My Italian Heart

Chapter Thirty Five

I got up on New Years Eve and I was more than a little annoyed. The night before, Em had announced she was going to stick by David all night to make sure he wasn't lonely. Telling us how much it would hurt for him to be away from Cara on such a big day. Except we had plans. I knew I would be getting a message at some point during the day canceling our night out together. I also knew Emily had announced it to us before she had told her dad. He wouldn't be happy about it and he would try telling her that he would be fine. She loved him too much for her to listen to his objections. Secretly, I wondered if it was as much for her benefit as it was for David's.

The idea of starting the new year without George must have been painful. I was certain it was her own feelings she had been channeling when she had discussed David's pain. Then, to top it off, she was still parted from Amiee. She hadn't heard anything from George at all, but Amiee had called her a couple of times. I was under no illusion that George would have been the one behind the phone calls, but he never spoke to her at all. Amiee had told her they were still in Milan and a couple of times she had told Emily how horrible she was finding it, but didn't go into details. She had also let it slip that Sharon's mother had suggested that she would be going to live there permanently soon enough. Apparently, George had told her that her grandmother was confused.

Emily had interpreted the conversation as Sharon's parents making a play for custody. She had asked us all desperately when she got off the phone if there could be anything else it could be. Almost begging us to tell her that there was another explanation. It was a testament to how much she loved Amiee that she stayed completely calm and level-headed until she was off the phone. I told her that I thought she was right, but that there was no way George would allow something like that to happen. George was a good father, even if he was a bit of an i***t when it came to Emily, no court would take his daughter from him. It appeared at the time to satisfy her panic, but she had been on edge ever since.

The journey home from Milan with David had been excruciatingly painful too. It really had been a week of awfulness after awfulness. After five minutes of complete silence pulsating around the car and mocking me, I couldn't take it any long. I cranked the stereo up and drove. Just continuously concentrating on the way the car moved from lane to lane. The feeling of the speed, the thrust of the gearstick. It was all I could do. David wasn't exactly happy with my driving, but he must have thought better than to mention it. It was a wise choice. I would likely have let his criticism unleash all my pent-up emotions. I couldn't be sure if it would have come out as torrential rainfall of tears or gale force winds worth of anger. Either way, it wasn't the best option for him and he seemed to know that.

Since then, it felt like he had been avoiding me, but I couldn't help but think I was reading too much into it. The truth was that where David was concerned I had no idea what to think half the time. It wasn't even like he didn't know how to communicate, we just never had the time to talk. Either there was something going on like in the car, or we were surrounded by people that needed to be kept in the dark. It felt like we were constantly failing to move forward, to have something meaningful. I still wanted to tell everyone, but I had no choice but to respect David's wishes. I just hoped he decided he was ready sooner rather than later.

I realized I had been chewing the end of my pen rather than writing with it. Pulling myself back to earth and focusing on the spreadsheet on the screen. David had headed up to the house to grab some lunch and I needed to make the most of the time I had to concentrate before he got back. I had gotten quite used to working away from him. It allowed me the space I needed to focus on the task at hand. Except having him there all morning had been impossible. Every few minutes, I found myself looking over at him and, even after he left, the essence of him seemed to linger and continue distracting me.

Out of no where, my concentration was broken from where it should have been, focusing on the shouting outside the warehouse. I scrambled to my feet, heading for the door rather than to the window. I could already tell it needed intervention, it was too loud and aggressive not to. The windows muffled what was being said, all I could tell was that it was two men screaming at each other. It happened from time to time, the lads in the warehouse worked together for long hours and it could cause friction. When they were tired and pissed off, talking things through didn't really seem to be an option in their brains.

I was picking up speed at such a rate as I went down the stairs that I nearly caught my shoe at the back of the last step. Just managing to stop myself from falling at the last minute. I wasn't the only person who had been attracted by the noise. There was a circle of men trying to work out what was going on. The problem was they were all taller than me and in my way. It made it impossible for me to work out who was arguing, let alone why. As I got closer, the voices got clearer.

