With a Twist (38 page)

Natalie couldn’t help
but notice how buoyant the mood at Quinn’s table was as they closed out the bar, celebrating the publication of Quinn’s article, the one that had taken precedence over her in his life. When she’d served them their first round, he’d politely asked her if she’d read it yet, but she hadn’t. He seemed disappointed.

She was stacking glasses when she noticed a well-thumbed copy of the
Standard
on the bar. Quinn’s father had put it there, proudly showing it to everyone who came in. She hesitated a moment, checking to make sure Quinn was still safely ensconced with his now-drunken friends, then picked up the paper and began reading his article, despite the fact it made her feel as though a cold stone had suddenly lodged in the pit of her stomach.

It was apparent right from the beginning of the article that Quinn was an extraordinary reporter. Oddly, she’d never made an effort to read his work before; perhaps deep down, she’d always known on some level that his job would always come first, and she didn’t want to deal with her opponent, even if it was just cheap paper and ink.

She closed the paper. She should have known from how long he’d been working on the article that it would be in-depth and couldn’t be contained in one edition of the paper, and so it was running over the course of days. She stared at his byline beneath the blaring headline: “by Quinn O’Brien.” Quinn O’Brien, the best reporter in New York. She knew it was true, yet the appellation made her resentful. She was still angry with him. Still hurt. Even so, she knew she had to acknowledge the article and congratulate him. Otherwise, it would look as though she were going out of her way to ignore it. She didn’t want to appear petty, even though that was exactly how she was feeling.

Quinn’s uncle and father had gone down to the basement, leaving her to finish cleaning up, which she didn’t mind. She was almost done at the bar when Quinn walked over to her. He looked exhausted, as usual. She had never known a time when he hadn’t.

“Busy tonight,” he noted.

“Very. Your mother should hire another waitress.”

Quinn looked amused. “I dare you to tell her that.”

“No, thank you. I’ve learned my lesson on that front.”

“You’re family now, right? She might listen to you.”

They stood there, awkwardly facing each other. “You and your friends seem to be having a good time celebrating.”

“Yeah . . .” He seemed somewhat unenthusiastic, which baffled her. This was his big day of triumph, was it not?

Time to be gracious. “Your article was very good.”

“Thank you for reading it.” He gazed at her intently. “I put a lot of work into it, as you can see.”

“I hope it was worth losing me over and getting your brother sent off to Ireland,” Natalie blurted. She apologized immediately. “I’m sorry. That was a cruel thing to say.”

“It’s how you feel,” Quinn murmured. “Don’t apologize. I have to confess: I was hoping that if you read it, you’d understand why I couldn’t give you the attention you deserved while I was writing it.”

“Which means what? Now that you’re done with it, you can?” she asked sharply.

“Natalie.” Quinn looked remorseful. “You know I never meant to hurt you.”

“What are you working on now?” she made herself ask.

Quinn smiled sadly. “Do you really care?”

“No. I’m just trying to be polite.” A quiet desperation overtook her as she looked around the bar and realized that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could bear working here. Seeing him all the time was torture. Maybe she’d move back to Brooklyn and go back to work at Vivi’s. So what if there was nothing for her to do in Bensonhurst? Anything was better than the anger and ache roiling inside her when she saw him. Quinn cocked his head toward his friends. “Guess I’ll get back to the guys.”

“Congratulations again,” Natalie forced herself to say. “I hope everything turned out the way you wanted.”

Quinn headed back
to his friends, all of whom were feeling no pain.

“Onward and upward,” said Durham, draining the last dregs of his beer. “I vote we hit Ronnie’s Lounge next.”

Ronnie’s was a lounge four blocks away from the Hart, a popular hangout for journalists working for all the papers in New York.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said uncertainly.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked Rodriguez. “When have you ever not wanted to celebrate?”

“Yeah,” Rogan chimed in. “This is your night, pal. To savor. To boast. C’mon, don’t be a wet blanket.”

“Okay, okay,” Quinn acquiesced, feeling pressured not to let his friends down.
“We’ll go to Ronnie’s.”

The bar was
packed as always. When Quinn walked in, there was a slight change in mood. His colleagues at the
Standard
applauded, while reporters from the other papers glanced at him with a mix of envy and admiration. Still, even those whom he had scooped managed to make their way over to him and congratulate him, albeit somewhat begrudgingly.

