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heartsofminds · 5 months ago

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i'm calling just to hear you scream - part i

"She’s tried to be positive. She’s tried to be kind. She’s trying to be the peacekeeper, but all of that falls out the window when her brother is bitching out everything that fucking blinks and breathes and Richie has slung a sledgehammer into the wrong wall that needed to be knocked down." or Natalie gets fed the fuck up and hires a hospitality attorney before everything else turns to shit.

a/n: i couldn't help myself at all and had to bite by trying my hand at writing for carmy! what can i say? i love men with trauma that need to be cuddled like newborns! please enjoy the beginning of enemies to lovers to enemies back to lovers fic with a workaholic chef and an overly empathetic attorney. angst is my brand! i hope you enjoy!

Being the peacekeeper of your family is never something anyone ever sets out to be.

One day you’re normal and live blissfully with the rose-colored lenses of naivety tinting life shades of bashful blush and magnetic magenta. The next day you’re diffusing a spitfire scarlett dispute between your anxiety-ridden mother and impulsively crude older brother while simultaneously taming the balloon of battered blue tears your baby brother sheds who observes from the corner; scared yet somehow unaware of the emotions sucking the oxygen out of everyone.

At first, it feels good. It feels nice to be appreciated and turned to in moments of darkness. Helpfulness defines your livelihood and gives you the nameplate of the gold star child who can never do any wrong and always finds a solution. But then you realize that is what you ever really are, and you’re both hated for your inability to let things sour and for always having an answer despite uncertainty plaguing every course of action.

Being the peacekeeper of your family is both a Medal of Honor, worn with pride and graciousness, yet a bullet wound wielded by shame and agony. The tenderness and hurt push on it until you can hardly stand it; half expecting pus to be seeping out in pale yellow heaps because the pain feels so real.

There are no exit wounds. There are no breaks. There is no humanity or personal identity or room for self-discovery.

A peacemaker is all you will be and all you will ever accomplish, and you’ll never say it out loud but it’s fucking exhausting.

Being the peacemaker is something Natalie Berzatto never fucking asked for, yet here she is, playing project manager to her haywire (and sometimes freakishly obsessive) baby brother’s blind-eyed throw of a dart that manifested itself in asking Uncle Jimmy for an eight hundred thousand dollar loan with the promise to have it completely paid back within eight months.

She’s not one to rain on a parade, but it’s hard to keep marching when your entire life has been putting out the fires of overly ambitious business ventures during unmedicated fits of mania. She had seen it with their dad, with their mom, and with Mikey. Carmen is the last needle needed to complete the fucked up haystack that engulfs their family.

She’s tried to be positive. She’s tried to be kind. She’s trying to be the peacekeeper, but all of that falls out the window when her brother is bitching out everything that fucking blinks and breathes and Richie has slung a sledgehammer into the wrong wall that needed to be knocked down.

Natalie has never thought of looking into Botox until now; when her face is set in a permanent scowl and her resting heart rate nears triple digits. Pete had been telling her for the past three weeks that she was doing amazing; that this was an impossible task to complete stress-free, and that the stress was “good” because it meant that she cared.

Sometimes she doesn’t realize that not everyone has a mom who drives the fucking car through the den during Christmas Eve dinner nor does everyone have a mom who moves all the furniture to the backyard before having to leave for their oldest brother’s high school graduation. Not everyone has an older brother who blows his head off and doesn’t leave a note and not everyone has a younger brother who would lose his head if it wasn’t attached to his body and had his mouth that was spewing hurtful insults by the dozen.

Stress does not mean that you care. Stress means that your eyes are staring at the fucking Sun trying to see where the other shoe is getting ready to drop because there’s always another disappointment and always another phone call to make to the pharmacy for more SSRIs.

Needless to say, Richie calling Neil “lard ass” on an antagonizing loop after he had pointed out the wrong wall was being destroyed was the last straw. Well, that and the fact she found a new patch of white hairs colonizing on her hairline the other morning. Constant shouted insults, gray hairs popping up overnight, and the colossal secret of a new infant making its arrival into the chaos in October weigh heavy on her. And she absolutely cannot afford to lose her cool and become the kind of bitchy and mean she knows that she’s capable of.

