Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (13 page)

None of that should matter now. Surely not now, three hours after Pop’s body had been put into a hole. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Joey?” Tina patted his chest. In her voice, he heard her concern.

He kissed her head. “M’all set.”

The frown around her doe eyes told him that she wasn’t convinced.

“I’m going to get a Coke or something. You want something?”

He shook his head. When she left him, he watched her walk around the groups of people toward the kitchen, and he felt lonelier the farther away from him she got.

Tina had made him worthwhile. What she saw in him, she made real. Without her, he would still have been the gasping moron in the cellar.

Carmen turned just then and caught Joey’s eye. She was standing in a cluster with Rosa; Eli; Theo; Theo’s other son, Jordan; and Jordan’s husband. Her brow creased; Joey must have been showing some kind of look. She said something to the others and came over to him.

She took his hand. “Where’s Tina?”

“Went for a drink.”

“Come talk to me.” She tugged on his hand, and he let his big sister lead him out the front door.

They sat on the steps. “I want to tell you something about Pop. Okay?”

Without looking at Carmen, he nodded.

The street was full of cars. All those people in their house. They’d needed traffic control at the church and cemetery; they probably could have used it here, too.

“He was worried about you, Joe. He was afraid he was leaving you to…I don’t know. Dissipate, maybe. He didn’t know what to do to save you.”

“Carm…don’t. No.” Unable to deal with his sister digging around in his head and stirring up thoughts that had already been spinning, Joey moved to stand. To get away. His chest felt tight, and his tank was next door. He should have brought it over, but he didn’t want all these people seeing him with it. Not today.

Carmen pushed on his leg. “Don’t go. I’m not done. The last talk I had with him was about you. The day he died. You weren’t home for dinner—you and Tina were out, and I was over by myself because Theo and Teresa had that Father-Daughter thing with her Brownie troop. Pop and I played Scrabble after dinner, and he talked about you. He wasn’t worried anymore, Joe. He saw all the changes you’ve been making. He saw how strong you’ve gotten in just a few months, just since Christmas.”

She stopped, and Joey finally turned to her. A single wet track marked each of her cheeks, but there was no sound of tears in her voice. “He was so happy about you and Tina, too. He told me”—she deepened her voice and affected their father’s gruff tone—“‘He loves that girl. I don’t know if he knows it, but it’s plain to me. And her, too. That’s a love match.’ I told him I thought he was right.” Carmen laughed quietly. “And he was fucking
thrilled
that she’s Italian.” Her voice deepened again. “‘Six kids and only one of them married in the blood,’ he said. I didn’t bother to remind him you weren’t married.”

The ache in Joey’s chest became a pain, radiating from the center, down into his arms and up into his head. He needed his tank.

He stood. “Need…”

Carmen stood with him. “Where is it?”

He nodded toward the house next door.

“You want me to get it?”

Pulling his tie loose, he shook his head. He needed to be over there alone, too, and he was pretty sure he could make it.

“Okay. Joe—he was proud. That’s what I wanted to say. He was proud of you.”

Hot iron bands clamped down around his chest. He had to get next door. He left his sister standing on the front steps.

~oOo~

He was sitting on the side of his bed, sucking oxygen from his mask, when there was a knock on his door. He took the mask from his face.

“M’all set, Carm.”

“It’s me. Can I come in?”

Tina. He set the mask aside and turned off the tank. “Yeah.”

She came in and closed the door. “You disappeared. I was worried.”

By way of explanation, he hooked his finger under the tubing and lifted his mask. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She crossed the room and sat at his side. “I don’t know what to do to help you.”

“Doing it.” He felt better just having her close.

“I don’t think I am.” She curled her hand over his in his lap. “You’ve been so quiet since he died.”

“…Always quiet.”

“You know what I mean. I just…I love you. I want to give you what you need.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

He didn’t want to sound like Tarzan when he asked this most important question, the one that felt like the pulsing center of the painful, empty fullness in his chest, so he concentrated and tried for a complete sentence. “Why…do you…love me? What…am…I?”

They’d been together two months, since their first date at Santini’s. Until now, that question hadn’t really occurred to him. They’d been taking things slowly, very slowly, and maybe that was why he’d felt surprisingly secure in what they were making. When he’d first told her he loved her, she’d welcomed it. When she’d first told him she loved him, he’d believed her.

But now, in the shadow of his father’s death, Joey didn’t know. Everything good that was beginning to happen in his life seemed to hinge on her love. But why did he have it? What did he offer her? What had he ever offered anyone?

