Hold Me Tight (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen
Eric

I have so much to be grateful for—and so much to worry about.

I clasp Ivy’s hand and reach across the table for Will’s. I clear my throat. It’s been a while since I’ve said grace. This is the first year I’m sitting at the head of the table, leading ‘my family’ in prayer. I guess I have to count Will among my family now that Ivy asked him to be the baby’s godfather. I just hope he moves out and gets his own place before the christening because he’s driving me crazy.

But I have to admit that he was a big help in putting this meal together. I know how to cook a few basic things like boiling pasta and grilling steaks, but I’m clueless when it comes to roasting a turkey. And since Ivy’s dorm room culinary skills haven’t advanced beyond nuking a container of ramen noodles, we’d probably be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right now if not for Will.

But it sucks not getting to spend the day with my parents. It seems strange that I’m not sprawled on their couch, watching football after overindulging in the huge spread my mom always puts out. I called her before to wish her a happy Thanksgiving, and she sounded really bummed that we weren’t coming over. My dad is sure to fall asleep as soon as they’re done eating, and she’ll be left puttering around the house by herself with nothing to do. That’s why I left Shep over there—so she wouldn’t be completely alone. I urged her to stop by later, but she didn’t want to cause any waves. She’s still waiting for my dad to get over it and start talking to me again, but so far he hasn’t budged.

He’s come into work on the days he’s been scheduled, but he usually just grunts whenever I say something to him, preferring to chat with Ben or even Will. He’s really steamed over what I did to Tim. He thinks I shouldn’t have gone over there, that it’s all my fault. But he couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t think he would’ve just cooled his heels if he thought Mom was in trouble. If he had been placed in that situation, he would’ve done the same exact thing.

But I’m not surprised by the way he’s acting. All my life, he’s taken Tim’s side over mine, no matter what we happened to be arguing about. In his eyes, Tim’s always right and I’m always wrong. Even now that we’re both adults, my dad still won’t hear me out or give me a chance to explain. He saw what I’d done to Tim’s eye and the wall immediately went up. He certainly didn’t waste any time shutting me out.

I think my tendency toward violence scares him. He’s seen me at my worst, and he probably fears what I’m capable of. But if we’re being honest, Tim’s the one who whooped my ass, not the other way around. He definitely held his own, like he always does. He’s no wuss. He never was. So I don’t know what my dad’s so worried about. I’m the one who nearly lost consciousness after Tim started strangling me.

If I really had to analyze it, it probably has something to do with the baby that’s on the way. Things are getting real. I can’t go through life like a loose cannon anymore. I can’t keep going off on people. I’m going to have to contain my emotions when they start bubbling over. I have to set a good example for my child. Fighting doesn’t solve anything. It only causes more problems.

I’ve always been a brawler, the guy with a reputation for having a quick temper. It doesn’t take much to light my fuse. Yeah, I have anger issues, but I think over the past year I’ve gotten better. Ivy’s helped me a lot. She’s steadied me, grounded me. Cassidy and I used to fight all the time because her parents were constantly butting into our relationship and it drove me up a wall. At least Ivy knows her own mind. No one tells her what to do or what to believe. She thinks for herself. She doesn’t let other people influence her. She makes her own decisions. That’s why we get along so well. I know I’m always dealing with her, not someone else speaking through her. No one is force-feeding their ideas down her throat. What she says is what she means. Half the time with Cassidy, I didn’t know if I was talking to her or her parents. She’d simply repeat their words verbatim and claim them as her own.

But Cassidy never possessed the confidence Ivy has in spades. She was always the meek, dutiful daughter to a T. She never wanted to upset her parents, but she had no problem pushing my buttons. First, she wouldn’t date me. After that, she’d kiss me but wouldn’t make out with me. Then, she wouldn’t sleep with me. I was patient. I waited. But with every step in our relationship, she let her parents throw up another roadblock.

My dad thought I was pressuring her, taking things too fast when she wasn’t ready. But he just didn’t get it. How could I possibly have been rushing things when we’d known each other since we were kids? What didn’t she know about me? I never held back with her. She was aware of how much I loved her. How I’d do anything for her. Even hang around with Tim if it meant I could see her outside of school.