Your phone number sits inside the LED-lit text thread of a friend she had known in high school. Becca was the older sister of Claire Cantor whom her little brother may have or may have not had a pathetic crush on years ago when he was in high school.

She feels kind of grimy doing what she is; offering up information about Carmy to Becca to give to Claire who apparently thought her baby brother was the bee's knees (which, if she saw the way he was acting right now, Natalie knows she would run the other way). She doesn’t even think Carmen has the capability to think of anything outside of the restaurant and the menu and how royally fucked they all are.

She can feel the dull ache of guilt in her chest that comes with knowing how unlikely anything is to come from this, and how wrong she is for pretending like her telling Becca where he grocery shops or if he has a girlfriend or if he was currently looking for someone to date would somehow tether Claire to a world where her and Carmen are a “thing” (because apparently “boyfriend and girlfriend” is too permanent of a word for Chicagoan twenty-somethings to use).

But she’s doing it for the sake of everyone else! It can’t possibly be as gross and low-lived as she feels it is.

Becca Cantor is insufferable and can only be taken in small doses, but she’s also a big wig junior partner at one of the most lucrative law firms in Chicago. Natalie hates blowing smoke up people’s asses who don’t deserve it (and in Becca’s case certainly don’t need it), but she desperately needs help and knows that she needs to figure something out before she fucks herself in such a deep hole that she couldn’t attempt to unfuck herself if she tried.

Your official title is “junior associate” and you had been working at Becca’s firm following your graduation from Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law a couple of years prior. Becca had said you were amazing; freakishly smart, funny, and hardworking. She also mentioned that you were the best kind of junior associate; the ones that know when to shut the fuck up and when to get the fuck out of the way. The addition added before the text conversation ended was how you were looking to get your foot into the hospitality legal field, and how you were willing to do anything concerning that for free fucking ninety-nine if it meant you would have some experience.

Natalie sits with her lower lip worried between her teeth and her hands one tick shy of shaking. Her heart beats erratically despite lounging on her couch with the lights off and a re-run of That 70’s Show playing softly in the background. She makes a mental note to bring up the high resting heart rate at her next OB appointment.

It’s because she’s pregnant. Yes. It has to be because she’s pregnant.

She shouldn’t be nervous. It would be absolutely ridiculous to be nervous. She’s not nervous.

She already ran the idea past Sydney and she agreed that they absolutely needed a lawyer in their back pocket. With all of the tax records fucked beyond belief, new workers being hired who actually knew their worth and wouldn’t tolerate not having an actual employement contract, and the lack of permits under their belt currently, a lawyer wouldn’t hurt if getting one turned out to not be as helpful as anticipated. Besides, Becca had said you were doing it for them pro bono which in turn meant free fucking nintey-nine.

But Natalie had lied to Carmen about how much some fluted cocktail glasses cost to ensure that they purchased the cheaper ones so that she could run the numbers and figure out a way to put you on the payroll. Pro bono or not, you’re doing them a huge favor and part of her can’t put the peacekeeping to rest.

Her fingers type and untype a novel of characters. She can’t seem to relax her mind enough to articulate what exactly she wants to say. She has one shot to not scare you off and not lose her mind in a fit of fiery rage and not have everything turn to shit and it be her fault. She has to be perfect.

Fuck. She is nervous.

Hi! This is Natalie Berzatto. I’m one of Becca Cantor’s friends and she referred me to you. I’m working on opening a restaurant and would like for you to swing by and discuss some things about it if you’re open to that! Please let me know. I’m looking forward to hearing back from you soon!

Nat’s finger hits the blue “send” arrow in the rounded box of her phone screen the same time she pushes a gag to the back of her throat. She used to work at a marketing firm for Christ’s sake. Cold contacting people isn’t anything new and she’s usually not one to shy away from reaching out to anyone in her personal life first. But she can’t help the fact that she’s never been able to swallow the artificial bubble gummy niceness of reaching out to a complete stranger for the first time. She feels stupid and knows that she sounds even stupider but tries not to think about it.

