Love In Slow Motion, page 3
Mrs. Pedalino scoffed and gave her husband a scathing look. “This is your doing, I take it? Bringing this…into my house.”
Ilan had never been a this before, and there was a small, ruthless part inside him that liked it. He liked being disapproved of by a woman who looked at her son like she wanted to scrape him off the bottom of her shoe.
“I’m not going to do this here with you,” Mr. Pedalino said. He took a step and held out his hand, and Julian walked over until the man’s large fingers closed on the boy’s tiny shoulder. “Take Ilan and go upstairs, okay? And I’ll send some snacks up.”
“Does he have to go home?” Julian asked in a voice so small, it made Ilan want to cry.
He waited, holding his breath, and then let it out when Mr. Pedalino smiled at him and ran a hand down his son’s hair. “No.” And then his jaw went tense when Mrs. Pedalino scoffed. “No,” he said again, “he does not. Now go play.”
For a single, tense beat of his heart, no one moved. Then, they joined hands, and Julian ran them upstairs faster than Ilan thought he was capable of moving. Neither of them dared breathe until the door was shut, and Julian had his forehead pressed against it like he could keep the cruelty behind them that way.
“Are you okay?” Ilan finally asked.
Julian turned around, facing Ilan. “What? Sorry, I didn’t…”
Sometimes Julian couldn’t hear him well, so Ilan cleared his throat. “Are you okay? That was kind of scary.”
Julian looked mortified, and his face was deep red. “Yeah. She’s just…” He didn’t finish his sentence, and Ilan didn’t ask him to.
Things calmed down after someone brought in soda and chips, and Julian suggested they watch a movie because he had a TV in his room with a little box on the top that played the words on the screen whenever the characters were talking. They laughed a lot after that, and Mr. Pedalino poked his head in and asked them if they wanted pizza.
It felt like the incident downstairs was a bad dream, lingering with a faint hint of anxiety, but easily dispelled with Julian’s grin and their quiet conversations. And while Ilan almost didn’t want to come back when Julian asked if he would, he wasn’t going to leave his best friend to that kind of a life. Not by himself.
Luckily, Julian’s mom was busy a lot, so Ilan didn’t see Mrs. Pedalino again until his third visit over. It was a weekend, and his dad dropped him off and spoke with her at the door as Ilan slipped by and rushed to Julian’s side by the stairs. The boy looked paler than usual, and from the clipped way she spoke to Ilan’s dad, he had a feeling she was being particularly vicious.
“Can you wait upstairs,” Julian murmured. “She wants to talk to me, and…and my dad’s not home tonight. He had to work late on a case with his partner, and um, it won’t take long.”
But he sounded like he was about to stand in front of a firing squad, so Ilan hid behind the wall at the top of the stairs and closed his eyes and listened.
“…don’t think I won’t put a stop to this if you put even a single toe out of line, do you understand me? This kind of influence could be devastating on your sister. She’s impressionable.”
“She’s only four. She doesn’t care who my best friend is,” Julian started to argue, but Ilan could hear the trembling in his voice.
“I never thought you’d be able to set a good example for her, but bringing someone like this into the home constantly—just look at the state of him, Julian. Your father can’t see it, but you can. I can. Corinne will make friends, and they’ll be able to see it too. Those filthy shoes, those clothes. He’s at that school because his father works in the front office, and that is not the sort of friend you’re expected to bring home.”
“He’s my only friend,” Julian said, and Ilan’s heart twisted in his chest because yes, he knew that. It was obvious that before he’d come to the school, Julian had been a deserted island.
“That’s because you don’t try. It’s bad enough we can’t hide that scar, but this chubby little face of yours…it’s no wonder no one wants to associate with you. Sometimes I wonder if your father only loves you the way he does because he can’t see…”
And then Ilan ran, because he couldn’t take it. He could fight bullies and hug Julian and make promises that someday they’d run away together and never look back. But he couldn’t ever undo the things his own mother must have been saying for years. And he fundamentally couldn’t understand how anyone could hate that small, quiet, kind boy.
Something shifted after that. They watched movies, then ate dinner after Mr. Pedalino got home, but Ilan couldn’t bring himself to smile or hold conversations the way he normally did. They went outside when they were finished, because it was near summer, and it was still light out, and Julian wanted to swing. Ilan didn’t feel like doing much of anything, because he was too young to understand how to fix the situation, but he was old enough to know that Julian was slowly shattering inside, bit by bit.
And there might be a day where there was nothing left of him.
“You were very quiet tonight,” came a voice to his right, and Ilan looked over to see Mr. Pedalino making his way across the grass with his cane. It hit the table Ilan was sitting on, then he stopped. “Are you here?” he asked after a prolonged silence. “The cook said she saw you sitting at the table.”
Ilan shrugged, then remembered he had to speak. “Yeah, it’s just me though. Julian’s on the swing.”
“I know. I was talking about you.” His hand reached out, found the bench, then he sat. “Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?”
Ilan bit the inside of his cheek. “Why does she hate him?”
