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CHAPTER NINE: NATALEE
“Natalee Jane, you look awful.”
I glared at my phone screen, but managed to plaster a smile on my face despite the dig. I usually regretted answering my mother’s FaceTime requests, but I was glad I rolled the dice and connected.
This was a momentous occasion. A precedent had been set—she hadn’t even bothered with inserting any TLC into her declaration on the state of how crappy I looked to help her brutal observation go down easier. Usually, she dropped little barbed comments among nosy questions about my personal and professional life. Today, there was no beating around the bush. No ‘Has work been busy?’ or ‘How are you feeling?’, giving me a chance to decide just how much I wanted to divulge. There wasn’t even a greeting.
I shouldn’t have been surprised since things like ‘tact’ and ‘gentleness’ weren’t in my mother’s dictionary. And judging from the new nose ring that glittered in her nostril and the half down, half braided hairdo that she’d probably seen in a magazine for the hip and cool, neither was ‘acting my age’.
“Hi Mom,” I said halfheartedly. “How are you and Dad?”
She saw right through my attempts at changing the subject, waving her claw-like nails like the room was suddenly filled with smoke or some foul odor. “Don’t even think about it. I want to know about you.” Before I was silly enough to actually think that she was concerned about my wellbeing, she clarified. “You got your natural beauty from me but sweetheart, would it kill you to use a little foundation? Some concealer to work on those bags beneath your eyes? Some mascara to make those pretty green eyes pop?” She paused, literally taking a big breath and flipping her bleached blonde locks before she finished her evaluation. “And those lips, your daddy’s lips, they were made for lipstick. They are utterly wasted on you.”
It was the same spiel I’d been getting since I was old enough to play dress up and made the tragic mistake of wanting to dress up like G.I. Joe and kick some ass instead of a princess, waiting to be rescued in my LEGO tower. My beauty and my ability to rope a man was paramount to my mother. It wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if I had another sibling to share the burden of her lofty goals of me slaying the child beauty pageant circuit, but she was stuck with me, and me with her.
I could cook a mean batch of chocolate chip cookies. Walk across a stage in a sequined number, hold my smile, and be charming? Not so much.
I put aside my laptop even though I kinda wanted to pretend I was slammed so I could get out of this obligatory chat ASAP, but I really was worried about Dad. A few months ago he’d had some chest pains, coupled with the doctor insisting he make some dietary changes. While he declared he’d eat red meat until the day he died, I was hoping that day wasn’t anytime soon.
“How’s Dad?” I repeated.
She drew her brows together, her fire engine red lips dipping into her signature pout. “Your dad is the same as he’s always been. Stubborn, overweight, and a pain in the ass.” She paused for dramatic effect and even brought a hand to her chest for some extra oomph. “You’ve been dodging me for weeks-”
“Actually, we talked last Monday, Mom, remember?” I corrected with an eye roll. “I told you about the Mitchell wedding.”
“There’s no, ‘How are you doing, Mom? How are things in your life?’.” she whined, ignoring me. “If it wasn’t for Facebook, you probably wouldn’t even know that I’m doing hair over at Collette’s place.”
I stopped trying to defend myself and just strapped in for the guilt trip. She was right. She was on Facebook more than I was, documenting everything from her Starbucks cup in the morning to the OMG moments from whatever reality show she was addicted to this week. “So you’re at Collette’s now? That’s awesome!”
“It’s alright.” She shrugged her shoulders and her top shifted, boasting a peek of her colorful chest piece. Her tattoos started beneath her collar bone, swept over shoulders and spilled onto her upper back. It was the story of her life in ink; from her favorite food as a child, to pictures of beauty products, quotes from her favorite movies, Dad’s name, my birthdate, and more roses than I could count. “You know that we can’t tolerate each other for more than a few days before I quit or she kicks me out, so we’ll see.” She snatched her phone close, literally zooming me in. Giving me a good look at eyes that were just like mine. “How about you? Work must be keeping you up late.” She pulled me back out to arm’s length, making me wish I had a Dramamine handy. “Or is it a boy?”
