff and unyielding as his posture.

“Because they don’t know you yet. To them, it would seem very sudden and surprising. Even though they just met Grant for the first time last week, they’ve heard a lot about him over the past couple of months. And he’s been really good with them. They’ve gotten kind of…attached.”

“So, let me recap. You’re saying Grant doesn’t know that he’s no longer your boyfriend. Your parents and your brother don’t know that you’ve only
mentally
broken up with him. But they all like the guy and want the two of you to be together, so you’ve continued to let them think you’re still a couple. And tonight you’re going out with him…why was that?”

“Because I have to break up with him in person.”

Chance pointed in the direction of the street. “He’s parked just a few spaces away,” he said with a clear mocking tone. “Can’t you talk to him in person in the safety of downtown Mirabelle Harbor? Do you have to go somewhere else where if, let’s say, he gets mad about this breakup, he could leave you stranded?”

“Grant wouldn’t do that. He’s a decent guy—”

He cut me off with a disbelieving shake of his head. “Tell me something, Nia. Truthfully. Is there an
us
in the real world, or are you having second thoughts?”

“Chance, you have to know—you must know, especially after last night—that I can’t continue dating Grant, no matter how much my family wants me to. But I need to be fair to him—”

He laughed without a trace of humor. “You need to be fair to
him?
See, that’s one of the things that really confuses me. Where, exactly, are your loyalties? Because you talk about Grant. And you talk about your family. But you don’t seem to be factoring me into that equation anywhere.”

I sighed in frustration. “Of course you’re in there. You’re the
reason
for all of this change. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to make things right, so we can be together, but your unfamiliarity with my family’s heritage makes everything a lot harder. One thing my parents like about Grant is that he knows how to act around them. It’s instinctive for him. But you’re someone new to them. Someone very different. And it’s going to be much more difficult to get them to accept you as a boyfriend for me.”

He went motionless, expressionless as he processed what I’d just said. I was hoping he’d take a deep breath. That he’d understand the delicate balance I was trying to manage here. But he came to a completely different conclusion.

“Well, damn,” he said, his voice low. “I’m an idiot for not seeing this sooner.”

“Seeing what? What are you talking about?”

“Your parents. You keep talking about your parents, how much they
really
like Grant. How you need to be so very careful about how you introduce me to them. How you’ll have to control their impressions of me. What you’re really saying is that your parents won’t think I’m good enough for you. That I’m someone you’re attracted to, someone you’ll have sex with—late at night, in secret, when no one else will know about it. But I’m not someone you want to openly introduce to them as your boyfriend anytime soon.”

“No, that’s not true—”

“Not true at all? Or only
partially
not true?”

“Chance, all I’ve been saying is that it’s going to take a little more time with them. To win them over. To get them to know you like I do.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think this is about a lot more than timing. It’s not just about you breaking up with Grant in a ‘fair’ way, is it? Or easing me into your parents’ circle of acquaintance. It has to do with your perception of us as a couple. How you don’t see us as matching somehow. How you don’t feel I’ll ever fit in with your family. And, most of all, how you’d much rather not be honest with me about it. Or with your parents. Or especially with yourself.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He
wouldn’t
fit in with my family…not easily. It would take a lot of time to get them to accept him and, with certain relatives, it might not ever happen. Which didn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It was just confusing to me, and there was so much pressure put on choosing the
right
relationship.

Chance apparently took my silence as my response. For someone who didn’t express a lot of emotion as a rule, he managed to look both very hurt and very mad at the same time.

Instinctively, I reached out to touch him. To try again to connect and explain.

He brushed me off, shuttered his emotions, and pointed to the array sharp utensils on the kitchen counter. “How about the next time you want to gut me, Nia, you just use a knife and be done with it, okay? It’d be less painful.”

Then he yanked open the door to the bakery and stalked out.

Mama was in the backroom with my father, but my brother sent me a disapproving look as we watched Chance leave The Gala. “He looks really pissed.”

“No kidding, Dimitri,” I said, grabbing my purse and a light jacket, and then going outside to find Grant and his fancy car.

Chapter Ten

~ Chance ~

It took a helluva lot to make me angry.

Right now, leaving Nia at The Gala, I was angry. Really,
really
angry.

And so damn hurt that I wished I could let myself cry.

I tried walking down the street, but that didn’t help. I wasn’t moving fast enough, hard enough. So I broke into a run, and I just kept going—through the downtown, past the schools, over to the lake, and along the shore. I ran until sweat dripped off me like I was under a water hose. Until I could stop wanting her for ten seconds. Stop wishing I could go back to last night and forget that today ever happened.

