Chapter 6: Garlic Bread Confessions
The restaurant was a cocoon of noise and garlic. Amy sat in the corner booth, her fingers tracing the red-checkered vinyl, watching the door. Every time the bell jingled, her stomach flipped. Her parents were five minutes late, stuck in Friday traffic on the 405. The extra time was torture.
She saw them before they saw her. Her dad, Mike, in his best button-down, the one he wore for graduations and funerals, looking vaguely bewildered by the ambient chatter. Her mom, Linda, her face lighting up as she scanned the room, a smile that had soothed every childhood scrape now somehow amplifying Amy’s dread.
“There she is!” Linda swept in, enveloping Amy in a hug that smelled of lavender and car air-conditioning. Mike followed, squeezing her shoulder. “Look at you! All L.A. glamour. You’re too thin.”
“I’m not, Mom. Sit, please.” Amy’s voice sounded brittle to her own ears.
They slid into the booth, launching into the safe, predictable script: the drive, the shocking price of gas, Aunt Carol’s new hip. Amy nodded, contributing nothing, her eyes darting to the door. She’d told Tom 7:15. It was 7:14.
“So,” Linda said, leaning forward, her eyes sparkling. “When do we get to meet this mysterious man? We’re dying of curiosity.”
Amy’s mouth went dry. The plan—Tom’s calm, logical plan—evaporated. The words climbed her throat, sharp and urgent. She had to say it now, before he walked in. She couldn’t let him be the reveal.
“Mom, Dad…” She set her water glass down, a small tap against the Formica. “There’s something I need to tell you first.”
Their faces, open and expectant, waited. The background noise of the restaurant seemed to recede into a hollow roar.
“I’m… we’re… married. Tom and I. We got married last fall.”
The silence at their table became a physical thing. Linda’s smile didn’t fall so much as freeze, then slowly drain away, leaving behind a blank, uncomprehending canvas. Mike’s eyebrows drew together, his head cocking slightly, as if he’d misheard.
“Married,” Linda repeated, the word flat.
“It was at the courthouse. It was small. Just us.”
“You’re eighteen,” Mike said, his voice low. Not angry. Stated as a factual, impossible equation.
The bell over the door jingled. All three of them turned.
Tom stood in the entrance, a stark silhouette against the streetlights. He’d followed the letter of her request: dark jeans, a simple navy polo. But the fabric of the polo was a mercerized cotton so fine it seemed to hold its own light, and the jeans were tailored to a fit no mall brand could achieve. He’d left the Rolex, wearing a simple steel watch, but on his wrist, even a Timex would have looked like a statement. His gaze found hers, then swept to her parents. He moved toward them, and the crowded room seemed to part.
He arrived at the table, and Amy watched her father’s eyes travel up, and up, to meet Tom’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Sterling,” Tom said, his voice a warm, respectful baritone. He extended a hand to Mike first. “It’s an honor. I’m Tom.”
Mike stood, almost reflexively, and shook the hand. “Mike,” he managed. Tom turned to Linda, who was still seated, staring. He didn’t offer his hand, just gave a small, respectful nod. “Ma’am.”
“Linda,” she whispered.
Tom slid into the booth beside Amy, his body a solid, radiating line against hers. Under the table, his palm found the small of her back. It was damp with sweat.
A waiter appeared, too cheerful. They ordered. Lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, chicken parm. Comfort food that now tasted like cardboard in Amy’s imagination. Tom asked Mike polite questions about the drive, about his work in hardware logistics. Mike answered in short, careful sentences. Linda watched Tom, her eyes flicking from his face to his hand, which now covered Amy’s on the tabletop.
“So,” Linda said, cutting through Tom’s question about highway infrastructure. “Married.”
“Yes,” Tom said, turning the full force of his attention on her. It was like being spotlighted. “I love your daughter very much. I know this is… unconventional. And sudden. The blame for the secrecy is entirely mine. I have a public profile in my work, and I wanted to protect Amy from that circus while she started school. It was selfish. I apologize.”
It was a perfect, graceful speech. It sounded rehearsed. Mike took a long drink of his iced tea. “How old are you, Tom?”
“Thirty-eight.”
Mike set his glass down with a thunk. Linda let out a small, choked sound, quickly disguised as a cough.
“I see,” Mike said. He looked at Amy, and the hurt in his eyes was a physical blow. “So he’s five years younger than me.”
The table drowned in silence. The cheerful clatter around them was a mockery.
The food arrived. They ate in stilted bursts of conversation, discussing the unseasonable heat, the Lakers, anything but the elephant in the room. Tom was deft, polite, filling gaps with an easy charm that felt, to Amy, like a high-wire act. He ate his chicken parm with apparent relish, but she noticed he only moved the food around the plate.