She shifted on the bed to face him directly. “Well, that pisses me off.”

He didn’t respond.

With a heavy, expressive sigh, she cupped her hands around his face. “I had a huge crush on you when I was a kid. Middle school and high school.” When he couldn’t suppress a twitch of a smile, she smiled, too. “You knew, huh? I guess I wasn’t subtle.”

“No.” He lifted his head from her hands. “Not him anymore.”

She took hold of his face again. “Obviously. And I’m not that swoony schoolgirl anymore, either. We’ve grown. But I didn’t love the macho, self-absorbed guy who hung out with Angie. He was hot, sure, but that wasn’t who I loved. I saw the man under him.” She blushed. “Sometimes I wrote you letters. I was pretty gone for you. But I always wrote to the you only I could see. I wrote these long entries in my diary, like scripts of conversations I wanted to have with you.”

“Can’t…c-con-converse now.”

“That doesn’t matter. At all. I love the way we communicate—without many words when we’re together, and with lots of words when we’re apart. We write love letters every day now. I
know
you. And I was right. The man I saw beneath the surface? That’s who you are now—and that’s who you were then, too, though you’ve grown since. You’ve faced hardship, and you’ve learned from it. You think and feel and love deeply. You hurt and acknowledge it. You struggle and try. You’re kind. You listen. You care. You’re funny. And you’re even hotter. I love everything about you.”

She leaned close and pressed her lips lightly to his. With her mouth on his, she murmured, “What are you? You’re everything.”

What she saw in him, she made real.

Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her onto his lap and claimed the kiss for his own. But the day was too much, this talk had been too much, everything was too much, and he lost his breath to the stress almost immediately.

Knowing nearly as quickly as he did, Tina pulled back and reached for his mask. As he took it and pushed it onto his face, she laid her head on his shoulder and stroked his chest.

When he could talk, he said, “So tired. Fuck.”

“Can we take a nap?”

“Wha…here?”

“It’s your bed, isn’t it? Is there anything else going on next door that you absolutely need to be there for?”

It was his father’s wake. He was pretty sure his family would say that everything going on next door was something he absolutely needed to be there for. But he wasn’t so sure they’d notice. And he was sure that the thought of more grey clusters of muttering people made his chest ache.

He and Tina hadn’t slept together yet. Not in the literal or the figurative sense. Two months together, and they were still on third base. Because he still needed his mask to get that far, and he refused to use it when he was inside her. That was a line he just could not, would not cross. He wanted tangled bodies and wild kisses, not tubes and the drag of his fucking tank.

But the idea of curling up with her here, on his bed, and simply resting—tucking her body against his, wrapping his arms around her, burying his nose, at least for a moment, in the thick mass of her hair—that idea calmed him.

“Okay.”

The words she’d spoken had been beautiful and had meant the world. But it was in her expression—in her lovely red mouth, her deep brown eyes—that Joey always found his trust and belief in what they had. There he saw her pleasure; he saw her love. He saw her care.

Now, she smiled brightly and got up from his lap. She kicked off her shoes and climbed onto his bed. He did the same. He’d discarded his jacket and tie and opened three buttons on his shirt when he’d first come into the house and gotten his tank, even before he’d come up to his bedroom to hide.

He’d thought he’d needed to be alone, but he’d been wrong. This was what he’d needed. He lay down and drew her close.

“Love you,” he said as he closed his eyes.

~ 10 ~

Tina woke in grey darkness and didn’t know where she was at first. Then she heard the sound of Joey’s breath—which always had a rough edge, even at rest—and felt the weight of his arm over her waist. She was in his bedroom, in bed with him. They’d slept past the sunset.

Since Carlo Sr.’s death, Joey had turned inward. She’d told him he’d been quiet, which was the best way she’d known how to describe the difference in him over these days. But it was more that he was distant, as if he’d moved so far inside that she couldn’t hear him anymore. He hadn’t turned away, and yet she couldn’t reach him.

Until this night. He was holding her so tightly, it was like he was holding on. Like she was keeping him in place.

As much as she could, she’d stayed at his side these past few days. He’d stood back from the rest of his family. He’d been a pallbearer, carrying his father’s casket with his brothers and brothers-in-law, but otherwise, he’d only watched. All of his siblings had spoken at the funeral, but he had not. Everyone understood—stress and emotion made his breathing and speech harder—but their understanding hadn’t changed the truth that he was alone, a step apart from the rest of them.