Mr. Pedalino blinked like he’d been slapped across the face. “I don’t know who…”
“Mrs. Pedalino. She hates Julian. The stuff she says to him is so…” Ilan stopped when his voice cracked, and he felt suddenly weak and desperate to go home so he could hug his parents. “Why?” he finished on a whisper.
“She doesn’t hate him,” Mr. Pedalino said, but the words sounded like the lie they were.
“Yeah. Yeah, she does.” Ilan felt his anger rising, because it was obvious this man loved his son, but he also didn’t do anything to stop his wife from being so cruel. “My mom doesn’t talk to me like that, even when she’s real, real mad. My dad…he never would. They love me. She doesn’t love him. Why don’t you stop her from making him cry?”
Mr. Pedalino’s eyes closed, and he let out a breath, and he said nothing at all.
It was that moment Ilan knew that he’d protect his friend with his life. And it was in that moment he wasn’t sure he would ever forgive Fredric Pedalino for not doing the one thing he was supposed to do as Julian’s father. It was the moment Ilan realized that love wouldn’t always be enough.
Leaning back in his desk, Ilan glanced around his office. His diplomas and certifications lined the walls, dusty because the moment he put them up, he stopped giving a shit about them. He liked his office, he liked his staff. He liked at least thirty percent of his patients as people, which was an astounding amount compared to most of his colleagues.
And once upon a time, that shit mattered. Once upon a time, he reveled in being the man who was best at his job—who had a reputation for patients falling in love with him because he was competent and kind. He liked the idea that no one had been worth settling for, and no one ever would be. Julian had always wanted more for Ilan, but he also respected that Ilan held the idea of relationships in contempt and was going to be satisfied staying out of one for the rest of his life.
And Ilan didn’t resent Julian for falling in love. It was impossible to do that when he saw the way Archer loved him. It was the kind of love from old literature that Julian was always quoting. Shit about the sun and stars and lassoing the moon. Love made most people weak and vulnerable, but Archer gave Julian strength, and for that, Ilan would never look down on what they had.
He just wasn’t willing to take the risks Julian took in order to get there.
Clicking on his mouse, Ilan opened up his Facebook window and saw a tagged photo of Julian from Archer’s page. He was on the street, staring up at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, his hand above his eyes shielding him from the sun that was lighting up his hair like it was on fire. He looked good. He looked content. He looked like he was at home, which made Ilan ache a little because he was thousands of miles, an ocean, and part of a continent away from him.
The worst part though, was when Julian quit his job and packed his bags and decided to call another country home, Ilan went to his office and took a good look around and realized that none of that shit actually mattered. He’d stayed close to where they grew up because that’s where everyone he cared about lived. But over the years, things began to change. His parents died, Julian escaped the life that was suffocating him. Hell, even Fredric had given Jacqueline everything in the divorce and disappeared into the wind.
And frankly, he was still reeling from that one.
Ilan couldn’t help but think back to his childhood, to that feeling of conflict both loving and hating Fredric for his strength and weakness. And there was a piece of him that would probably always be angry because Fredric should have done more, but Ilan had grown up with eyes wide open and understood now what Fredric had gone through with his ex-wife’s fingers wrapped around his throat, only just able to breathe. He had never quite been able to believe that Fredric would find his way out, though.
But he had.
And that was what motivated him to write his resignation letter and to post a goodbye to his patients before he began transferring their records to one of the other network doctors. There was nothing left for him in this town except old, bitter memories and a string of former hook-ups he had no intention of seeing again.
And once that was done, well, he had no fucking idea what was supposed to come next. But he wanted to feel sand between his toes and breathe in ocean air. He wanted to return to the coast he’d always dreamed about as a kid and do it without feeling like he was letting someone down or leaving them behind.
His phone started to buzz, which startled him enough to jump, and he dug into his coat pocket, not bothering to look at the screen. “Dr. Nadav,” he said, leaning back and scratching his temple with one of the cheap plastic pens the last pharmaceutical rep had dumped on his desk.
There was silence, then static, then the sound of his realtor’s voice. “Sorry, I…shit…going to…”
The call dropped, and Ilan reached under his glasses to rub his eye, staring at the screen as he waited for Jack to call him back.
“I’m gonna fucking murder every fucking cell phone tower in this god forsaken swamp,” was the greeting he got when he picked up again, and it made his grin tug at his cheeks.
“Not enjoying your stay here in our little corner of the world?”
“I fucking hate this place,” Jack said, sounding like he was gritting his teeth. “But we got an offer. Asking, they want ten in concession because they want to re-do the pool deck.”
“Did you tell them to go fuck themselves?” Ilan asked. “Because my job isn’t to line their pockets so they can make superficial changes.”
Jack laughed. “No. I didn’t tell them anything, because my client wants to get the fuck out of town in the next forty-five days, and we have a meeting to go look at houses this weekend.”
Ilan groaned, but he knew it was just his pride talking. He didn’t want to concede more than asking on his house since he’d priced the damn thing to sell, but he could afford to do whatever the hell he wanted. He was a single man on a doctor’s salary, and even after paying off every cent of debt his parents had accrued, and every cent of his student loans, he had more money than he knew what to do with.
