Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Gabby

" D o you really expect her to come see you?" Valentina asks as we stand behind the case, taking a bit of a break in the space between our breakfast and lunch rush. We're learning that this is the calm before the storm.

"I hope so..."

"You sure?" she scoffs giving me a sarcastic smile. I don't expect it out of her, but it's just a little glimpse of her personality. Every once in a while, she'll give me a small amount, and I can't wait until she trusts me enough to give me all of it. I think most of her life she was stifled, and now that she's able to let it go? She's going to have people lining up to date her and be her friend.

I clear my throat, shaking my head. "I'm not sure of anything other than the fact I want to be with Barrett. He's pushed himself into my life in ways I never thought another man would."

"You've been married before, right?"

She and I have talked, but never gone too far in depth about the life I came from, or the one she came from. "Yeah, I had everything with that marriage that should've made me happy. We had money, a nice house, newer cars, and could vacation twice a year..."

"But you weren't happy," she finishes for me.

"No, not at all. There were aspects I was happy with, but he didn't know me. When it came down to what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, he had absolutely no idea, and he was never going to know." It was a reality I'd had to face, when Jeff and I had been at a couples' dinner and one of our friends asked him what would be my dream job. He'd smiled widely and told everybody I'd be happy as a stay at home wife and mom. That had never been a dream of mine. Yes, I wanted kids, but that hadn't been my entire goal in life. When he answered it incorrectly at a dinner we were at, I asked him on the way home, is that what you think about me? Do you really think I'll be happy as a stay-at-home wife and mother? Do you not see how much I love cooking, and how I want to do something with it?"

"And what did he say?"

"He looked over at me, a stupid fucking grin on his face, and said women like you are to be taken care of. You don't know how to work hard, and you're more than likely to have people do the job for you. Women like you don't have ideas, and you definitely don't know how to implement them."

Val visibly recoils. "What a jerk."

"Yeah, that was one of the names I called him. We got into a huge fight that night, and I just knew from that moment on nothing was ever going to be the same again. When we'd gotten married, I hadn't believed in divorce, I'd thought that would be the last thing that would ever happen to me." I roll my lips together and think back to how I'd been so disappointed at first. I'd felt like such a failure. "I talked to him and told him I had bigger aspirations, but he laughed. He said women like me didn't have aspirations."

"I heard that a lot too within my family," Valentina admits. "It's one of the reasons I had to leave. I'm not ready to tell anyone everything that happened, but it appears as if you saved yourself."

"I did," I confirm, thinking back to the guts it took for me to leave. I hadn't planned it. I can't even put my finger on it, what had made me leave that day.

"You saved me, too. If you'd not given me a job, and a place to live, I would've gone back home, because there would've been no other place for me to be. I admire you, appreciate you, and want you to have everything you want to make you happy, Gabby. If there is anything I can do to help that, I beg you to tell me. You've changed my life, and I just want to make yours easier."

Tears come to my eyes, I didn't expect this from her. I never once thought I'd had a big influence on her, I thought all I was doing here was give her a choice. "All I wanted for you was to have a choice, when you told me where you came from, it didn't seem as if you'd had that."

"I didn't, and if it weren't for you, I would've been married already."

This surprises me, although she's hinted at it more than once, I don't think I fully believed her. "Who would you have married?"

She swallows roughly. "There were three or four men who were vying for my father's approval. All of them were at least forty, and I wasn't ready."

Her words slap me across the face. I don't know what to say. "Val... I'm so sorry. I didn't realize..."

"It's okay, most people don't. It's why I don't say much about it. Not because it makes me uncomfortable, but it makes everyone else uncomfortable. It was my reality for longer than I care to admit." She sighs.

"Is the rest of your family expected to do this? Boys and girls?" I'm beyond interested now that she's started talking.

"Yes, but it's more expected of the girls instead of the boys. It's so backward, and it's nothing I ever truly wanted for myself." She taps her fingers against the case. "When I was faced with the fact I wouldn't be able to say no to a marriage, I knew I had to leave."

The fact that this shit still happens in modern day America is beyond me, and I would give anything I had to keep it from happening to someone else. "How long was it from the time you left to you coming here and asking for a job?" There's a part of me that needs to know I was helpful to her, and she wasn't struggling for months.

"Three days," she says it with the finality of someone who faced hell and won. "Every Easter I'd hear people talk about how much could change in three days and I would pray so hard..." she stops for a second, swallowing so roughly I hear it. "That it would be my life that would be changed. Seems prophetic, huh?"

"It does, but regardless of how it happened, I'm glad it did."

Val looks over, grinning. "Me too."

The bell over the door rings, signaling that someone else is coming in, and when I glance up, I'm wholly unprepared to see Barrett's mom standing there, looking completely out of place. "Hey." She waves. "I came for that coffee."

"How do you like it?" I paste a smile on my face, because I know without a doubt this meeting between us? It's going to make or break the situation I have with Barrett, and no matter what I will go down putting my best foot forward. I've lost the man once, I don't plan to lose him again.