The Heart Chaser by Gina Azzi
Abbi
Dry your eyes and straighten your spine.
Gran’s voice rings in my ears as the water from the shower beats down on my head. It’s hot and steamy and doing shit at hiding the fact that I’m sobbing. I know my eyes will be puffy and red and that Chloe will call me out when I meet her for lunch.
But why is everything spiraling? Why, after all the shit with Phil, and losing Gran, am I now losing Luca?
Because I can’t keep him. Not when he’s getting into it with his team, his family, his friends, because of my past. Not when he’s blurring the lines between our relationship and his career. I can’t let him sacrifice so much because I messed up, because I trusted the wrong guy, because I got played.
My fingertips press against the glass door as I try to regulate my breathing. Nothing about this past year has been easy. Except reconnecting with Luca. Shame on me for believing things could be so effortless. Haven’t I learned by now that nothing is that simple? If it seems too good to be true, it’s because it is.
I close my eyes and rinse the conditioner from my hair before stepping out of the shower. Going through the motions, I get ready for my lunch with Chloe. Now that I don’t have an office to go to, now that my March camps have been postponed until summer, perhaps indefinitely, I have all day to wallow in my depressing thoughts. Chloe taking me to lunch is a power move. She wants to snap me out of my funk before she leaves for Central America next week. She’ll be gone for two weeks as she writes a piece centered on child endangerment, trafficking, and migration.
Normally, I welcome Chloe’s interventions. She’s the only person, besides Gran, who I can count on. But now, I feel too exposed, too raw and hurt, to heed her tough love.
“Hey,” I greet Chloe when she knocks on the door to my apartment.
“Hi,” she replies, stepping inside. “Love what you’ve done with the place.” She glances around my space.
I smirk. I haven’t done shit with this apartment and it shows. Between moving in a whirlwind, desperate to leave Hoboken behind, and reconnecting with Luca, I haven’t spent a lot of time here.
“Are we heading out or ordering in?” Chloe asks.
I narrow my eyes. “Just how tough is this tough love going to be?”
“Take a seat and we’ll order something.”
I groan, moving to my kitchen and grabbing two sparkling waters from the fridge. I slide one to Chloe while she taps on her phone.
“I’m getting us salads from that new place, The Leafy Green.”
“Great,” I say, popping the tab on my water and taking a sip.
I sit across from Chloe and watch as she places down her phone, settles her coat and purse on another chair, and fixes me with a stern look.
“Abbi Walsh.”
“Chloe Crawford.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“No, you don’t.”
She lifts her eyebrows as if to ask, seriously?
I raise mine back and she smirks.
“You haven’t been this salty in a long-ass time,” she accuses me.
I snort, trying to keep my face blank but my emotions, a tumultuous, flowing river under the surface of my skin, rise to the surface.
“Why are you trying so hard to push him away?” Chloe’s voice softens.
I scoff but she sees through me in a heartbeat.
“Why won’t you let him in?” she tries again.
“He’s going to bail.”
“How do you know that?” Her eyes are pleading but her voice is even.
I exhale, glancing up at the ceiling to school my expression. “How can he not? He’s already getting into it with his team, with his family, with everyone over me and these stupid pictures.”
“That’s his choice. His decision. He wants to support you. Why can’t you let him?”
“I don’t want him to put everything on the line for something that’s so, so new…so fragile. Hell, I might not even be here next month.”
Chloe frowns. “What do you mean?”
I gesture around my plain apartment, exasperated. “Chlo, I’m not even working.”
“You’re on a temporary leave.”
“That could become permanent at any time.”
“Abs, I feel for you. I really do. This is a shitty situation and Phil is a dick. But you can’t let this shitstorm dictate everything.”
I groan. “You sound just like Luca.”
“Good. At least he’s trying to talk sense to you.”
“Moving here was a mistake. Letting Luca in was—”
“The right thing to do. He’s crazy about you, Abbi. And you’re in love with him.”
My eyes shutter closed and a few tears leak out because…I am. I’m in love with Luca Pandatelli and all I’m offering him is heartache. And headaches.
“I can’t go to Philadelphia with him. I can’t meet his family like…like this.” I point at myself, hot mess express over here.
The corner of Chloe’s mouth ticks up. “Okay. Then tell him you’re riding this one out but pick a date, a weekend, to go meet his family. He wants you to meet them. He’s bringing you into his life, his world. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
I nod, working a swallow. “But not like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like the pathetic, naive—”
“Stop.”
“Girl who everyone has seen naked.”
Chloe shrugs. “At least you’ve got the goods.”
I roll my eyes and plant my face down, my forehead resting against the edge of the table. “Chloe Ann, I’m…tired.”
“I know. You haven’t had a chance to get back on your feet before this next wave wiped you out.”
“I miss Gran,” I murmur, a quiet admission.
“She wouldn’t want you to back down.”
“I know,” I say, knowing exactly what Gran would say if she was here.
Lift your head.
“You haven’t mourned her yet,” Chloe whispers.
I glance up and watch as the pieces click together in her mind. Her expression changes, her mouth twisting and her eyes softening.