When the check came, Tom intercepted it with a smooth gesture. Mike’s jaw tightened. “We can get that.”
“Please, Mike. It’s the least I can do.” Tom’s tone allowed no argument. He handed over a black credit card without glancing at the total.
Outside the restaurant, the warm night air was a relief. “You’ll come to the apartment?” Amy asked, her voice pleading. “For coffee?”
“We’re pretty tired from the drive, honey,” Linda said, her smile brittle. “Maybe tomorrow? We could do breakfast. Just us.”
The dismissal was gentle, absolute. Amy hugged them, feeling the new stiffness in their bodies. “I love you,” she whispered into her mom’s shoulder.
“We love you, too,” Linda whispered back, the words thick.
They drove off in their sensible sedan. Amy stood on the curb, watching the taillights disappear. Tom’s hand returned to her back.
“That went,” he said quietly, “about as well as could be expected.”
At the penthouse, he poured himself two fingers of whiskey, neat. He stood at the window, his “casual” outfit now looking like a costume he was desperate to shed. “They’re good people,” he said, more to the city than to her. “Their concern is valid.”
Her phone buzzed on the kitchen island. A text from her mother.
Mom: Sweetheart, can you meet us for breakfast tomorrow? At our hotel? 9 am? We need to talk. Just us.
Amy showed the phone to Tom. He read it, his expression unreadable. He took a slow sip of whiskey. “You should go.”
“What do I say?”
“The truth. Your truth. Not the one I gave you in the car. Yours.” He finally looked at her. “They need to hear it from you, not the polished version.”
The next morning, the hotel coffee shop was a study in fluorescent lighting and faint maple syrup smell. Her parents sat in a booth, two mugs between them. They looked exhausted.
Amy slid in. No one mentioned food.
“Amy,” her dad began, his hands wrapped around his mug. “What are you doing?”
“I’m in love with him, Dad.”
“He’s a forty-year-old man—”
“Thirty-eight.”
“He’s a billionaire,” her mother cut in, her voice trembling. “Honey, you’re a child. You won a scholarship. What could you possibly have in common? What does he want with you?”
The question hung in the air, cruel and necessary. Amy felt a flash of anger, hot and defensive. “He doesn’t want anything. He loves me. He supports me. He didn’t pay for school, he didn’t get me the internship. I did that.”
“And what do you do for him?” Mike asked, his gaze level. “What does an eighteen-year-old girl give a man who has everything?”
The image of Tom from two nights ago flashed in her mind—the desperate need in his touch, the way he’d clung to her after, as if she were the anchor in a storm she couldn’t see. He’s lonely, she realized with a sudden, piercing clarity. And I’m the one thing he can’t just buy or control.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, the fight leaving her. “But he needs me. In a way I don’t think anyone else ever has.”
Linda reached across the table, gripping her hand. “That’s a hell of a burden, Amy. That’s not a foundation. That’s a rescue mission. You can’t fix a man like that.”
“I’m not trying to fix him! I love him. The age thing… it’s just a number.”
“It’s not just a number!” Linda’s composure broke, her eyes filling. “It’s life. When you’re thirty, in your prime, he’ll be fifty. When you’re forty, he’ll be sixty. He’ll have a past, a whole life, that doesn’t include you. Secrets. What secrets is he keeping, Amy?”
It’s handled. The low voice in the dark. The closed study door. The look on his face when certain calls came in.
“Everyone has secrets, Mom.”
Mike sighed, a heavy, defeated sound. “We can’t make you come home. You’re legally an adult. You’ve made… a legally binding decision.” The words tasted sour. “We just need you to know what this looks like from where we’re sitting. It looks like you were naive. It looks like he took advantage.”
“He didn’t,” Amy insisted, but the seed of doubt, planted weeks ago, now found fertile soil. Was this what escape cost? The unwavering trust of the people who loved you first?
They parted with strained hugs, an agreement to “take things one day at a time.” Walking back to the car service Tom had insisted on (she hadn’t fought him this time), Amy felt split in two. The daughter who ached for her parents’ approval, and the wife who felt a guilty, pulling loyalty to the complicated man waiting in the skyline apartment.
He was in his study, on a video call, when she returned. He saw her pass the door and held up a finger: one minute. She went to the balcony, leaning on the cool rail.
He joined her a few moments later, handing her a cup of tea. “How was it?”
“Hard.” She sipped the tea; he’d added honey, just how she liked it. “They think you’re a predator.”
