Chapter Text
The next day is Sunday. Richie will get his shit together and go to work like an adult, but he doesn’t need to be at the restaurant until 3:00. He calls Tiff to ask if he can take Eva for a couple hours. She says yes, but asks that he have her back by 1:00 because they’re meeting Frank’s parents for a thing.
He takes her to the aquarium. Lifts her up so she can get better eyes on a starfish clinging to a corner. Waits patiently while she watches an octopus skulk around its tank with the focus of a monk. When they came two years ago she repeated the same three jellyfish facts that Richie had heard many times before. Her brain was a little mound of Swiss cheese, but now it’s a supercomputer. It’s deranged how parents think they can home-school their teenagers when Eva knows more about shark evolution than Richie ever will.
He tries not to mourn all the bits he’s going to lose as she gets older. The near future where there will be no more bedtime stories, trick-or-treating, or god forbid, the day she stops holding his hand in public. But he’ll survive it like every parent before him.
“I’ll see you Wednesday,” he says while hugging her goodbye. Over time he’s been able to hug her with more weight. One day he won’t have to hold back anymore. He’ll be able to hug her the way he would any other adult. That’s something to look forward to.
She waves goodbye to him before going inside the house. Just as he’s about to turn the ignition, his phone starts ringing. It’s Sydney. He stares at her name. Delays accepting the call until it’s one ring away from voicemail.
“Hey, what’s up?” he answers. It’s been weeks since he’s heard her voice outside of work.
“Hey, how you feeling?” she asks, and sounds genuine enough.
“Much better. Thanks for the fried rice.”
“Was there enough chili oil?”
Richie smiles. He hasn’t eaten a single bite.
“Syd, you know it was perfect.”
“Still like hearing you say it.”
He leans back in his seat and stares at the road in front of him. Will Sydney’s calls replace Tiff’s? Every time he sees her name on the screen, will his heart spasm with hope that she’s calling to take him back? He hopes that’s not the case. He hopes the divorce has left him with marginally thicker skin.
“Anything going on?” he asks after a mutual pause.
“No, uh… I know you don’t clock in ‘til 3:00, but I was wondering if you’d be up to meet me at that bar on Ontario around 2:00?”
Richie pinches his eyes shut. Nausea rolls through every organ. Is she really planning to formally break things off with him right before his shift? Make him plaster on a smile for eight hours with no reprieve? He wants to ask if it can wait until after service, but she’s often stuck at the restaurant until midnight or later. At least she doesn’t sound pissed, which probably means Carmy didn’t blow his cover. Sydney is terrible at hiding her anger.
“Yeah, I could do that,” he replies with all the enthusiasm of walking across gravel.
“Thanks. I just, uh… I’d like to talk to you for a bit outside the restaurant.”
Richie swallows down the choke-worthy lump in his throat. “Yeah. I’ll see you there.”
He hangs up, then just sits there for a minute or two, preparing for the drive home. He waits until the first stoplight before lighting a cigarette. Didn’t want Tiff or Eva to see him smoking from the window.
His apartment welcomes him with vaguely empty arms. He’s still readjusting to all the available counter space in his bathroom. Assembling his suit feels protective. People manage to dress themselves in suits before funerals. Before court hearings where they receive life sentences. Richie always thinks about that whenever he watches the news. No matter how fucked someone’s life may be, they're never allowed to roll into court in sweatpants.
This is nothing by comparison. If Sydney really is planning to break up with him, it shouldn’t take more than fifteen seconds, which gives him a full hour to lick his wounds.
Her box of stuff leers down at him while he’s tying his shoes. He considers leaving it as some stupid tether, but decides it’s better to make a clean break. So he seals it with packing tape and carries it to the car.
He arrives at the bar fifteen minutes early. There was no reason to linger around his apartment any longer. On autopilot, he carries the box inside, but realizes it will need to go right back in his trunk until Sydney can carry it home after service. Oh well, he supposes it’s more about the statement than anything else.
He orders a beer and takes his usual booth, placing the box on the floor. It’s been a while since he last darkened their doorstep. Sydney took up almost every free night, the little attention sponge. His memory falls back to the night she tried kissing him. It felt like such a joke. Such a nothing occurrence. Sydney Adamu and her half-baked enzymes.
