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Frank
The past seven days had been absolute torture. Between the weight of my guilt, which only multiplied by a thousand tons after the night Shelby arrived at the bar, and Claudia not responding to my texts or voice mails, I was a fucking wreck.
All I wanted to do was explain things to Claudia. I needed her to understand the situation I was in, and how sorry I was for involving her in it. It was wrong of me, I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself when it came to her. Everything I felt for her was genuine, and she was probably sitting at home thinking it was all some sort of game for me, or a lie. It killed me to think about the suspicions that might be going through her head when I knew they weren’t true.
I needed to tell her everything, but I couldn’t tell her anything at all because she refused to talk to me.
I didn’t blame her, but I didn’t want to give up. I just didn’t know what the hell else to do.
“You look like shit,” Nick said when he walked through the office door. I had been sitting there with my head in my hands, staring at the same inventory sheet for the last forty-five minutes.
“I know.”
“Frank, this isn’t you.”
“Which part?” Honestly, I didn’t know who the hell I was anymore. When had things gotten so far gone that I failed to recognize who I w
as supposed to be?
“When you heard about everything that was going on in my life, you told me to man up. You were pissed for me, pissed at me. You wanted me to take control of my situation and stand up for myself.” Nick’s voice rose, and I suspected he was getting emotional at the memory of his not-so-distant past.
“What’s your point?” I demanded, but my tone sounded more defeated than anything.
He walked around the desk and clapped a hand on my shoulder, giving it a hard squeeze. “I’ve got to give you the same advice, bro. You need to stand the fuck up for yourself. You can’t keep living like this. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life miserable and unhappy? Why? Who benefits from that? I promise you that everyone will be better off—and I do mean everyone—if you would just end things with Shelby. I know it’s not easy. But sometimes you have to make the unpopular decision and do the hard thing because you’re the only one who will.”
I wanted to shout that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, wanted to grab his hand and throw it the fuck off my shoulder. But I didn’t do either of those things.
Because he was right; my baby brother couldn’t have been more right. And I was only pissed off at him for it because I was mad at myself. I had let things go too far and for too long, and I had no one to blame but myself.
I had done this. I had created the life I was currently living, and it was up to me to either get out of it once and for all, or to shut the fuck up and be happy. The decision was the easy part. It was the follow-through that was painfully difficult.
Defeated, I dropped my head in my hands and mumbled, “You’re right.”
“I know. Can I ask you one more question without you wanting to kill me?”
“Depends,” I said cautiously, glancing up at him.
Nick dropped his hand and leaned against the edge of my desk. “On what exactly?”
“Just ask already,” I said on a huff, and he cleared his throat
“Have you called Claudia?”
My stomach dropped at the sound of her name. “Only about a hundred times.”
“And?”
“She doesn’t answer.”
“Try texting?”
“Try texting.” I mimicked him like I was some idiot who didn’t know how to get in touch with a woman. “Obviously. She’s not responding to those either.”
“Go to her house then,” he said with a shrug.
“I don’t know where she lives. And I can’t pull that kind of shit while I’m still not available.”
He nodded. “True. No grand gestures until you’re single,” he said with a grin. “But when that time comes, make sure you ask me what to do, because apparently I’m pretty good at them. I got my girl back.”