He didn’t want to be the asshole all those dickheads at school had grown up to become with their trust funds and self-importance, like nothing else in the world mattered except what made them happy. But Ilan was self-centered. He had known that about himself since he understood the man staring back at him in the mirror. It was why he never really inflicted himself on anyone as a boyfriend, no matter how many times he’d been tempted to do it just for the perk of regular, uncomplicated sex.
He loved easily, but being in love felt damn-near impossible, because he’d seen what it had done to people across the course of his life. He saw it ravage Fredric as he gave everything to a woman who would sooner spit on him than inconvenience herself for his well-being. He saw the way Julian had struggled to find worth in himself, and when he finally let himself open up, he was mocked, cheated on, and abandoned.
But Ilan couldn’t deny it had worked out for Julian in the end. Archer had come along like some avenging angel from the stars, using a flaming sword to put an end to every single sharp tongue that had ever made Julian feel like he was less than perfect. But Ilan also knew that Archer was the exception, not the rule.
He was fine with that, of course. He didn’t want love. He just wanted to be somewhere that allowed him some measure of contentment. And although change was hard, it was necessary.
He’d already put feelers out in Crescent Cove, and there was plenty of work there, plenty of room for a doctor to get established. He was looking forward to having his own practice though. To avoid hospital shifts and the manic mood of the ER on holiday weekends.
He wanted to carve out a little piece of the world and call it his own and limit the people who loomed over him and told him what to do. And he wanted to be somewhere he was allowed to take time away from being a doctor, where no one could guilt him for taking space that was made for people whose lives were fuller than his own.
So, the time had come. He’d accept the offer on the house. He’d hit send on the letter to his patients. He’d say goodbye to the people he’d been treating and his staff who had been at his side for years. He’d set his little name plaque and all his stupid diplomas into a box next to the succulent Julian had gotten him that wouldn’t die no matter how many times he forgot it existed. He’d send someone for all the books he owned because he thought they made him look smart but were far less convenient than google.
He’d carefully pack each and every item that ever meant anything to him, and he’d set them up in all the new shapes that he wanted to define this life. Shapes that didn’t quite resemble who he was—yet. But they would.
Maybe he’d make a friend. Maybe he’d find himself worthy of more than just a quick fuck in a club bathroom or in the backseat of his car on a dirt road. Maybe he’d take a trip to across the ocean and let himself sit back and appreciate that even if love wasn’t for him, it could be for the people he cared about, and that mattered just as much as anything else.
“Dr. Nadav?”
He looked up at the voice and smiled at his nurse, Lizzie, who looked a bit frazzled from the afternoon, because Mondays were always the longest. “Hit me with it.”
Her smile softened, and she let out a breath. “Mrs. Carson is in four. I measured her knee, and it’s fine. Her BP is up, but I think she’s just nervous. She didn’t seem interested in talking to me, but…” Lizzie’s voice trailed off, and she frowned. “Ilan. Are you okay?”
He felt a wave of something that kind of sounded like his mother’s voice reminding him that people would miss him, and they’d feel bad that he was going. But that it was okay. Everyone would be okay—with or without him, and it didn’t have to have deeper meaning than that.
“I’m good,” he said, then pushed up from the desk and decided to get on with his day.
Fredric ignored the sounds of his cabinet doors opening and closing, and he dragged his hands down the back door until they curled around the small latch, letting the dog door swing free. Sebastian gave him a quiet huff of appreciation before he darted out, and Fredric turned, reaching for the little breakfast bar as his daughter quit her silent judgment of his new place.
“It’s bare,” Corinne declared after a moment. The furniture had helped dampen the echo, but there were a lot of empty corners that needed to be filled. “You’re going to starve to death. Or kill yourself on take-out.”
Fredric snorted and felt along the counter until he found his glass, taking a long drink of his water. “If eating midnight Chinese at the office five nights a week while working on three hours of sleep didn’t do me in,” he reminded her, “I think I’ll survive a couple taco nights.” His work had been chaos right until the moment he quit—but most of that was self-inflicted. It was stay at the office and delegate, or it was go home and face whatever battles Jacqueline had decided to wage that week, and if he wanted his heart to survive any of it, the office always won.
“You’re not funny.” Corinne hadn’t gotten the brunt of her mother using Fredric’s health as emotional manipulation—not the way her brother had—but she’d dealt with it enough. Jacqueline spent nearly thirty years using his stroke as a way of guilting her children into doing whatever she wanted, and Fredric hadn’t put a stop to it before it created a gulf between him and the two people he loved most in the world.
He sighed as he heard her come around the corner, and he smiled when her hands fell on his shoulders. “I know it’s not funny,” he told her, laying a palm over hers, “but I promise I’m not dying. I actually can take care of myself.”
“I know,” she said, her voice going soft. “It’s just…you were always right down the street, and now you’re like three hours away if I break laws, and I hate that.” He heard the hesitation and fear in her tone. “What if something does happen and all of us are too far to get to you in time.”
“You want me to get life alert?” he pressed, and she smacked him in the side.
“Oh my god, stop. I just mean, you’re all the way out here on your own, okay? And you refuse to hire a driver, and you don’t actually know anyone. I hate that you felt like you had to put this many miles between us.”