One of his new colleagues, Tim Stewart, came over and draped his arm around his neck. “You bastard,” he said affectionately. “You realize you just made life harder for the rest of us, right? You’re the standard we’re gonna be measured by.”

“I thought I was the standard everyone was measured by for years.”

“Arrogant SOB. Anyway, all drinks are on us tonight, you got it?”

Quinn smiled weakly. “Got it.”

Jesus Christ, what the hell was wrong with him? He should have been exuberantly shitfaced by now. It was his night, but part of him couldn’t care less.

He accepted the whiskey from his colleague. Seconds later he found himself pinned against the bar being grilled by some cub reporter from the
Post
. Quinn was only half listening, his eyes drawn to his
Sent
friends. There was Rogan, divorced for years because his wife couldn’t take the erratic nature of his job. There was Durham, who was now sleeping on Quinn’s couch because his wife had thrown him out and he had nowhere else to go. Quinn’s eyes roved over the rest of the crowd; more than half the people he knew were lone wolves like him: journalists who lived from story to story with nothing else in their lives. Over half of them were guys in their fifties; they were either divorced or incapable of balancing a personal life with the adrenaline rush of their job. Like him, they’d go home alone tonight. They’d lie in their beds with their cell phones on, waiting for a call from an editor or a tip from a source. If nothing were going on, they’d get up the next day and head directly to the newsroom to see if anything juicy might come over the scanners. They’d race to scoop their opponents. And then they’d do it all over again the next day, and the next, and the next.

That’s when he realized that Natalie was right: his life was sad, selfish, and stupid. Even though he had tremendous respect for many of his colleagues, he was forced to ask himself: Is this really how he wanted to end up? Drunk in a bar with his fellow reporters, talking shop because they had nothing else in their lives? The answer hit him like a brick smashing down on his head: no. He’d had it all—the job, a woman who loved him—and he’d blown it, because he was so stupid and myopic he chose to put work first. Because he was so selfish he refused to bend while she gave and gave and gave, far past the point he deserved. His all-important article hadn’t been worth losing her and Liam. God, what a fucking moron he was.

He had to get her back.

It was all he could think about as he waved away another shot of whiskey. Perhaps he’d give her some more time without him, give her a chance to miss him. Besides, he needed a little time to figure out when and how to tell her he’d been a fool, and she’d been right all along. He had a feeling that if he went rushing back to her now and begged her to give him another chance, she’d tell him to take a hike. He was a man of instinct; he’d know when the time was right to plead his case. He just hoped that when that time came, it wasn’t already too late.

36

Natalie hadn’t thought
she would start crying this early, but the minute she got to Anthony and Vivi’s house to dress on the morning of the wedding, she began sniffling. At least she wasn’t alone: Vivi’s mother and grandmother were there, too, and when Vivi walked down the stairs in her grandmother’s wedding gown, out came the tissues. “We’re going to ruin our makeup!” chided Vivi, who was also teary. For the most part, they were all weeping tears of joy, but there was also a subcurrent of sadness there, too, since Natalie and Vivi’s father wasn’t alive to walk Vivi down the aisle.

“He’s here in spirit,
cherie
, you know he is,” Natalie whispered to Vivi in the limo when it pulled up in front of Saint Finbar’s church, where their father’s good friend, Bernard Rousseau, stood waiting for them. Bernard was going to give Vivi away. Natalie was thankful he let her remain in his apartment while he was in town for the wedding; she’d been sure he would want his privacy. But he was only in New York for a few days, and then it was back to Paris. He told her that he liked her living in his flat and keeping an eye on it for him and that she was welcome to stay for as long as she liked.

The church was packed. Vivi was right: Anthony had invited all of Bensonhurst. Standing in the vestibule at the back, she spotted Quinn sitting in the eighth pew from the front on the left, right on the aisle. She wasn’t sure, but from behind it looked like he was wearing a new suit. When he turned to talk to the woman to the left of him (a good-looking woman in a fabulous form-fitting champagne-colored dress), her gut clenched. Had he brought a date to the wedding? No, Vivi would have told her.