Dave is clearing cups from the table to his right.
“Hey, what's the deal with that girl you were with a couple months back? The one who looked ready to topple after three Miller Lites?”
Richie smiles. “Yeah, that’s my coworker. She has this genetic alcohol sensitivity. She was real embarrassed. I got her home in one piece.”
“Wish I had something like that. Don’t even want to think about all the money I’d have saved. Hey, speak of the devil.”
The bell on the door rings, and Sydney steps inside. She’s not wearing her whites. Just the plain t-shirt she normally wears underneath, coupled with the black slacks of which she owns four identical pairs. She catches his eye immediately.
“Hey, glad you came,” she says while taking her seat. Her voice is a bit too cheery. A bit too PR-coded.
Richie shrugs. “Had nothing better going on.”
His thumb slides up and down the neck of the bottle. It feels like he’s in a doctor’s office awaiting a diagnosis. Just get it over with, he thinks. You’ve had your trial period with Carmy while keeping me on the back burner. Just cut the fucking heat already.
“Richie, I uh—“
“I’m thinking of looking for jobs.”
He panicked. Needed to say something to postpone the inevitable. It’s not technically a lie. He spent maybe half-an-hour yesterday scanning through listings. But realistically, with his criminal history it will be at least another decade before any worthwhile employer will take a chance on him. He’s trapped. They’ll probably have to bury him under the floorboards. But still, it’s nice to dream.
Sydney doesn’t look offended that he cut her off. She actually looks upset.
“We can’t lose you.”
Richie smiles. She treated him like dead weight for a year, then he puts on a suit and suddenly he's irreplaceable?
“While I appreciate the sentiment, you guys aren’t exactly filling up Eva’s college fund. Smyth is looking for a maitre d’. $29 an hour.”
Sydney gives a small nod. “I think we could match that.”
Richie knows what their books look like, and no, they cannot.
“No hard feelings, but uh… I’m in love with you.”
It’s not planned, but the words leave his mouth with ease. Like one of the million ‘I love you’s shared with Tiff over the years. Keeping it a secret would have been kinder. It would have allowed her to drop him guilt-free. But saying it aloud makes him feel just a bit lighter. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. That’s what they teach in AA.
“Wait, for real?”
Richie winces. Maybe not the worst reaction to a love confession, but certainly not the best.
“That a surprise?” He doesn’t feel like he did a particularly good job at hiding it.
“It’s just, I kinda figured you were still in love with Tiff. You never took your ring off.”
Her words floor him. With unexpected certainty, it hits him like a train that he is no longer in love with Tiff. He didn’t think that was possible. When she made him leave, he figured the love would stay in his heart until death. Dilute every future relationship; bother him like a chronic ailment. But in this exact moment, he realizes that it’s gone. He no longer misses talking to her every day. When she drops off Eva, doesn’t feel an ache standing in her proximity. Sure, he’ll always carry a bit of love for her as the woman who made his daughter, but she has been appearing in his dreams less and less. Go figure, he falls out of love with one woman just to fall for another who doesn’t want him. Out of the frying pan into the fires of hell.
“I love you, Syd,” he repeats. “Nothing to be done about it, but is what it is.”
He takes a sip of beer and waits for her response. He’s expecting something along the lines of ‘thank you for telling me,’ or ‘that’s very kind of you.’ But instead, she says the most improbable thing Richie has ever heard in his life.
“Well, um… I think I love you too. So, that’s convenient. That’s sort of what I wanted to ask you about.”
Richie feels his center of gravity shift. Like when all the alcohol hits at once. He raises his eyes to properly look at her face for the first time since she walked through the door. She looks earnest enough.
“You said you were in love with Carmy.”
She gives an uncomfortable laugh. “I mean, you kinda put words in my mouth on that one, let’s be real.”
She clears her throat. It’s a bad stalling habit she’s picked up from Carmy, except she doesn’t have smoker’s lung to excuse it.
“I uh… I did have feelings for him. And if you’d said this was all just casual and whatever, then yeah, I’d give him a chance. But if you think we can figure this out, then I’d like to keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Why?” he asks, still refusing to give himself allowance for hope. “Between me and him?”
He really shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. But truly, what the fuck?
Sydney looks down at the table. Her posture is a bit rigid, as though she were conducting an interview.
