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Ty stabbed the buzzer to apartment D and prayed his brother’s voice would come over the line. He hadn’t texted, or called ahead, because he hadn’t known he’d been heading to Finn and Dawn’s loft apartment in SoHo, until he’d found himself walking towards the subway after work.
“Who is it and what the hell do you want?” Finn’s muffled voice rumbled out of the intercom, the clipped surly tone almost making Ty smile, for the first time in close to three weeks, ever since he’d woken up in the barge to find Zelda gone. His brother had never been one to hold back, unless he was trying to charm a lady, but right now the gruff response fit Ty’s mood.
“It’s Ty. I was in the neighborhood doing a deposition.” He lied. “You want to go grab a beer to celebrate TGIF?” Not that he had a damn thing to celebrate, and not that he felt like drinking, but he’d rehearsed the casual request for the last twenty minutes, while walking past all the loved up couples, dating up a storm in the upscale neighborhood on a warm Friday evening in Manhattan. In fact, he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol since Zelda’s revelation over a week ago at Sully’s, because for some dumb reason just the thought of drinking made him feel guilty, as if it were a betrayal of the struggle she’d waged—and won—for five years.
Why hadn’t she told him sooner? When he’d accused her of being drunk in the station house? When he’d offered her that beer on the barge? Before he’d fucked her like a mad man next to the kegs of Guinness in Sully’s basement?
But of course she hadn’t told him, because they’d only known each other for ten days by the time he’d jumped her that night at Sully’s. And while he’d been losing his head over her, and holding nothing back, she’d been holding everything back.
“Sorry man,” Finn said. “I’m working on a violin concerto and it’s killing me.”
That would explain the pissy attitude. When Finn was in the zone, you couldn’t blast him out of it with a stick of dynamite.
“No problem. I’ll take a rain check,” Ty said into the intercom, as his spirits plummeted even further into the pit of doom at the thought of returning to the house barge alone. And spending another night trying not to see Zelda in the shower, or lounging on the couch, or hurling potato salad at him. It was as if the scales had been ripped away from his eyes. He’d gotten one shining glimpse of what his life could be like—richer, fuller, more real—and now everywhere he looked the memory of that moment was torturing him. He couldn’t sleep, was struggling to eat, and his work was suffering, too.
He still spent hours every evening reviewing cases, checking precedents, writing notes for court appearances, but somehow he’d lost the drive, the ambition, and, most of all, his optimism, the unshakeable belief that if Ty Sullivan was on the case, he could make a difference. How could he have been so damn arrogant? The truth was the poor would always be there, struggling against unscrupulous landlords, exploitative employers, punitive bureaucrats, and anything he could do to help was like pissing in an ocean.
And however much he might want to help and protect Zelda, he couldn’t undo all the crap that had happened to her, or make her want him back.
“Hey, hold up, Ty. Why don’t you come up? I’ve got some Sam Adams in the fridge. I’ve hit a snag with the damn concerto and Dawn will be home soon anyhow.”
“That’d be great,” Ty replied.
He shoved the heavy security door open as Finn buzzed him in, pathetically grateful for his brother’s change of heart. He bypassed the elevator and made his way up the metal stairwell to the sixth floor loft apartment. If he could stretch this beer out until Dawn appeared, he could stave off returning to the house barge alone for at least another hour.
*
“So what’s going on?” Finn cracked open the bottle of beer and handed it to Ty. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” Ty said ruefully, and took a swig of the beer. But the cool lager tasted sour on his tongue.
“Hard day at the office, huh?” Finn said, the smug smile an acknowledgement of the running joke they’d had for years about which one of them had chosen the better career path.
“It’s been a long day, that’s for sure.” As they all were these days.
Ty took off his tie and tucked it into his pants pocket, not in the mood for his brother’s friendly mockery as he followed Finn out of the state-of-the-art kitchen and into the loft’s huge open living space. Polished, cedar wood floors flowed to a wall of floor-to-ceiling French doors that afforded a dramatic view of the downtown skyline, and the bridges of the East River, framed by the 1920s building’s fancy ironwork. The place was all clean lines and luxurious designer accents that had to be down to Finn’s girlfriend, because as far as Ty could remember his brother had never had an opinion on interior design. He spotted the vase of fresh flowers on the sideboard, sunny yellow buds he couldn’t name in a profusion of spiky green leaves. No way were they Finn’s doing either.
“Tough case?” Finn asked as he settled onto one of the green suede sofas parked on top of a deep pile rug.
“Something like that. How’s Dawn?” Ty asked, keen to change the subject.
He might have needed company for this evening, but he’d rather suck out his own eyeballs than let his brother know how low he’d gotten over a woman who didn’t want him. He was the big brother in this relationship. He didn’t lean on his siblings, they leaned on him.
“Dawn’s good.” Finn placed his beer on the low occasional table and Ty noticed the upright piano behind him, tucked into the corner of the huge space, which had once been jammed into their bedroom above the pub. The battered instrument should have looked out of place in the five million dollar apartment, but it somehow seemed as comfortable here as his brother. “In fact, Dawn’s great,” Finn added. “We’re thinking of trying for a kid.”
Ty stifled the cruel stab of envy at the cautious optimism in Finn’s voice. What the hell was he jealous of? He knew this was a big step for Finn, after finding out Dawn had miscarried ten years ago—and all the other drama involved when she had come back into his life. Plus, Ty had made a decision years ago he probably wouldn’t want kids of his own. Kids were a lot of responsibility and he couldn’t see himself wanting to interrupt his career. And he could hardly ask the woman he married to interrupt her career, because he believed wholeheartedly in gender equality.
But the thought of that meticulously detailed blueprint for his life and that of the fictional Mrs. Tyrone Sullivan, which he’d designed before he’d ever met Zelda, felt like so much self-serving bullshit now. Jesus, had he actually believed that he could just plan out his life cleanly and efficiently and that everything would simply slot into place the way he wanted? Life was messy, emotions were messy, people were messy. Real people that was, like Zelda with all her faults and flaws. But that’s what made them fascinating and exciting and unique. And as hard as he was finding it now to move on and forget her, he wouldn’t have changed the short time they’d had together for anything. Because he’d discovered in those precious few days, it was better to face the curveballs life threw at him, than spend his whole damned life watching the game from the bleachers.
“That’s great, man.” Ty tried to inject some enthusiasm into his tone as he leaned across to clink the neck of his bottle with Finn’s. “Here’s to the next generation of Sullivans.” He was happy for Finn and Dawn, they’d had a rough time and they deserved the good stuff now.
Finn laughed, and took a long swig of his beer. “Yeah, well…” He sent Ty a smartass grin, the same smartass grin Ty remembered from when they were kids, which usually meant Finn was about to talk them all into a whole heap of trouble. “It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it, because we all know you’re dead set against following in Mom and Pop’s footsteps and fathering a load of little Sullies.”
It was a familiar jibe, one Ty had deflected a thousand times before with a self-satisfied smirk, because he’d once boasted about how immune he was to the kind of love that left you struggling to raise five kids above a rundown pub in Brooklyn. But after a week of feeling the huge loss in his life just get bigger, of what he might have had with Zelda, the self-satisfied smirk refused to come. In fact, he couldn’t even muster the smallest smile.
He placed the beer on the coffee table, and sank his head into his hands, the misery he’d kept so carefully at bay for the last week, ever since Zelda had walked away from him, rushing towards him like a runaway train.
