Chapter 61

“Cilla, can you come out here for a minute, please?”

Dropping the modeling chocolate she was working with, Cilla sighed as Sid called for her to come out front. Pushing through the door she noticed he was crouched next to a little blonde haired boy and a slim whip of a blonde woman was standing nearby. “What’s wrong Sid?”

He stood, “do we have anymore chocolate chip cookies or the ones with the M & M’s in them?”

She nodded, “I’ll bring another tray out.” Turning to head back she noticed the dark haired man standing just inside the door. He looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place him. Disappearing through the door she returned and got a full look at the man and as she handed the tray of cookies to Sid, the realization of who the man was hit her. “Charles?”

He looked across the cases at his ex-wife, “Cilla? Is that you?”

She couldn’t speak, his tone was so pleasant and so decidedly not the Charles she remembered. “What are you doing here?”

He indicated to the woman the small boy, “we were out for a stroll and my son wanted a cookie so we stopped in. How have you been?”

His wife and son. She gripped the counter, she couldn't breathe and felt her heart nearly stop. “You have a son?”

Charles indicated to the boy that Sid was handing a cookie to, “that’s Jack. He’s four now.” He moved closer to the cases, not wanting his wife to hear what he was about to say. “I’m sorry Cil, for everything I put you through. I got help after we divorced. But I want you to know that I am truly sorry for everything Cilla.”

Cilla didn’t know what to say, what to do. She looked over to the boy that Sid was with, to the woman that was standing next to them and then back to Charles. All the bitterness, all the pain, all the anger she had harbored, that she had carried because of him spewed out of her on a hiss when she opened her mouth.

“What do you want me to say Charles? Congratulations? Good for you?” She lowered her voice further, “you made my life miserable and now you come waltzing in here with an apology and you think that will make everything okay?” When he didn’t say anything she continued, “well, it doesn’t. Not in this lifetime, not in the next. Nothing you could say to me would ever make things okay."

She paused and an image of Jon came to mind. "I have someone in my life who loves me now Charles and he's ten times the man you could ever hope to be. So you know what, you can take your apology and your pretty little family and get out. Get out of my shop. I don’t ever want to see you in here again.”

She looked over at Sid, “the cookie is on the house.” She swung through the door into the kitchen and dropped heavily onto a stool, burying her face in her hands.

When Sid swung through the door he wasn’t sure what to expect. A few tears, a tantrum, some yelling and ranting maybe? What he didn’t expect was to see her sitting calmly at her work table working with the modeling chocolate. He stepped closer to her, “are you okay Cil?”

Her hands weren’t quite steady as she tried to finish the figure she was working on so she set it down. “No Sid, not really. Did you know who was out there when you called me out front?”

He shook his head, “no Cil, I didn’t. I didn’t recognize him right away, but he came in after I was talking to the boy.”

She looked down at what she had been working on and smashed it with her fist, “that boy was his son Sid. His SON!” Her voice rose and broke and she couldn’t keep the tears at bay any longer. “After what did to me, what he made me do, he has the nerve to come in here with his wife and his son and apologize to me. What was he thinking? How could he do that?”

She looked up at Sid, the only one who truly knew what she had been through with Charles and wept bitterly, “how could he do that Sid, how could he?”

He wrapped her up in his arms and held on as she wept. “I don’t know Cil. I just don’t know.” He stroked her back and let her cry it out. She had always wanted children and when Charles took that away from her she had been devastated. Sid grew angrier the longer he stood there holding his friend while she cried because of that man. Again.

Jon stepped through the backdoor surprised to find Sid holding a weeping Cilla in his arms. “Hey, what happened, what’s wrong?”

Hearing Jon’s voice Cilla pushed away from Sid and wiped her face with her apron. She didn’t want him to see her like this. “Nothing, it’s okay. I’m fine.” She glanced at her schedule and started to put things away. “Sid, let’s clean up and I think we’re going to be closed tomorrow for the long weekend.”

Sid’s eyebrow rose in question, she had been planning on being open at least for half the day anyway. “You sure about that Cil?”

She nodded, “yeah. I’m sure.” She crossed the room to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Thanks."

“Okay.” He squeezed her shoulder and headed out to start pulling trays and cleaning the cases.

Jon crossed to Cilla, “you want to tell me what that was all about?”

She shook her head and continued to clean up. She couldn’t talk to him about it just yet. She didn’t want to break down in front of him. “Not yet. Please Jonny” she whispered, “not yet.”

He sighed and with his fingers tilted her chin up so he could see her face. The pain he saw in her eyes hurt him almost as much as the fact that she wouldn’t talk to him. “I’ll wait while you finish up here and then we’ll go up and get you packed. We’re going to go out to the Hamptons tonight. Okay?”

She nodded her head, “okay. Will your kids be there this weekend?” She sniffed and wiped at her face again with her apron.

“For part of it, why?”

She got out a pink box, “we’ll need some cookies.”

Jon watched and waited while she packed the box full of cookies for his kids and his heart eased a little. She had finally stopped sniffing and the hitch in her breathing had eased. He took the box from her as she locked up and together they headed up the stairs.

Halfway up to her door Cilla stopped and sat down, suddenly exhausted. “I just need a minute” she told Jon when he sat down next to her. Jon set the box between his feet and wrapped an arm around her. When she leaned in and rested her head against his shoulder he kissed the top of her head, “you ready to talk to me yet?”

“It was Charles.” She felt his arm tense. “He came into the shop today. With his wife and his son.”

Shit.

He wrapped his other arm around her and they sat there, on her steps, hip to hip, her head on his shoulder while she went through everything that had happened that afternoon. “It hit me after they left Jon. It wasn’t that he didn’t want children. He just didn’t want them with me.” Her breath caught and she struggled against her tears, “why wasn’t I good enough for him?”

Jon held her and his heart hurt for her as she cried. “He’s an ass. He didn’t deserve you when he had you and he certainly doesn’t deserve your tears now. He’s not worth it baby.” He waited until her tears slowed, “look at me Sweets.”

She raised red, watery eyes to his fathomless blue. “What?”

“You deserve so much more baby. I’m not sure I’m even good enough for you.”

Cilla chuckled as he had hoped. “Shut up. You’re way too good for me, but I guess we’re stuck with each other.”

She stood and wiped her face with her hands, “sorry about the way I just fell apart there. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

He picked up the box as he stood and took her hand, “its okay. Are you all right now?”

She took a deep breath as she dug for her keys, “I will be. Now, what do I need for the weekend and how long do I have to pack?”