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“I’m staying at West’s,” I say, fighting a laugh. Mom’s look turns serious.
“Yes,” she says gravely. “We need to talk about him, especially.”
“Mom, look—”
“No, Raleigh, you look,” she says sharply. Twenty-four years of training has me shutting up immediately. “I owe you an apology.”
I blink. And blink again.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, I owe you an apology.” She sighs heavily. “I overreacted that day. I’m sorry. I never suspected… You have to know your father and I would never shut you out. Never.”
“Then why?”
Mom bites her lip. “Maybe I’m older than I thought. You surprised me that day, Raleigh, and that’s the truth. I never suspected you felt that way for other men.”
That makes me laugh a little. “For what it’s worth, neither did I. Not until I met him.”
Mom nods. “I get that. I’m sorry, too, that your young man had to deal with that. I reacted poorly, and family matters ought to be private. It wasn’t his fault.”
“West is family, Mom,” I say quietly. She looks me in the eye.
“Is he?” she asks.
I swallow hard. “I love him.”
Mom takes a shaky breath.
“And the girl you mentioned,” she says.
“Callahan,” I say. “Callie for short.”
“Where does she fall in all this?”
I bite the inside of my cheek hard, annoyed by the moisture building in my eyes all over again.
“I love her, too, Mom.”
Mom nods slowly. “I suspected as much. Oh, my boy.” She pulls me in and hugs me again tightly. I don’t bother trying to disguise my sniffling this time. When we pull back, Mom hands me the tissue pack, making me laugh.
“Come on,” she says. “I think this calls for a drink.”
“I can’t believe she asked you if you were being safe,” snorts Callie a couple of hours later. We’re sipping coffee in her back office at Hale House. I’ve never been here before, and I wasn’t ready to go stare at the walls of the apartment until West gets home tonight, so I picked up coffee and muffins and Googled the address. Callie seemed surprised and delighted to see me, and it occurred to me that maybe that’s all happy relationships are: doing nice things for each other, especially when they least expect it, until the end of time.
It’s a nice thought, anyway.
“Yeah, that was not my finest moment,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Worse even than the time Dad found my porn stash.”
Callie’s eyes go huge, her mouth dropping into a perfect O. Possibly not the smartest thing for me to say.
“Oh, no,” she says, when I look away and start digging through the bag for more pastries. “Oh, no, you do not get to drop that bomb and just leave it there. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say, exasperated at myself. Possibly this is why I haven’t had an actual relationship until now. “Just, I came home from diving practice one day—”
“Have I ever told you how hot I find the idea of you in a tiny bathing suit?”
I pelt her with a sugared blueberry. “You want to hear the story or not?”
