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Mercy’s eyes started to water as her mouth fell open.
“Is it true?” she asked, turning to focus solely on me.
I sucked it up.
She would’ve had to figure it out eventually.
Though, just sayin’, but I would’ve liked to be introduced first.
“Yes,” I answered, thankfully getting through that one word without adding anything bad onto it.
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” She placed her hand over her mouth as tears started to roll down her cheek. “I’m going to be a grandma?”
“Yes, Dad?” I heard Sammy say. “I’m going to be a daddy. You’re going to be a granddad. Sierra and Blue are going to be aunts. Are you fuckin’ stoked or what?”
I snatched the phone away from his ear and handed it to Mercy who took it and placed it to her ear.
She was still crying as she spoke low to the man on the phone.
“Let’s get you inside, chatterbox,” I growled, taking him by the arm and leading him to his house. “Keys.”
Sammy reached for them and offered them to me. Just as he did, he turned to yell at his mother.
“And she writes about sex!” he called out. “You might have heard of her. She’s an author. Of sex.”
I closed my eyes as a wave of horror washed over me.
Just as I was sliding the key into the lock, he said, “The key to my heart is on there, too. You can keep it.”
The irritation I felt at his announcing to everyone that I was pregnant and that I wrote about sex was quickly washed away.
“What am I going to do with you?” I asked seriously.
He pushed open the door to his place and I winced at all the laundry everywhere, just like I did yesterday.
“You’re going to keep me. Forever,” he ordered, sounding stern.
Then he collapsed onto the couch and instantly fell asleep.
Just. Like. That.
I sighed and stood there with my hands on my hips for a few long seconds before I heard Mercy enter the room behind me.
“It’s not his fault,” she said softly as she closed the door. “He has really, really bad reactions to the meds. And this was likely only Vicodin. You have no clue what he does on actual anesthesia. Jesus. When he was fifteen, he had to have his tonsils out. He announced to everyone in the room that he was a product of almost-maybe not-possibly so-rape.”
My mouth fell open.
“That’s a story for another time,” she said. “I’ll tell you about it when he’s not about to wake up and start putting in his two cents. But, needless to say, he’s not a product of rape.” She winced. “But yeah, he announced it to the entire operating room, apparently. And when they got him out, a nurse asked if I needed help getting away from my husband.”
I slapped my hands on my face. “He didn’t.”
“He did,” she confirmed.
I shook my head. “That’s… wow.”
She smiled at her son who was on the couch looking as if he hadn’t just embarrassed the crap out of me.
“My son tells me you’re an author, but he didn’t tell me what pseudonym you write under,” Mercy said a few seconds later. “I read romance. Maybe I’ve heard of you.”
I scrunched my face up as my heart started to pound. “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there!”
Mercy grinned at me. “Don’t be nervous. I swear, I’m totally normal. I won’t stalk you at all.”
A burst of laughter escaped me.
“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “Just the idea of you reading my books makes me kind of nervous. I’ve been observing these hot guys lately, and my books have gotten a little racier than they used to be.”
Then a thought occurred to me.
“You didn’t… do you know about me?” I asked. “My Tourette’s?”
She hadn’t looked at me oddly or anything.
And she didn’t react to my weird comment—at least what appeared to be weird to the person that didn’t know that I had Tourette’s. I hadn’t had to introduce myself when we’d met.
Mercy’s lips turned up at the corners as she smiled softly.
“I do. He’s had a lot to say about you.” Her eyes took in the room around us. “He’s such a fucking slob.”
I snorted then and bent over to pick up a couple of shirts that were near my feet.
“I did a few of his socks yesterday,” I admitted. “I think he just buys new socks instead of putting the old ones together.”
Mercy snorted and picked up a pair of jeans by her feet.
“You’d be right.” She paused next to a pair of underwear, and instead of picking those up, she kicked them into the kitchen.
I followed her, babbling on about my pen name, when I started writing, and what my next book was going to be.
“So he talked about me?” I questioned.
She looked at me.
“A lot. All about this beautiful neighbor of his that walked away with his heart,” she confessed. “He’s talked a lot about you over the last couple months. You going to Alaska threw him for a loop. And you ignoring him.” She started to snicker. “I think that’s the best thing you could’ve done, and I’m sure you didn’t even realize it.”