“Abbi.” Chloe extends her hand and my face falls.
Sobs wrack my chest for the second time today and I fold in on myself. My best friend scurries to my side of the table, wrapping me up in a hug.
She’s my last person. The last one I have that I can count on, that I know will show up.
What about Luca? my heart asks.
What about him? my head answers.
He’s showing up.
For now.
“I’ll end up ruining him,” I tell Chloe.
She pulls back, her expression bleak. “You’re not giving him a chance. You’re not being fair.”
I let out a huff, half humor, half tears. “What is fairness?”
Chloe lifts her eyebrows. “Turning philosophical, are we?”
I sigh and drag the backs of my hands across my eyes. “I don’t know how to trust what’s between us. I don’t know how to trust him. Not after—”
“He didn’t call.”
“Yeah.”
“And Phil betrayed you.”
“There’s also that,” I agree.
“Not to mention Kent.”
“Please don’t.”
Chloe snorts but her face reflects the pain I feel bleeding from mine.
“You’ve had a tough go of it, Abbi. And I don’t have an answer for you. What I do know is in the past nine months since I’ve met Panda, I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you. I’ve never seen him claim a woman the way he’s claimed you. He’s in love with you and he doesn’t deserve to be punished for the mistakes the men before him made, any more than you deserve to be punished for them. So, stop punishing yourself.”
Her words land hard, popping in my head like Pop Rocks. I grin when I think of my favorite childhood candy. Nothing in my life has ever been simple, and this seems no different.
“Do you really think I’m punishing myself?” I wonder aloud.
Chloe chews the corner of her lip, her green eyes sparking. “I think you’re always skeptical of happiness, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. What if this time, it doesn’t?”
“What if it does?” I counter.
“That’s life, Abbi. And you said it yourself, what’s fairness anyway?”
I snort out a laugh as a knock sounds at the door.
“I’ll grab lunch; you get the plates,” Chloe demands.
I nod, moving into the kitchen to pull out plates and cutlery.
We sit back down and open our salads.
“Mourn your gran,” Chloe tells me.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Talk about her. Let yourself miss her. Share stories about her. Tell Luca about her. Does he even know that she raised you?”
I shrug. “A bit.”
Chloe quirks an eyebrow. “Things between you and him can’t blossom if you don’t let him in, Abbi. You need to decide if you’re going to make a real go of this or let it fade out the way—”
“I always do,” I finish for her.
She shrugs, her eyes brimming with a sadness, an expectation, I don’t like. It’s as if I’m disappointing her and it hurts to know my best friend thinks I’m sabotaging my own relationship. Am I?
I tip my head, acknowledging the challenge in her eyes. “You’re really going all in today, aren’t you?”
“Tough love is real love,” she answers, flashing me a grin. “And you’re like a sister to me. I just want you to be happy.”
“Yeah,” I agree, lifting my fork to my mouth. “I’d like that too.”
* * *
Lunch with Chloeputs a lot of things into perspective. I spend the remainder of the afternoon contemplating my relationship with Luca, thinking of Gran, remembering my childhood.
Mom passed when I was a kid, just on the peak of becoming a woman. Dad was already out of the picture, not even bothering to send child support payments as he took his new family to Disney World.
But Gran raised me as her own. She was both the mom and the dad and the grandmother. She was my shoulder to cry on, my number one cheerleader, and could rival a prison guard when necessary.
Losing her feels like I’ve lost a piece of myself. An important part that I don’t know how to heal or recover now that Gran isn’t here to tell me how.
I sigh and plop down on the couch, grabbing the remote control. I glance at the clock, knowing Luca should be home in another thirty minutes or so. I’m going to invite him over then, tell him about Gran, try to sort this next step out between us. Chloe’s right; I’ll never know what will happen if I’m not willing to try.
I frown as my face splashes across the television. What the hell? My eyes flick down to the bottom corner where the logo of a well-known celebrity gossip station lights up.
Well, well, well. No publicity is bad publicity.
I snort and turn up the volume, not entirely sold on that point.
“—linked to the lingerie model, Anastasia Luvorchik, who announced her pregnancy earlier this afternoon. She’s naming Boston Hawks Hockey goalie, Luca Pandatelli, as the father. Most recently, he’s in a relationship with Abigail Walsh, the infamous woman allegedly breaking up happy relationships across the Northeast. Is this her latest work?”
Another image of me, an awful one, sloppy drunk in Luca’s arms over the summer, appears on the screen and I gasp, my hand flying to my throat.
What the hell? Is Luca having a baby with, with a lingerie model?
My heart pounds, so loud I can hear it in my eardrums.
Is this a scandal? Did he know? Did he keep this from me?
Stop it. You don’t know anything yet. You know what they say about those who make assumptions.
Yeah, but I’ve been made an ass of my entire life. Why should now be any different?
My phone buzzes next to me, the screen lighting up with an incoming call and a barrage of messages.
A lump forms in my throat and nausea rolls through me, twisting my stomach.
I need to talk to Luca. But now, I no longer want to.