Over these months that they’d been together, Tina had learned a lot about him. Seeing the way his family was, and the way Joey was with them, she thought she might even understand him better than they. It was an arrogant thing to think, after only a few months, and yet it felt true.

She thought she understood at least one thing more than Joey’s brothers and sisters did: it wasn’t only his breath or speech that had kept him from speaking. She didn’t think he’d felt worthy of it.

Joey’s self-esteem was almost nonexistent. He saw his flaws but not his assets, his weakness but not his strength. He could list what he’d accomplished so far this year—in his fitness, for instance, twenty-three pounds lost, several inches of muscle gained, twenty lengths in the pool, how much his reps and weights had increased, how much lung capacity he’d gained—but there was no sense of accomplishment attached to any of it. Likewise, he could talk, or, more often, write, about his work and what he did, but rarely with the sense that it mattered.

What he saw was a man who couldn’t talk and couldn’t breathe, and little else about him seemed, to him, consequential.

His psychologist had told him that a significant part of his breathing difficulties was the vicious cycle of anxiety. Anxiety had the somatic symptoms of elevated heart rate, tightening muscles, rapid breathing. The chance of losing his breath made him anxious, which made him lose his breath. For Joey, on top of that, were the various anxieties caused by bad previous experiences and the low self-concept they’d left behind.

He wanted to be normal, and no matter what he accomplished, he would never be. It had been ten years since he’d been hurt—almost eleven. If he’d ever had a chance to gain back everything he’d lost, that chance was gone. He could be stronger—and he was—but he would never again speak without searching for words, and he’d likely never again live without meds and inhalers and oxygen tanks. As he fought to be stronger, that truth was a wall too high to climb.

He was on meds for anxiety and depression—but those had side effects that exacerbated pulmonary disorders. His meds for his lungs caused depression. He was walking a pharmacological tightrope that was being constantly adjusted while his team sought the balance.

Meanwhile, Joey didn’t see what he’d gained, only what he couldn’t attain.

She wanted him to have everything he could. Until he could be happy with himself and the life he had, until he could see all that he
did
have, and all that he was, what they were building as a couple would rest on sand.

Right now, however, with his arms around her, while he slept behind her, she felt secure. Solid.

Without breaking his embrace, and trying not to wake him, Tina rolled to her back. She was wearing a black jersey wrap dress, and the skirt didn’t make the journey with her very well; most of her bottom half ended up exposed, showing her black panties and her sheer lace-top thigh-highs. It was the wrongest possible night to seem like she wanted something to happen, but to reorganize her skirt would likely wake him.

And of course she wanted something to happen. She was happy to be going slow and to have their feelings for each other grow so deep while they were still traveling the path to complete physical intimacy. It was unlike any other relationship she’d had, and it was precious. More than anything else, she didn’t want to push him to a place that made him anxious and stressed. But it wasn’t easy.

Here she was, lying with him, sleeping with him, spooning with him, thinking about him, loving him. More than three months had passed since that afternoon in the coffee shop. For her part, she was ready. So ready. She wanted to feel him inside her—she wanted to be thrusting and grunting and coming together. His tank didn’t bother her.

Those thoughts were interrupted as Joey’s hand moved from her belly, over her hip to her thigh, where the tips of his fingers plucked at the lace tops of her stockings.

She looked over and saw his eyes glittering in the pale light from outside the window.

“Hey. You’re awake.”

Rather than answer, he leaned close and kissed her. Usually, their kisses, like everything about them, began slowly, just light brushes of touch, but this time, he covered her mouth and pushed his tongue between her lips right away.

The direction her mind had been wandering in when he’d woken had her body already thrumming, and she moaned and looped her arms around his neck, twisting her tongue with his. His erection dug into her hip and thigh.

She felt him fumbling at the tied belt of her dress, and then, when he had that undone, he tried to push the whole dress open and was thwarted by the little interior tie that kept everything in place. When he rose up to see the problem, Tina took care of the tie herself and opened her dress. She lay beneath him in her matching black underwear and her stockings, only her arms left covered.

Propped on his elbows, he stared down at her. In the moonlight, their bodies had gained a soft glow. Tina watched him study her and wondered what would happen next.

She’d gotten him off several times by now, and he’d returned the favor almost as often, but they’d not yet been fully naked together. They weren’t yet now, but he was seeing more of her at once than he had before, and something felt different. Tina felt her own breath coming fast.

“Joey,” she whispered. “What are we doing?”

“Beautiful.”

“Joey.” She cradled his face in her hands and lifted so that his eyes came up to her face. “Joey.”