Besides, keeping everything together is never easy and she knows that she would be selfish for letting her discomfort prevent her from doing what she knows is best.

Her breath is stuck in her chest as she eyes the open text thread to an unsaved number; her blue text message staring at her menacingly and breeding contempt as the seconds pass. She gasps loudly whenever she sees the gray bubbles pop up beneath it. Pete pokes his head into the living room with a tea towel in his hand and one of the ceramic plates they had eaten dinner on in the other. His eyes wear concern but he knows better than to confront his wife. Natalie was anything but sugary sweet when she was stressed and the influx of hormones as of late have not been helping.

You see the message as soon as Natalie sends it. The unknown “312” number finds its way into your notifications and your eyes read over the words in a frenzy. You know that you’re intelligent. You graduated from law school for fuck’s sake, but for some reason you absolutely cannot comprehend the text you’re reading.

Firstly, you were sure Becca hated your fucking guts. She was a junior partner that everyone hated being assigned to because she pushed all her work onto the associates and nothing ever seemed to be good enough for her. Part of the reason you had to take work home tonight was because she sent you an email with enough passive-aggressive undertone to know that these edits needed to be done now; never mind the fact that the time she took to type out the seven and a half page report about the original report probably took up so much time that she could’ve done the task herself. But yet you replied kindly and have been working through your brain fog and finger cramps since arriving home at six in the evening five hours ago.

Secondly, hospitality litigation was absolutely above your pay grade. You had taken one elective course on it during your 2L year and did a two-week internship before the start of 3L simply because one of your friends wanted to go on vacation and needed to find someone to cover for them. You know jack shit about hospitality law and you don’t even know why Becca Cantor, of all fucking people, would be so willing to recommend you when she couldn’t care less if you lived or died.

But of course, you can’t say no. You can never say no, and if this Natalie person was desperate enough to reach out to you via text at 11 PM on a Wednesday, she definitely needed help and needed it now. Besides, you would tell her that you do not need to be paid and if whatever she needs proves to be way too advanced for you, you can always help her find an attorney that knows what they’re doing.

Right?

It definitely doesn’t mean that you’ll pull an all-nighter and research every aspect of hospitality law in Illinois that you can get your hands on. . .Or look up every department dealing with food and management regulations in the state. . .Or try and look at precedent cases. Your firm gave you unlimited access to West Law. Might as well use it for something slightly more interesting than trusts, estates, and contracts.

You’re unusually pensive for something you know you would love to do. The ongoing battle as of late has been the dispute between seeking joy and wading in practicality; happiness or falsified peace?

You rub your eyes with a roughness that would make your optometrist cringe. You know that staring at your computer screen five hours after your contracted work hours ended was the culprit for your dry eyes, but the hours you need are not going to bill themselves. Getting up to get your eyedrops will have to wait.

Replying to Natalie cannot.

Your fingers type and untype; the feeling of texting back an unknown number foreign and unnerving.

Thanks so much for reaching out and thinking of me! I would love to. What dates and times work for you, and where would it be best for us to meet?

The text stares at you on your phone screen. Why do you sound so. . . corporate? Boring? Infantile.

She could probably tell you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about at all. The feeling of defeat rises in your throat but you ignore it and hit send instead. You’re trying to be better about that; letting your fear of uncertainty keep you from taking action. You’ve come to realize that the hard part isn’t doing the thing. It’s actually sitting in the aftermath of the “thing” and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

You bite your lip so hard it begins to bleed and throbs with each pulse of watery blood that fills your mouth. The gentle suck you give it to stop the bleeding makes it partially numb.

Fuck you, Becca. Fuck you, Becca. Fuck you, Becca.

Natalie chirps when your text illuminates her screen. She gasps and sits up; startling Pete who had settled next to her after finishing the dishes. Her eyes curl up in the same way her lips do.

Fucking finally.

The world no longer feels like it’ll fall apart.

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