Again, my dad voiced his disapproval when he realized what was going on. He saw the way Tim looked at Cassidy, how it was killing him to have to be around us. My dad knew that Cassidy was coming between us, and he didn’t like it. He knew that neither of us could say no to her. She was the one pulling the strings, making us jump, pitting us against each other, even if it wasn’t her intent. I got the girl, but I ended up losing my best friend over it.

And to think that I might have lost Cassidy because of Tim makes my heart ache. She held on to that baby because it was his, not mine. She gave up her life to protect
his
child. She refused to treat her cancer because of the life they’d created. She withered away to nothing, letting me think she was doing it for me, when the whole time she was doing it for someone else, someone with deep ties to the both of us.

Shit like that messes with a person’s head. I’ve tried not to dwell on it since I found out about Cassidy and Tim, but seeing him again after all these years brought my anger raging to the surface. I couldn’t hold back, and seeing him with his hands on Ivy, thinking he could take away everything that’s ever belonged to me, was the last straw.

Why can’t my father understand that? Why is he being so hard on me for what I think was a perfectly natural reaction under the circumstances? I didn’t beat Tim to a pulp like I’d wanted to. We both walked away. Nobody ended up in jail. No one pressed charges. It’s over and done with.

Or is it? The longer my dad draws this out, the more irritated I get. It’s not going to end well, especially if Tim and I happen to cross paths in the meantime. He better stay the fuck away from me.

“Earth to Eric,” Ivy giggles, running her thumb softly along mine. “We’re waiting.”

“Yeah, man. There’s no way I’m letting this food get cold after I slaved away all morning getting it ready,” Will mutters.

I open my eyes to see them both staring at me anxiously. “Sorry,” I apologize, hanging my head. “I just realized how much I have to be thankful for, and it kind of blew me away.”

“Aww, baby,” Ivy says, getting up out of her chair to wrap her arms around me and giving me a quick kiss. “I love you so much.”

“All right, if you two are going to get all smoochy, I’m out of here,” Will whines, yanking his napkin off his lap and throwing it on his plate.

“Relax, Will. If you wanted a kiss, you should’ve just said so,” Ivy quips, grabbing his face and planting a big ol’ smack-a-roo in the middle of his forehead.

“Ugh,” Will groans as he wipes his brow with the back of his hand.

“You’re welcome,” Ivy responds, making me laugh. She smiles at me, running her hand across my shoulders before retaking her seat.

“Can we just get on with it?” Will mumbles. “My spinach casserole’s starting to congeal.”

We rejoin hands, and I decide to speak from the heart. “Dear God, thank you for this food. Please watch over and protect Ivy and the baby, and if you have a minute, be sure to bring a plague of destruction upon our enemies. Amen.”

“Amen,” Will says heartily.

But Ivy squeezes my hand. “Eric, c’mon.”

“What? He’s right,” Will jumps in. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

“I just don’t believe in putting bad karma out into the world,” Ivy replies, fiddling with the handle of her beer mug filled with apple juice. “It always comes back to haunt you.”

“But we have to be prepared,” I reason with her. “After hearing what went down with Lauren yesterday, anything goes.”

“We need to come up with a plan,” Will proclaims, stabbing the serving fork into a piece of dark meat.

“So you’re really not going to finish the screenplay?” I ask, turning to Ivy for confirmation.

“I don’t see what good it would do.” She shrugs, scooping a spoonful of sweet potatoes onto her plate.

“Short term, it’d get Lauren off our back, but long term, it’d make Tim look like a giant dick. And I don’t want to see that happen, for Ben’s sake,” Will admits, passing the cranberry sauce to me.

“I thought you’d be spending Thanksgiving with them,” I comment offhandedly, gauging his reaction.

“Nah Ben’s not at the farmhouse. He’s with his parents. Tim’s been holed up by himself for over a week. Ben said he refuses to talk to anyone, won’t even answer the phone. He went over there last night to check on him and I guess Tim was passed out in front of the fire with an empty bottle of tequila lying next to him.” Will gazes quickly at Ivy before looking away.

Clearly, Will thinks Tim’s acting like this because of her. Great.
Thanks, Will, for giving me yet another thing to worry about.
He’s trying to make Ivy feel guilty so she’ll go over there and talk to him, probably because Ben suggested it to him.