She couldn’t stop looking at him. He was clean-shaven, and his hair was combed. He looked undeniably handsome, and she could see the woman he was talking to noticing it, too. She forced herself to look away.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

Michael Dante appeared, pulling at the collar of his tuxedo. “I hate these monkey suits.”

“I’ve never met a man who doesn’t.”

Michael narrowed his eyes as he looked at the doors to the church, where his cousin Gemma’s husband, Sean, stood directing guests. Beside him was Aldo, the ancient headwaiter/manager of Dante’s.

“Look at that
gavone
,” Michael said with a scowl, gesturing at Aldo. The old man was tapping his foot impatiently and checking his watch.

“I’m sure he’ll stop once we start down the aisle.”

“Pain in my ass. Pain in Anthony’s ass. He always has been.”

“I think it’s sweet that Anthony wanted him up there.”

“Oh, please. He would have torched the restaurant kitchen if Ant had done otherwise.” Michael looked sentimental as he gazed around the church. “Did you know this is where Ant and I were both baptized? We had our first Holy Communions here, too. And our confirmations. I got married here, too. My kids were baptized here.” He paused. “I was a wreck when I got married. Puked twice before we even left the house and once here.”

“But I bet the feeling went away when you saw Theresa, right?”

“Yup,” said Michael, as his gaze tenderly drifted to the front pew where Theresa sat with their three children. “Smartest thing I ever did, marrying that mouthy broad.”

Natalie smiled, even though her heart felt as though it were made of glass about to shatter at any moment with sadness. The wedding . . . Michael’s unabashed love for his wife . . . Natalie felt the absence of love in her own life acutely. She reminded herself that this day was not about her. It was about Vivi and Anthony—their love, their commitment to each other. She would not let the failure of her relationship with Quinn mar the joy of the day for her.

She moved to Vivi, who was talking to Bernard Rousseau.

“Nervous?”

“Not at all.” Vivi was radiant.

Michael had momentarily disappeared. When he returned, his eyes were bright and excited. “The padre says we’re ready to roll,” he told Natalie, Vivi, and Bernard. “We just need to wait for the Bach to begin so Natalie and I can walk up the aisle. Then the wedding march will start, and it’s showtime. Anthony’s at the altar, waiting.”

Natalie took Michael’s arm, and they stood side by side in the back of the church, waiting for Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” to begin on the organ. She felt surprisingly nervous. What if she tripped walking up the aisle? What if she cried like a baby as she listened to Vivi and Anthony exchange vows?

The church organ, which had been playing softly as the church filled up, fell silent for a moment. Natalie took a deep breath, glancing anxiously at Michael as the opening notes of one of J. S. Bach’s most beautiful pieces of music began quietly playing. “Ready?” Michael whispered.

“Ready.”

Slowly, almost regally, they started up the aisle, heads turning to watch them. All eyes were on them, including Quinn’s. Natalie could feel his gaze locking on her and holding. Her eyes cut to him quickly as she walked by, but not so quickly that she failed to notice the longing in his eyes or that he was wearing the shirt she’d given him months back. Shaken, she forced her gaze back to the front of the church, where Anthony stood expectantly, looking extremely handsome in his tux. Aldo and Sean were standing midway down the aisle on either side. The fiery little waiter had stopped fidgeting and now tears were rolling down his cheeks. When she and Michael reached the altar, Michael went to stand beside Anthony, while Natalie moved to the other side to wait for Vivi.

The opening strains of the traditional wedding march began, and everyone in the pews rose and turned toward the back of the church to watch Vivi as she made her way up the aisle—everyone but Quinn, that is, who was still staring at Natalie.
She refused to look at him.

Vivi was beaming, her mother and grandmother weeping quietly. Natalie felt overwhelmed with sudden emotion and bit down hard on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting into tears.

A few rows from the altar, Bernard and Vivi stopped. Anthony left the altar and walked down the aisle to where they had stopped. Bernard was smiling broadly, and so was Anthony. Bernard shook Anthony’s hand and with his other hand, clutched Anthony’s forearm. Natalie could see Anthony’s eyes begin to well up with tears. Anthony took Vivi’s arm, and the two of them walked together to the altar.

And throughout the ceremony, Natalie could feel Quinn’s eyes on her, his gaze intense and unwavering.