Percy, page 8
And Percy believed Dennis. Percy didn’t know why, but just something was very good-hearted about this man. As Percy pushed his way forward, his stomach grumbled.
“Sounds like your body is looking for food.”
“Since getting here, smelling all this tempting food, I’m ravenous.”
“And that’s good,” Dennis stated firmly. “What can I get you?”
By the time Dennis had served Percy, he had a full plate stacked up on a tray, with coffee, water, and juice on it. He just now realized that he wasn’t sure he could maneuver all this in his chair and make it successfully to a table. If he placed the tray on his lap, it would be almost impossible to keep the juice and the coffee from spilling. Then he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Can I give you a hand with that?”
Surprised, he looked up to see Giada. “How come you’re always here when I need you?” he asked a little crossly. “I was really trying to be independent today.”
“Well, if I was the one in the wheelchair,” she noted, “I wouldn’t know how to get that full tray to a table. It’s either carry it with your hand and somehow get your legs to do the job or put it in your lap and then coating your eggs in coffee.”
He burst out laughing. “I was just considering that decision—which I would sacrifice—when you found me,” he admitted.
She grinned and took his tray from his hands. “I’m not sure what the technique is around here, but I’m sure somebody can show you. In the meantime, how about I take this, and you tell me where you’re planning on sitting?”
“Well, I was planning on sitting,” he replied, with half a leer, “wherever this beautiful woman I talked to last night was sitting.”
“I have about ten minutes before work starts,” she noted, “but those ten minutes are yours. So where will it be?”
They settled on outside on the balcony. When he finally got there, he felt a sense of satisfaction but also fatigue. “It’s harder than it looks,” he admitted.
“And I thought you were doing wonderfully,” she stated in a firm tone of voice.
“And there’s that cheerleader in you again,” he said, with a head shake.
“Doesn’t matter if it is cheerleading or not. I’m not lying,” she noted firmly.
“Good. I would hate to think that’s something that you would do.”
“No, I don’t have time for it,” she explained. “Life is for living, and it really is for people who get up and do. The rest of the world sits back and lets every day go by, as if it’s meaningless.”
“How come you’re so focused on going forward?”
“Lately I’m not even sure that I am,” she noted quietly. “But I’ve been kind of looking after my brother for a very long time. Well past the point that I should be.”
“How old’s your brother?”
She winced. “Thirty.”
He looked at her in surprise. Nothing else to do but stare, as he composed his thoughts so he wouldn’t alienate her in one sentence. “And you’re looking after him?” He was at a loss for words. So was she, it seemed. Hesitantly knowing they’d spoken of her brother earlier but needing to make sure, Percy asked, “Is he sick or disabled?”
“No, he’s not disabled,” she replied crossly. “He’s spoiled. He’s getting married in six months, and that’s now become another problem.”
“Well, he’s had a built-in maid and housekeeper for how long? Why would he want to change that status quo now?” he asked curiously.
“Obviously he doesn’t. And I’m the fool who let it get this far.”
“I don’t know that you’re a fool, not when you do anything outta love,” he stated quietly. “Your brother’s a very lucky man.”
“I don’t think he believes that,” she replied, with a grin.
“That’s just because he’s stuck in his own head at the moment. I’m surprised he found somebody, if he’s as dependent on you as it sounds.”
“I don’t think he’s told her how dependent he is. They do argue about it, but I’m still not sure she fully understands. And that’ll be a problem, once they are married.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but it’s not your problem.”
She looked at him in surprise. “And you’re not the first person to tell me that I either,” she admitted begrudgingly. “But it’s quite hard to let go, when it’s been me and him all this time.”
“I get it,” Percy agreed cheerfully. “You’re a mother hen.”
“Am I?” she asked, staring at him, fascinated. “How would you know?”
“I can see it,” he murmured. “And again that’s not a bad quality, but, like every hen, they know when their offspring needs to live on their own. And when that dependency has become too much, even for her.”
“Not sure that it’s become too much for me,” she argued, “but I accept that part of the blame is my own.”
“No blame,” he murmured. “Your brother’s thirty, well past the point in time of needing anybody to be blamed for his behavior. He’s comfortable being spoiled. And comfortable isn’t necessarily good for his emotional growth.”
“No, it probably isn’t,” she confessed. “Dani did offer me a place here. I … I’ve been wondering lately if I shouldn’t take her up on it.”
“Six months of living alone will make him a much better man,” Percy murmured. “You might want to think about that from a motherly perspective, even from his fiancée’s perspective.”
“He won’t like you one bit,” she stated, chuckling.
“Nope, not likely,” he agreed, “but then, just as we have some plain truths here in my world, there should be a few plain truths in your brother’s world too.”
“And in mine,” she noted, with a knowing gaze at Percy. “I have to let go.”
“Well, you’ll let go one way or the other,” he pointed out quietly, “in six months. Why would you let it get that bad, and why would you make the pain that much worse by dragging it right out to the end?”