He didn’t flinch. “I know.”
“They asked what secrets you’re keeping.”
This time, he did react. A slight tension in his jaw, a flicker in those green eyes before the shutters came down. “Amy…”
“Don’t,” she said, turning to face him. The wind whipped her hair. “Just… not right now. I can’t handle another secret today. I just need you to be my husband. Not the billionaire. Not the guy with the shadowy phone calls. Just the man who married me.”
He studied her face, reading the fatigue, the conflict, the stubborn love. He took the tea from her hands and set it aside. Then he pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her, his chin resting on her head. They stood like that for a long time, two figures clinging to each other high above the city, the future a wide, uncertain expanse below them, built on a foundation of secrets they were both too afraid to examine.
The wind picked up, carrying the distant cry of a gull from the dark beach. He stirred first, his hands sliding down to her waist. “Come inside,” he murmured into her hair. His voice was rough.
He led her across the cool limestone floor, away from the vast, judging cityscape. He didn’t take her to the bedroom. He guided her to the deep, sectional sofa that faced the silent, monolithic television. He sat, pulling her down beside him, then shifted to face her, one leg bent on the cushion between them.
The artificial glow from a single floor lamp cut across his profile. He looked stripped. Not of clothes, but of armor. He took both her hands in his, his thumbs tracing her knuckles. He was quiet for so long she thought he’d changed his mind.
“You know what I love about you?” he finally said, the words so soft they barely disturbed the air. He wasn’t looking at her eyes, but at their joined hands. “Your dimples. Right here.” He released a hand to touch the corner of her mouth, gently. “They only appear when you smile for real. Not the polite one for the delegates. The real one.”
Amy held her breath. He’d never talked like this.
“I love when you eat your favorite food—that terrible, greasy burger from that stand near campus—and you do that little shoulder dance.” He demonstrated, a slight, awkward shimmy of his own powerful shoulders, and the gesture was so absurdly tender her throat tightened. “You get ketchup on your chin. Every time.”
He looked up then, his green eyes capturing hers. The intensity was still there, but it was focused, precise. “I love when you study. You spread those tortilla chips everywhere, the crumbs all through the casebooks, and you mutter in German when you’re frustrated.” A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. “You’re the only person I know who can sound angrily scholarly.”
He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her cheek. His voice dropped, losing all its polished edges. “And I love… Christ, Amy, I love when you rebel. When you refuse the car service. When you hide my name. When you look me dead in the eye and say ‘no’ just to prove a point to yourself.”
He let out a slow breath, as if the admission cost him. “Other women, younger or my age, they never did that. They saw the penthouse. The name. The card. They saw the billionaire.” He shook his head, his gaze boring into hers, willing her to understand. “You’re the only one who ever looked at me and just saw Tom. Flawed, impatient, thirty-eight-year-old Tom. And you challenged him anyway. You’re not afraid of me. You’re the only real thing I’ve touched in years.”
The raw honesty in the room was a third presence, thick and humming. It answered her mother’s question in the fluorescent coffee shop. What does he want with you? He wanted her to see him. Just him.
Before she could speak, before she could even process the seismic shift his words caused, the low, specific buzz of his personal phone cut through the moment. It was in his pocket, pressed between them on the sofa.
He flinched. The softness vanished, wiped clean as if by an internal hand. His eyes closed for a fraction of a second—a silent curse.
The phone buzzed again. Persistent.
“You should get that,” she said, her voice strangely calm. The high of his confession was already curdling, poisoned by the timing.
“It can wait.”
“It didn’t wait last time.” She pulled her hands back from his, the connection severing. “It never waits.”
He stood, a fluid motion of controlled frustration, and pulled the device from his pocket. He glanced at the screen. Whatever he saw didn’t surprise him. It hardened him. “I have to take this. It’s… the Dubai thing. It’s ongoing.”
“At nine on a Friday night,” she stated, not asking.
“The world doesn’t keep your hours, Amy.” It came out sharper than he intended; she saw the immediate regret in the tight line of his mouth. He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll be quick.”
He walked back toward his study, the phone already at his ear. “Yeah,” she heard him say, the door closing, muffling the rest.
Amy sat on the sofa, still warm from where he’d been. She could still feel the ghost of his thumb on her knuckles, hear the vulnerable scratch in his voice as he listed her dimples, her chips, her rebellion. The two Toms warred in her mind: the one who saw her, and the one who kept walking away into soundproofed rooms.
She waited. Five minutes. Ten.
She stood and walked quietly to the study door. No light bled underneath now. She pressed her ear to the cool wood. His voice was a low, urgent rumble, the words indistinct but the tone clear—it was the voice he used for handling things. It was the voice of the billionaire.
