AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Which was crazy because it had only been for a few days, but she couldn’t explain why else she felt lonely. And she wasn’t thinking of Domi or any of her other friends when she was wishing she wasn’t alone—in fact, she was relieved to get away from their questions for a bit. It was Brian who kept popping into her head. Which was maddening for a number of reasons.
Unpacking meant throwing everything into her laundry machine and turning it on. Then she just… wandered around the house. She tried to write, but she couldn’t get her head in the game. She turned on the television but couldn’t find anything to watch.
Her phone pinged several times, including a threatening message from Domi that said, ‘You can’t avoid me forever.’
After she moved her clothes into the dryer, Rae gave up and headed out to the place she really wanted to go to get reassurance on what she wanted from her future—her parents’ home.
What Domi had said about her parents just hiding their fights from her… she didn’t really believe it, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. As much as she was thinking about the week with Brian, she was also thinking about that.
She texted her mom that she was on her way and got back a thumbs up. It wasn’t unheard of for her to drop by for dinner with little notice. With her parents living only twenty minutes away, it was easy, and they had an open-door policy for any family members. Well, anyone except her mom’s sister, Aunt Deirdre. The two of them always needed at least a day’s notice before seeing each other so they could prep for the inevitable clash and get their best comebacks ready. They always got into a fight, so Rae knew her mom could; she just didn’t with Rae’s dad.
It did keep the holidays interesting.
“Hey, babygirl,” her dad said as soon as she walked in the door, striding down the hallway like he’d been waiting to hear the door open.
Nearly a head taller than her, his closely cropped hair liberally sprinkled with grey and a beard to match, he was broad-shouldered and carried just a bit of extra weight around his middle. She always felt like he was a giant teddy bear. Rae beamed at him, stepping into his big bear hug and sighing as some of the tension leeched from her body.
“How was your trip? I didn’t think we’d be seeing you today. Too tired to cook?”
“Something like that.” As close as she was to her dad, boy problems were not something they talked about. That had always been kept between her and her mom, and she wasn’t going to change that now. Neither of them knew anything about Hideaway Resort, though, other than she’d gone to an all-inclusive resort for Domi’s bachelorette party.
“Well, it’s good to see you.” He gave her another little squeeze and let go, turning to head into the living room where the television was on. It was always on during the weekends of football season. Her dad followed both the colleges and the pros, and her mom tolerated it. “Wanna come watch the game with me?”
“Yeah, in a few. I wanted to talk to Mom real quick.” At least, she assumed it would be a quick question.
Do you and Dad hide your fights from me?
No, baby, of course not.
The reason she couldn’t ask her dad was because she knew that even if they did, he’d never admit it to her. And he was a good enough actor that she might not know. It had served him well during many a practical joke while she was growing up.
Her mom, on the other hand, had a terrible poker face.
That was also why Rae felt so sure her parents hadn’t been hiding fights from her. Her mom had never been able to hide anything. She’d figured out that Santa wasn’t real when she was only four years old because when she’d asked her mom why Santa had the same wrapping paper as them, her mom froze. Her dad had jumped in to cover, something about Santa also wanting to support the neighbor’s kid’s school fundraiser, but it had been too late.
Thus had followed the pattern—if she wanted to know the truth just by an expression, ask mom.
Her dad might have been able to hide fights from her over the years, and she could totally see him doing that to try to protect her, but mom? Nope. There was no way.
But she just needed it confirmed. For her own peace of mind. To know that what she’d been wanting was something she could actually have. Because if she didn’t ask, she was never going to get Domi’s voice out of her head.
“Mom’s in the kitchen,” her dad said with a wave of his hand, settling down into his favorite chair, his gaze already on the game.
Following the smell of home-cooked chili, Rae headed on in and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that her mom was not actually cooking but was sitting at the island counter, nibbling on an apple slice and reading a book. The cover looked like the latest by Leslye Penelope, her mom’s favorite author. She looked up as Rae walked in, smiling and sliding her bookmark into place so she could put it down. She was dressed in colorful, comfortable clothing that she called her ‘house clothes’ and a headwrap to keep her hair out of her face. She always said she didn’t feel like messing with it on weekends.
Rae had a lot of memories of weekends at home with her mom looking exactly like this when she was younger—then the flurry of activity that would happen if they needed to leave the house for some reason.
“Hey, babygirl.” Her mom greeted her in the same manner her dad had, getting to her feet and enveloping Rae in a warm hug. “I guess you were too tired to cook tonight, huh? How was your trip?”
Both the greeting and the question were completely natural, and she couldn’t help but think that her parents were two peas in a pod. It wasn’t just the words of the greeting or the inquiry. It was the way they said it, with the exact same intonation. She relaxed a little more.
“It was good. Domi had a great time, and that was the most important thing.”
Her mom smiled as she sat back down, gesturing for Rae to take the seat next to her. Her parents had opted for very comfortable bar seats with backs for the kitchen island because the kitchen was her mom’s favorite place to sit and read. Sometimes, she did it in the window seat next to the big bay window, but when she wanted to eat and read, she preferred the counter where she could lean on her elbows and prop her book up.
Rae got her love of books and reading from her mom, though her mom didn’t read the same kinds of romance as Rae did. She didn’t think her mom had gone down the kink rabbit hole, but if she had, Rae didn’t want to know.
“I hope you still enjoyed yourself, too,” her mom teased. “I didn’t expect to see you today, though.”