“Carmy, he uh… he needs someone who wants to take care of him. And that doesn’t work for me. And kinky shit aside, it seems like you… like taking care of me?”
Richie nods. “Very much so.”
He never thought about it in that light, but it’s true. It’s nice to know his efforts did not go unnoticed.
Sydney smiles. “I like being taken care of. And no one except my dad has ever really done it. So, thank you.”
Well, when she spells it all out like that, he supposes it does make a fair bit of sense.
Richie remembers the night Eva was born. 4:13 in the morning on a Wednesday. It took becoming a father to make him realize how much he loves taking care of people, and in his current state, needs it to keep himself going. He gave too much of that care to Mikey. Or maybe not too much, just the wrong kind. The kind you’re supposed to give a young child who only knows food and warmth, not a grown man with a sickness no amount of love could fix. When Mikey died, it was the first time in years Richie had no one to care for. Alone in his empty apartment, his baby girl asleep eight miles away, and his best friend prone on an autopsy table. That was the lowest point of Richie’s life. He had failed them both in unforgivable ways.
He’s learned from his mistakes. He knows second chances don’t come lightly. Sydney is giving him the opportunity to try again. Maybe she senses his disbelief, because with only mild hesitation, she reaches out to rest her hand over his. Richie watches her thumb run down the trail of his veins. He smiles. After months of tamping down his feelings, he’s finally allowed to breathe easy.
“I uh… I know you hate Taylor Swift—“
“Hate her,” she echoes, just in case Richie forgot.
“But I have a third ticket to her concert next month. If you want to come with me and Eva. You can feel intellectually superior to ten thousand normie sheeple. Doesn’t that sound like a good time?”
She smiles brightly. “Guess it is kind of a cultural experience. Like watching the Berlin Wall fall.”
“Eva will be so out of her mind she won’t even notice you’re there.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it that way, but he feels the need to soften the blow. He’s asking her to meet his daughter and indulge her in something she enjoys. He’s not expecting more from her. She doesn’t have to come over the nights he has her. He just wants Eva to know that she’s around. The age gap shouldn’t be too weird since Eva is still too young to know the difference between a friend and girlfriend, and in her eyes, everyone over the age of fifteen is an honorary senior citizen.
“It would be cool to spend some time with her,” Sydney says, and seems to mean it.
“She’s a great kid. Fucking hilarious. You two have that in common.”
Sydney curls her fingers to wrap around the side of his hand. “You’re such a good dad.”
Richie can’t remember the last time someone said that to him. Maybe Tiff, once or twice in the early days. Before Mikey required more attention than Richie or anyone could give. Hearing Sydney say it, a woman raised by an angel of a father, is the highest compliment he could ever receive.
“What’s this?” she asks, looking over the side of the table to nudge the box with her shoe.
Richie cringes. He completely forgot about that shit. “Your stuff.”
“Damn, dude, way to make a girl feel wanted.”
“Sorry, sorry, I just… I got in my feelings.” He takes a sip of beer with his free hand. His face is probably bright red.
She looks down at the box with one of her trademark weird expressions. Richie would need a catalog to organize them all.
“I uh… I have to stay late tonight, but I could come over tomorrow. Sorry, I know I kept flaking out. That wasn’t cool. But you can take this stuff back, if you want. I don’t think I need any of it back home.”
Richie looks at her inquisitively. “Tomorrow’s your birthday.”
From the look on her face, it’s clear she lost track of the calendar.
“Oh shit, you’re right. Fuck. Our problematic age gap is gonna shrink.”
Richie laughs, then turns his hand over to cradle her fingers in his palm.
He has enough life experience to recognize a good thing when it stabs him in the ass. There are finally tracks beneath his feet. Death, divorce, and dread, all smoothing out into a steady thrum. After eighteen months of agony, he suddenly has access to happiness on tap. Sure, Carmy will hate him, maybe forever. But Richie and Mikey always seemed to bounce back from worse shit than this. Maybe it will be alright. He’s got a bit more hope to spare than usual. The girl he loves wants him in return, and tomorrow he’ll get to take her home. He’s going to take care of the restaurant, his friends, and his girls. That’s his purpose. That's all he needs. He's relieved he found the answer with plenty of time to spare.