"I can't believe you would even show your face here after what you did." It was David, but not like I had ever heard him before. His voice had taken on a raw quality to it. Not only was he pissed off, but there was something else in the way he spoke that I couldn't quite decode.

"This is nothing to do with you, Grandad." The men in front of me cleared just enough for me to match the voice with the person standing in front of me. Adam. Part of me wanted to shrink back into the crowd. I didn't want to see him. I didn't want the extra complication of the pair of them fighting either.

"Both of you need to calm down." That would have been what I would have said if I had managed to get there sooner, but it was Emily playing ref and trying to calm the situation. I just stood there in the crowd, unable to make my body or my voice work.

"Em, you don't know what he did, so stay out of it." David's tone was bitter and biting. I didn't think I had ever heard him speak to her like that and I felt awful for her. She recoiled slightly almost like he had slapped her, but she didn't understand why and he was too worked up to give her reaction any attention at all.

"It's not my fault she's a slag." I saw his body hit the floor before I had even comprehended what had caused him to go down. Then I saw David shaking out his hand. Clenching it and letting it hang lose again. He had punched him and hard, judging by the way Adam had gone down. I had to do something. There was no longer an option to stand by and hope for the best. I dragged my way through the remaining crowd, feeling almost naked by the time I was stood there in the open. All eyes seemed to turn to me, but I hoped that was all in my head.

I didn't really know what I was meant to do. I had never had two men fight over me before. Let alone them doing it while one of them was trying to keep his feelings a secret. Emily being there just seemed to complicate things all the more. I went with my instincts. Heading over to Adam and holding my hand out to him, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. The old prat punches like a girl." He took my hand and I helped him to his feet, but I could see David behind me coming for him. Emily seemed to be trying to hold him back and was trying to talk him down. Except, without knowing what the hell was going on, she would have a hard time finding the right words to make him still. I wanted to smack Adam myself, it was clear that he had only come to cause trouble. I didn't know what had transpired between him and David, but it was clear they had gotten under each others skin. I felt like it was less about me and more about the pair of them.

David was chuntering but there was nothing I could make out. "Can we talk, please?" Adam asked me.

"I suppose we need to. You had better come up to the office." I gave David a look of apology as we disappeared back into the crowd which had started to dissipate. "Come on guys, back to work please." I waited until we were up the stairs and behind a locked door before I dared say a word, enough of my dirty laundry had been aired in public for one day. "What are you doing here, Adam?"

"I came to reason with you." He headed straight to the window and I wondered if David was still down there where I had left him. I figured he was. Adam spent too long looking at one spot for him not to be there. I also knew as much as he would be pissed off with me for giving Adam the time of day, there was no way he would go far and leave me alone with him. He was too over-protective for that. I just stood there waiting for Adam to continue. I was there to hear him out not to have a deep and meaningful conversation. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said what I said, but that guy really riles me up. Sitting in here all day with you, pretending he's your keeper."

"How does he do that exactly?"

"You just saw him outside."

"He was trying to protect me, Adam, and after what you did, I'm grateful to him for that." It was clear from the look he shot me that he had underestimated me and my loyalty to David. "Did you know when we were together that you were going to run to David telling stories? Did you make that decision before or after?"

"After. I didn't mean to do it. I rang here hoping to catch you. He took great pleasure in telling me, you weren't in the office. Suggesting you had had enough of me for one day. I lost my temper and said things I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. It was self-defense really, I was defending us." He turned to me expectantly.

"Thank you Adam for your selfless act. I'm afraid I am just not interested in someone who could say such things, even in temper or self-defence." I tried to keep my voice calm and flat, but it didn't work. "I think we have said everything that needs to be said." I saw him coming forward and stepped forward from the door. Trying to make enough room to let him out of the office. I was concentrating on the lock and the doorknob so much, that I completely missed the advance. His mouth took mine forcefully with no warning and my back slammed into the still locked door.