“I get it,” she replied thoughtfully. She looked up to see Shane approaching. “Oops, here’s the boss, and I need to go.” She hopped up, looked down at Percy. “I hope tonight is better than the last few days have been for you.”
“They haven’t been bad,” he clarified. “They’ve just been tough.”
“And you are one tough cookie. You’ve got this,” she stated, with a bright smile. And, with that, she was gone.
Chapter 8
Giada raced toward Dani’s office. She’d seen her boss and friend exit the dining room and realized that she really did need to see whether a residence here was an option or not. As she reached her boss’s doorway, Dani was just sitting down with a big cinnamon bun. “You must be some kind of busy around this place in order to wear off those cinnamon buns.”
“Thankfully I have no trouble keeping busy here.” Dani laughed. “Unfortunately it’s too busy.”
“I know,” Giada agreed. She stepped inside Dani’s office and asked, “So is your offer of a residence serious?”
“Let me take a look and see what we have but absolutely.” She looked up and asked, “Are you ready to have that conversation with your brother?”
“Everybody seems to think I should have had that conversation already, but it will be tough regardless,” she admitted.
“And he might convince you to stay.”
“Sure, but, like somebody just told me, that breakup is happening in six months anyway, and why would I want to push it to the end, when I’ll feel more like I’ve been rousted out?” she mentioned, with a downturned lip.
“You’ve always been a mother hen to that brother of yours. You’re what? Four years younger? Yet he’s always just been your baby.”
“And not necessarily in a good way,” Giada admitted. “I think he needs six months alone, learning what independence looks like, before he gets married.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been told that a few times. But we do understand that it’s hard for you.”
“It’s something that I’ll need to adjust to, possibly more than he will.”
Dani gave her a commiserating smile. “You’ll become an empty nester.”
Giada laughed. “And I haven’t even had a kid yet.”
“No, but he’s been that to you,” she murmured, “and you’ve done a fantastic job.”
“Wow. I have been a total mother hen to him, haven’t I?” Giada shook her head. “It’s just kind of sad.”
“I get it. I really do. But I wouldn’t worry about it as much as you are. He made the decision to get married. And six months from now, that’ll be a completely different deal for him. And his fiancée needs to know what she’s getting into too.”
“I don’t think he’ll look at it that way, considering how much he’ll suffer for six months.”
“Is she a good cook?”
Giada looked at Dani in surprise. “You know what? I’ve never even asked. In our family, it’s such a sexist thing, but the women are supposed to stay home to look after the men.”
“Doesn’t mean the new wife is of the same opinion,” Dani noted, with a raised eyebrow. “Does the fiancée want to sit at home and wait for her dearly beloved to return?” she quipped, with a rolling eye look.
“I think not,” Giada replied.
Dani shook her head. “I don’t know that I would be happy at home, without work too. It’s up to each individual. I know of an attorney, a woman, whose husband stays at home with their young daughter, does the cooking and cleaning. It works for all of them. Each doing what they enjoy. We all gotta be true to ourselves.”
“In my family it was expected of me to keep looking after Francis. Obviously I got an education and worked at the same time. But, when I wouldn’t bring home a husband right off the bat, following all the extended family’s traditions,” she teased, “I think they all thought that I was better off looking after Francis instead.”
“Good Lord, treating you like the spinster sister already? You’re only twenty-six,” she stated. “How long has this been going on? At what point in time were you supposed to get married?”
“They’d have been happy to see me engaged at sixteen and wed when I turned eighteen, I think. Admittedly I wasn’t really feeling it at that age.”
“I would think not. How do you even know who you are and what you want while just a teen? You have to know yourself really well so you can choose your mate wisely.”
“Agreed. Yet, now, with our parents gone,” she stated, with a sad smile, “I won’t have my father to walk me down the aisle.”
Instantly Dani got up, walked around, and gave her a hug. “I know it still hurts,” she said. “Sometimes those hurts just stay with us forever.”
“And that’s hardly fair, is it?” she asked, shaking off the blues and giving her boss a brighter smile. “At least my brother will get married, and that should make our parents happy, as they smile down from above.”
“It will,” Dani agreed, with a bright smile of her own. “You know it will. And what about you? Will you stay until he’s married or not?”
“No.” Giada shook her head. “I think he would be a better husband and a better partner if he does survive the next few months on his own.”
“That doesn’t mean he’ll agree with you though,” Dani warned her.
“I know. It’s a discussion I need to have with him. But I wasn’t sure if I had another place to go to. Hence me being here in your office.”
“I’ll get back to you to confirm,” she stated, “but, if there isn’t one right now, there will be soon.”
“Well, soon would be something,” Giada agreed, “even if I moved out in a month or two.”
“Sure, but the sooner the better, probably.”
“At least for my sake, maybe, yes.” And, with that, she headed to her office. It would be a long day now, as she had done something that she’d been wondering about but had held back taking the plunge on because it would be uncomfortable for her and her brother. Yet what everybody had said here was right. It would hurt and would probably hurt her more than her brother. He’d be inconvenienced, but he had a fiancée now. Somebody he absolutely loved and adored. And that relationship would hopefully make him mature as well. And, for that to happen, for him to realize his own maximum potential, Giada needed to get out of the way. She groaned, as she sat back at her desk. “Why didn’t I see that before now?”
