He went about cracking eggs into a bowl and beating them. He talked to me as he did. “I’ve never seen him like that.” I didn’t know what to say. “Did you spike his drink?”
“What? No!” But when I saw his shoulders shaking, I realized he was pulling my leg. “Oh.” He laughed harder and I smiled. I saw a lot of Connor in Ricky. The most obvious, they were both smartasses.
When he started to chop up a green bell pepper, he peered up at me. “He talks about you all the time.” He did? “He was actually excited to go to mediation today.” Ugh. So was I. “Anything to see you again.” Same. Then he got serious. “He doesn’t want a divorce.”
Without Connor around, I found honesty, hard and true. “Neither do I.”
Ricky nodded solemnly. “I can see that. So why are you fighting him?”
My throat stuck. “You don’t know what he did to me.”
“I do,” he said. “I heard the song. I know what he did. All of it.”
“Then you know exactly why we can’t just pick up where we left off. We have too much history now. Trust has been broken.”
He poured the eggs into a pan and they sizzled. “Trust can be mended.”
It was easier said than done.
At my silence, he came forward to lean his elbows on the counter. “Picture this. Connor Clash, famous, rock god, wanted by women and men alike, the unobtainable man, groupie lover, happily single, falls for a twenty-something-year-old virgin.” He waved his arm in my direction. “Some li’l bit of a woman who hasn’t ever really lived before. What do you think, he wanted that?” Turning back and moving the pan around, he stated, “Shocked the shit out of him, left him feeling less like himself than ever before, because suddenly, he depended on somebody, wanted and needed somebody. And Connor didn’t need anybody.” He pointed the spatula in my direction. “Until you.”
The more he talked, the more I—grudgingly—began to understand.
Ricky went on. “You were the plot twist he didn’t see coming.” He huffed out a breath. “And then he lost you. You were gone, and nobody would tell him where you were or whether you were okay. He spent time your dementia-ridden grandmother, for fuck’s sake.”
My stomach shimmied.
I had my suspicions on just who had paid my grandmothers tenancy at St Jude’s but every time my thoughts drifted to Connor, I denied he would ever do something so selfless. But I was angry and hurt. Now, thinking about it, it made perfect sense. Because Connor wasn’t an asshole. He just played one to his worldly audience.
Only, I knew better.
“He did?” My voice was weak.
“He did.” Ricky put his omelette onto a plate. “And while everyone else is going about their lives, Connor comes crashing down to earth with the realization of what he’s done, of what he’s lost.” He forked the eggs into his mouth and garbled, “He can’t cope. Turns to drugs, again.”
“I didn’t want that.”
Ricky swallowed and made a face. “Nobody wanted that but that’s the point that Connor, bless him, loses the will to live. Goes on a bender then another until, whaddaya know, it’s a month later and he hasn’t showered. And I’m working interstate, none the wiser.” He ruefully looked down at the counter. “Until that fucking interview went viral.”
Shame filled me. It had always seemed like I was the only victim here. Alas, Connor was a victim of his own destructive ways. “Connor’s good at hiding himself.”
Finished with his meal, he placed his plate into the sink, gripping the edge, leaning over it. “Mark my words. If you didn’t show up when you did, I’d be putting flowers on his grave.”
The thought sent a shiver through me.
“He’s doing everything he can to be an improved version of himself. He’s motivated, determined to be a better man, and it’s all for you. I know it.” Ricky stood and looked me deep in the eye. “So, don’t break up. Fix it. Be romantic and date your husband like he wants to date you. Let him work to win you over. Love each other now, because life is short and you’re too young to live with regret.”
Each word hit me, and they hit me hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs.
It was strange, surreal even. As if abruptly every doubt in my mind had been expelled.