A cold clarity settled over her. She turned and walked to the foyer, slipping on her sneakers. She grabbed her keys—the keys to the Mustang he’d given her but she’d chosen to drive anyway. The elevator ride down was silent and swift.
The garage smelled of concrete and exhaust. Her Mustang roared to life, the sound defiant in the sterile space. She didn’t know where she was going. Just away from the quiet war between his confession and his secrets. The city streets swallowed her, a stream of red taillights leading her into the anonymous, neon-lit night.
The city streets swallowed her, a stream of red taillights leading her into the anonymous, neon-lit night. She drove without direction, the Mustang’s engine a responsive growl to her slightest touch. The tension from the hotel coffee shop and Tom’s study seemed to vibrate in her bones.
She found herself climbing, the road twisting up into the dark hills. The lights of the valley sprawled below, a glittering, chaotic mirror of the stars faint above. The sign appeared: Griffith Observatory. It was closed, the lot nearly empty. She pulled into a space overlooking the endless glow of Los Angeles.
She killed the engine. The silence was immense, broken only by the wind sighing through the ancient eucalyptus trees. Her hands were still clenched on the wheel. Flawed, impatient, thirty-eight-year-old Tom. His words replayed, then dissolved into the memory of his retreating back.
In the glove compartment, tucked behind the manual, was a small, tightly-rolled joint. A relic from a study session with Maya from her poli-sci class, a girl who wore hemp bracelets and talked about anarchist theory. Amy had kept it, a tiny totem of a life that felt galaxies away from penthouse balconies.
She rolled it between her fingers now. Tom would absolutely hate this. It was messy. It was a loss of control. She cracked the window, lit it with the car’s lighter, and took a shallow, cautious puff. The smoke burned, then settled into a warm expansion in her lungs. She exhaled, watching the plume vanish into the night air.
The second hit was deeper. The sharp edges of the evening began to blur and soften. The sprawling city below stopped looking like a map of his empire and started looking like what it was: millions of separate lives, countless other dramas. Her parents’ hurt, his whispered secrets, the weight of the ‘T’ pendant around her neck—it all shrank to a manageable size under the vast, indifferent sky.
She spoke aloud, her voice startling in the quiet car. “He sees my dimples.” A drag. “He handles things in the dark.” Another. “My dad thinks he’s a predator.” She leaned her head back against the seat, the thrum of the cannabis unlocking a solid, grieving thought she’d been avoiding. “Maybe they’re both right.”
Her phone, face-up on the passenger seat, lit up. His name. The screen glowed, pulsed, went dark. He didn’t call again. A minute later, a text notification buzzed.
Tom: Come home. Please.
She stared at the two words. Home. The penthouse? The sterile gallery of art she hadn’t chosen? The bed where he’d both worshipped and claimed her? She thought of her mother’s kitchen, the smell of simmering jam, a home that felt too small for who she was becoming. She had no home. She was suspended between worlds, belonging fully to neither.
She picked up the phone, her fingers hovering. The high made her thoughts slow, syrupy. She typed a reply, deleted it. Typed again. She settled on the truth, simple and unadorned.
Amy: I’m at the observatory. I need air.
The response was immediate.
Tom: It’s closed. It’s not safe. I’m coming.
Amy: Don’t. I’m safe. I’m just thinking.
Tom: Amy.
Amy: You had your call. I have this. That’s the deal, right?
She put the phone down, screen facing the seat. She finished the joint, grinding the tiny remnant out in the car’s ashtray with finality. The buzzing in her mind quieted, replaced by a lucid, melancholic calm. She could see the pattern now, the beautiful, gilded trap. His love was a spotlight, intense and singular, but it demanded you stay in its beam. Step into the shadows on your own, and he panicked.
Headlights swept across the lot. A dark SUV, not the Mustang, glided to a stop two spaces away. The driver’s door opened. He got out. He’d changed into a black sweater and jeans, his hair slightly tousled by the wind. He stood by his car, not approaching, giving her the space she’d demanded from a distance. He just waited, a silhouette against the city’s glow, his hands in his pockets.
He’d come anyway. Of course he had. He was handling it.
Amy looked from him, to the view, and back again. The man who knew she ate burgers with ketchup on her chin, and the man who sent helicopters to Dubai. They were the same person. The realization wasn’t a relief. It was a sentence. She opened her car door, the interior light flooding the space around her. She didn’t get out. She just sat there, one foot on the asphalt, caught between the vast night and the pull of his unwavering, complicated gaze.