And, because she hadn’t seen it, it was hard to accept that she had been so focused on looking after him that she hadn’t looked after his emotional needs and what was best for him in other ways too. Giada hadn’t been looking after her own emotional needs and doing what was best for her either. Huh.
Trying to park her mental roller coaster, she set about getting through the rest of her day. She would talk to Francis tonight when she got home. They would have this discussion, and hopefully he wouldn’t be too upset about it.
But, by the time she got home, and they sat down to a meal, he was already in an ugly mood, yet she persevered.
“You want to move out?” He stared at her in shock. “Why would you do that?”
“It would save me the trip back and forth,” she explained, “and I think it’s time you lived alone, before you got married.”
“Well, that would be stupid,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I won’t be alone very soon. Margaret will be moving in, so obviously I don’t need that experience.”
And he completely ignored the fact that it was something that she wanted to do and something that he needed to do. “I don’t think so.”
He waved his hand again in her face. “Stop. You’re not moving out. What kind of a brother would I be? I fully expect you to stay on after we’re married too. It’s not like Margaret will know how to cook or anything right away.”
Giada stared at him. Her heart sank. And then her anger burst free. “Did you just say that you expect me to stay on, as your cook, after you’re married?”
“Yes, that’s why we had a fight last week,” he replied, with the shrug. “She didn’t want that. Not that she doesn’t like you of course,” he added, with yet another airy dismissive hand wave.
Why had she not noticed all those hand movements all this time? “I would agree with Margaret,” Giada replied. “She’s a new bride and expects to have the house to herself. Why would you even put that on her?”
He stared at her in surprise. “You know our families are always big and extended. If Mama were here, she would be staying in the house too.”
At that, she stared at him in shock. “And that would be even harder on your bride.”
“And she would adjust,” he stated in a cool manner.
A manner so very much like her father that Giada could only stare. “I had never considered that you were so much like Papa,” she noted quietly. She knew this conversation would likely be difficult, but it had never occurred to her that he expected her to stay on. And how Margaret didn’t cook, so Giada was expected to stay on in that role too? “Besides,” she added, “I need a life of my own.”
“Well, you won’t get it working in that place full of broken-down men,” he replied in disgust. “I mean, you might as well stay here and look after us. At least then you might find a relationship through us.”
“I’m not staying here and looking after you and your bride too,” she stated firmly. “I’m not a spinster. I’m not an old maid. I’m not too old to have a family of my own or a relationship of my own,” she argued, feeling her own temper spike yet again. “And I sure as heck am not staying here to look after the house.”
“But you have to,” he stated matter-of-factly. “It’s the only way that Margaret would agree for you to stay.”
“I’m not staying,” she declared flatly. “So you guys can do your own dishes and your own vacuuming. Not to mention the cooking.”
“Well, no,” he replied simply. “I’d just hire somebody. Why would anyone want to do that themselves?”
“But you’re okay for me to do it?” she asked, getting angrier and angrier.
He shrugged, as if to say, What’s the problem here?
Why had she not seen that before? Why had she allowed herself to be treated this way? Because she’d done what she’d done out of love, whereas he didn’t appear to have any respect at all for her. “You think I’ll just stay here after you’re married and continue to look after you?”
He stared at her, bewildered. “Why would you not want to?”
Her jaw dropped. Slowly she closed it, looked down at her plate, realizing that absolutely everything had tasted like sawdust for at least the last ten minutes. Then she said quietly, “I’ll head up to my room.”
“Good,” he replied, with feeling. “Hopefully by the time you come back down again you’ll be back to normal.”
“Geesh.” She shoved away her plate, stood, left the kitchen as it was, and went straight to her room. She sent a text to Dani. The sooner, the better.
Giada didn’t expect any response right away, but Dani sent a text. Tomorrow. There’s a place for you. Come with your gear and stay.
Giada pondered Dani’s text for a long moment, and then she looked around at her place—her place—where she had lived all her life and realized that presented yet another problem. She didn’t own any furniture. This was the family home, and Francis planned to stay in it. Indeed, he’d inherited it. She, on the other hand, had inherited a small amount of money, a dowry as some would probably look at it. But she didn’t have anything really big to move. Yet at the same time, a lot of mementos, books, photos were here that she wasn’t sure she wanted to just leave behind, risking them being tossed like trash.
Torn, and in a quandary as to how to proceed, she didn’t answer Dani right away but headed to bed, confused, tired, emotionally overwrought. And hurt by her brother’s words. The fact that he didn’t even understand in what way he might have upset her hurt even more. Finally, exhausted, she closed her eyes and slept.
Percy would like to say that he didn’t notice Giada’s absence for the next couple days, but he had to admit that, every time he turned around, he half expected to see her.