But today
did
happen.

And I was just going to have to live with that.

When I got home, I took a long shower and then called Blake.

“I’m a fool,” I told my brother, and I relayed to him what went down at the bakery.

“Love makes fools of all of us,” he said in his sage, radio-station voice.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snapped. “Since when do you know anything about love anyway?”

“Song lyrics, Chance. I listen to lots and lots of romantic song lyrics. It’s modern poetry.”

“And besides, I don’t
love
her. What I’m feeling is just an intense…infatuation.”

Wasn’t it?

“Really?” Blake said. “How many women have you ever been this ‘infatuated’ with in, say, the past decade?”

No one. But I wasn’t about to tell my brother that.

“You think she’s really hot, right?” he continued. Then, without waiting for me to reply, he said, “Answer this question—to yourself, if not to me. Would you still be feeling hurt right now if she weren’t so pretty?”

“What? Well,
yeah
. It’s the principle of the thing! What do her looks have to do with it?”

“A lot, actually. If, as you said, this was just an infatuation. But you care about what she thinks of you. How her family sees you. You want to be involved in her life. You can imagine the two of you together for the longer term, right?”

“So? I’ve had crushes where I imagined marrying some other girl before,” I said. I could hear the defensiveness in my own voice. Bet Blake could hear it, too.

“Did I say anything about marriage?” my brother asked. “Hmm, interesting. Listen, Chance, this is one of those ‘do as I say and not as I do’ situations, okay? I, personally, don’t think relationships are worth the risk and the heartache. But it sounds like this chick might be worth it to
you
.”

“She’s not a
chick
. You know, don’t call her—”

“Yeah,” my brother said, cutting me off with a not-so-subtle snicker. “My point exactly.
Nia
means something to you. So, would you just stop pretending you don’t care and, maybe, try to tell her that?”

I came to the conclusion that Blake wasn’t being helpful, and I decided to call Derek.

“Relationships are about understanding and compromise,” my married brother told me. “Were you really
listening
to what Nia was telling you?”

Jeez. “Yes, I was listening.”

“Without judgment, Chance?”

That conversation was even shorter and less helpful than the one with Blake.

I figured only Chandler would know what I was talking about. He was my twin, dammit. He was supposed to understand me when no one else did. So, I called him. No answer, just his voicemail.

Usually, I let it ride when I got the automated recording. But I needed him. So, I left a message saying, “It’s important, Chandler. Call me.” Then I did a hundred crunches on the floor, about five hundred torso twists, and more pushups than I remembered to count.

Finally, my twin brother called me back. An hour later. And drunk.

“She’s a woman and you’re a man,” Chandler slurred, after I attempted to explain the Nia Pappayiannis story to him.

“Yeah?”

“So, act like one!” my intoxicated twin instructed forcefully. “If she doesn’t love you back, screw her. Or screw one of her friends. Or screw someone else you find at the bar…or the gym or wherever you like to go. Just don’t let her screw with your head.”

Unfortunately, this was the least helpful advice of all.

I hung up on my third brother of the night and thought, Oh, what the hell? I’d tried every other sibling already. Might as well talk to Shar, too.

~Nia~

“Here’s to you,” Grant said, raising his wine glass. “And to a night of inspiring music.”

“Thanks,” I replied, clinking my glass with his and taking a sip.

Just as he’d promised, we were at an intimate Italian restaurant with good wine, great food, and an excellent atmosphere, just steps away from the concert hall on Chicago’s north side. As always, he’d ordered more for us than we could eat—an antipasto platter, toasted ravioli, eggplant parmesan, chicken marsala with mushrooms—all of it delicious. I was having a hard time relaxing and enjoying it, though, after that confrontation with Chance back at The Gala.

He was
so
stubborn. And frustrating! And…and completely irrational about all of this. I’d been arguing with him in my head for the past hour and a half.

“Don’t you like it?” Grant asked me, breaking into my thoughts.

I’d speared one of the toasted raviolis with my fork but hadn’t bitten into it. From his viewpoint, it must have looked like I was studying it and finding it lacking in some way.

“Oh, no. It’s wonderful.” I forced myself to eat it immediately. “I was just wondering about the filling. A type of cheese, maybe?”

“We can ask our server,” he said with a smile.

I smiled back and decided to make an effort to be more conversational. “So, do you often come to the Parkside Pavilion for concerts?”

“I’ve been to a fair number,” he admitted. “Mostly with the corporation. We’ve held special functions onsite for our shareholders and their families.”