My stomach did a twist and roll thing. Jason Cox was far from a boy...and he was absolutely making me lose sleep.
Once I realized that he’d invited me to some private suite so we could have sex, all I kept seeing was me holding back tears after he abandoned me on New Year’s Eve. I decided to take the reins, rock his world, then kick him to the curb before he had the chance to disappoint me a second time.
Give him a taste of his own medicine.
The trouble was, I didn’t expect him to be so delicious.
I’d kissed someone before, lots of someones—and I’d never felt sparks ripple over my body when our lips met—until Jason. I’d never felt playful, delighting when our teeth clanged because we were so hungry, so starved for each other, that things like finesse went out the door.
I couldn’t get enough of him. And because I refused to let my guard down long enough for him to hurt me, I knew that night would be my only chance to try. The only night we’d have. So I let my inner succubus out to play because I knew that unlike the others, who wasted time asking me how I liked it, whispering sweet nothings, Jason Cox would know just what buttons to push. Would know just what I needed.
I’d followed through with walking away despite the fact that my legs didn’t stop shaking until I got home and climbed in the shower. Pretending like I’d wash away my sins when in reality, I wanted to hold tight to the way his hands had felt, fingers piercing my skin as I rode him to bliss. The way he stretched me, exploring me in ways that I never knew were possible.
It had been a week and I still felt a fluttering in my core at the thought of him, which was more times than I could count on two hands. But the thing that had me taking on more orders than Tamara and I could handle, trying to stay busy so I wouldn’t answer his texts or his emails, was the look in his eye before I booked it out of Crave.
He didn’t want me to go, even though he got what he wanted.
Which meant that maybe I had him wrong and he wanted more than sex.
And that thought had me filling my waste basket with messed up cake designs and display plans. It had me zoning out during appointments, wondering what he was doing. And now that my mother was on the prowl, sniffing around for her future son-in-law and grandbabies, it was making me wonder if maybe I should go back on the grid after all.
There was no harm in saying hello, right?
“Oh my God, you met someone!” Mom squealed and I heard Miley go off the rails, yapping manically. Miley was her chihuahua, a skittish little diva who had taken on her owner’s not so flattering characteristics. Things like snapping at everyone and demanding attention and affection while giving little to none in return.
I sighed and tried to exit the conversation. “First off, I don’t date boys. I date men-”
“Well, you haven’t dated anyone since that khaki wearing pussy Scott.” She elbowed right past my attempts at trying to steer the conversation and dragged me back to my ex fiancé. She seemed to have forgotten all about the way she’d been putting her nose where it didn’t belong. Calling up Scott’s mom, both of them meddling, trying to mend something that was broken from the start.
Scott was safe. Predictable. He’d surprised us all. Never in a million years would I have guessed that the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with was playing me for a fool. Falling in love with another woman while I’m daydreaming about cute little houses with an office for him and a garden for me. Imagining what our children would look like while he was burying himself inside another woman.
And instead of comforting me and telling me that I’d find love again, my mother’s first question when I told her the wedding was off was, What did you do?
I blinked
at my phone screen, glazing over my face. It was just a tiny blip, since my mother’s well meaning (but often missing the point by a mile) one was taking up most of the space.
Growing up, everyone in our small town would say I was the spitting image of her. The high cheekbones, the big, green eyes, the raven colored hair. Even teachers would sigh if I ever showed any sign of a backbone, groaning that I was just like Juliet.
I never saw it. When I was younger, I’d look at the other moms in the grocery store, sure one of the nicer, less loud, less brash ones would take one look at me, call the police, and take me some place where I could eat chocolate chip cookies without guilt and watch cartoons instead of soap operas.
Now, I couldn’t escape that I was my mother’s daughter.