“Tim isn’t one to sulk,” I remark, watching Ivy out of the corner of my eye. “That sickening smile never leaves his face. Something else must be going on.”

“I have a theory,” Ivy responds.

I throw a quick glance in Will’s direction. He seems just as surprised as I am, and he leans forward in his chair, propping his elbows on the table. He hasn’t heard this from her either. Whatever new suspicion she’s been harboring, it’s news to him, too.

“It’s nothing more than a hunch,” she continues, my attention riveted to her. “But I’ve been thinking that maybe Tim wasn’t the father of Cassidy’s baby. Someone else was.”

“Ivy, I know you’d like nothing more than for Tim to turn out to be the good guy in all of this, but it’s just not going to happen,” I say carefully, trying not to let my exasperation show.

“Wait a minute.” Will holds up his hand. “Let’s hear her out.”

“It’s a gut feeling, really,” she replies, squirming in her seat under my reproachful gaze. “Tim always seemed to dance around the subject. He hinted at it, sure. But he never came right out and said he was the father.”

“Probably because he doesn’t know for sure,” I say glumly. “Just like I’ll never know for sure. What do you want us to do? Exhume her body for DNA?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ivy retorts, shaking her head at me like I’m out of my mind. “Absolutely not.”

“Well, what then?” Will pipes in, struggling to see where she’s going with this.

“I don’t think Tim ever slept with Cassidy,” she states calmly.

“Now she’s a mind reader,” Will responds with his signature brand of sarcasm, jutting out his chin.

“Ivy, why would you even say something like that?” I question her, probing deeper.

I hate that she thinks she knows Tim so well. They were only thrown together for a couple of days, but she believes she’s unearthed his biggest secret. If they established that degree of intimacy in such a short amount of time, I don’t want to think about what that could mean.

“I really can’t put it into words,” she says, struggling to express herself. “There’s just a sense of yearning that surrounds him whenever he talks about her. Like he’s heartsick because he never got to be with her.”

“That’s one interpretation,” Will cuts in. “Or maybe after knowing how good she was in the sack, he’s torn up inside because he’ll never get to bang her again.”

Ivy and I both glare at him from across the table.

“All right. Sorry. Language, I know,” Will says, backing down. “But, Ivy, I think you’re reading way too much into it. Tim was attracted to Cassidy his whole life, and at the time, she was vulnerable and looking for comfort. It’s not that complicated. Bada bing, bada boom.”

“But
why
was she looking for comfort?” Ivy’s eyes travel directly to my face.

She’s expecting an honest answer, but I don’t know if I’m ready to give her one.

“You had a fight with her, didn’t you?” Ivy prompts, not giving me a chance to respond.

I get up abruptly from the table, nearly taking the tablecloth with me.

“Hey, watch it!” Will scolds, throwing out his arm to keep the serving dishes from sliding onto the floor.

“You did. Didn’t you?” Ivy presses, not letting it go.

She’s getting way too close to something I don’t want to talk about. Why can’t she drop it? Why does she always have to be so damn persistent?

“So what if we did?” I ask, spinning around. “What’s it to you?”

I hate seeing the hurt I’m causing reflected back at me in her eyes. But she should know better than to pursue this. It’s not going to help matters.

“It means everything to me. You know that,” she responds, refusing to give in.

“Yeah. During her last winter break, we had a bit of a blowup.” I clench my jaw, not wanting to remember all this. “That whole fall semester, she was distant. I’d stop by her apartment and she was never there. I’d call her and she’d never pick up. I knew something was going on. I just didn’t know what.”

I drop down in my chair, holding my head in my hands. It’s painful having to relive this. It’s definitely something I’d rather forget.

“When we came home for Christmas, I should’ve been happy. I was done with school. I had earned my degree. Yeah, Cassidy still had one semester left to go, but the finish line was in sight. We were on the brink of moving on with the next phase of our life. But on the ride home, we barely spoke to each other. It was the most time we’d spent together in weeks, and she pretended to fall asleep in the front seat so she wouldn’t have to talk to me.” I grimace, recalling how quiet she was as I drove in silence for miles, feeling so alone even though she was right there next to me.