His respiration was shallow and fast and growing harsh, and Tina made a conscious effort to slow her own down. If he could match her, he stayed calm and kept his breath longer.

“I…need…”

He didn’t finish, and she was afraid to imagine, to hope, what would have filled in the rest. With their eyes locked together in the near-dark of the room, she wiggled her arms out of the dress and unfastened the front hook of her bra. Her hands shook as she opened the bra and slipped her arms free of that, too.

His eyes left hers, sliding down her body to her chest. “Need you.”

“You have me.”

He turned his head, and Tina could tell that he was looking at the tank on the nightstand.

With her hand on his cheek, she returned his attention to her. “That doesn’t matter. It
doesn’t
, Joey. That tank isn’t you. It isn’t us. Don’t keep it between us.”

“It is. It will be…if…”

“No. If you need it, you’ll use it, but it won’t be between us. Not if it isn’t keeping us from what we want.” She lifted his chin. The room was too dark to make out much of his expression, but she could see the glint of his eyes. “Joey, do you want me?”

“God. …Always. So bad.”

“Then take me. Please.”

He let out a rough cough of a breath. “Don’t have… uh…things.”

She tried but failed to figure that one out.

He dropped his head; she felt a light tickle between her breasts as his hair brushed her skin. “Baby…no baby things…fuck!”

His strategy for finding the words that eluded him was to work backward from the meaning he was trying to make, but he usually did the searching in his head. It was unusual for him to expose a process he found humiliating. He must have been intent on getting the meaning out, word be damned.

“Condoms?”

“Condoms,” he echoed, obviously relieved.

“We don’t need them. I’ve been on the Pill for years.”

Since a couple of years before she had cause to need contraception, in fact. She’d had horrific periods from almost the beginning, and her doctor had prescribed the Pill in her sophomore year of high school. There had been a serious conversation with her mother about the expectation that she remain a ‘good girl,’ despite the prescription. But Tina had always been a pretty good girl. If the high school hallway rumors were to be believed, she’d been the only virgin left in her class by graduation day. At the Catholic school.

Still, Joey hesitated, and Tina could feel his cock softening against her leg. It was difficult not to let her own self-esteem take a hit, that he would lose his arousal while she was bared to him, in his arms, in his bed. She knew it wasn’t about her, but still.

As if to prove it wasn’t about her, his head swiveled to his tank again.

“Joey. If you need to wait, we’ll wait. But this is about your head, not your body. I’m here. I love you. I want you.”

His gaze returned to her, but not to her eyes. He focused on her throat. “Don’t…don’t…want to suck. Not…with you.”

Maybe it was the faint light in the room, or her own faltering self-esteem in the moment, but until just then, Tina hadn’t seen how
tormented
Joey was. Now that she saw it, it was all over him—his eyes, his face, his rigid posture, his rough breath.

She came up onto her elbows so that her face was barely an inch from his. “That’s impossible. There’s no goal except to be close. Just be with me.”

Lying back, she shimmied out of her panties and tossed them away.

He was beginning to make the sound that signaled the onset of real struggle with his breath—that
hem
he made, repeated in every exhale. She pushed on his chest until he settled again on his side, and she lay facing him. Tucking her head to his shoulder and sliding her arm around his waist, she took slow, deep, measured breaths with her mouth at his ear and her chest on his.

Slowly, he relaxed, and his breath became his own again.

She was naked except for her stockings, and he was fully dressed but for his shoes. It felt good, his clothes on her skin. Sensual. But she’d rather have been skin to skin.

The first time they’d been truly intimate, when she’d gone down on him on his birthday, she’d taken the lead. Since then, he’d been more forward, and they’d been initiating about equally. She’d been waiting for him to take this last step, not wanting to push, but now she realized that she would have to be the one to take it.

With her mouth at his ear, breathing steadily, she sucked on his earlobe and moved her hands between them, to the buttons of his shirt. Murmuring
I love you
as she sucked and kissed his ear and neck, she opened his shirt.

He wore a t-shirt under his dress shirt. She pushed her hands under it, sliding over his bare chest—covered lightly and naturally with hair over his pecs and down the center of his belly—until he grunted and lifted up to yank both shirts off at once.

He tossed them away and came down again—and as he did so, he pushed her to her back and lay over her, claiming her mouth in another of those demanding kisses.

Maybe he would take the lead after all. She’d like that, and he might need it. He needed to be strong. He
was
strong. Every day he had to work hard at things other people took for granted. Things so basic as breathing and speaking. Tina wished she could make him see how his striving against such odds was the very opposite of weakness.