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I’m no better than that rich girl who tried to sleep with him just for the thrill, because I didn’t care to go any deeper.
“Vera?”
“I’m sorry.” Tears start burning my eyes. I try to blink them away. I turn away from James, even though there’s a zero percent chance he didn’t already see them.
“Hey,” he says, and I feel him come up behind me. “You’re okay. I knew we were going to talk on our date. Cover all the first date topics. We’re still going to, right?” He hugs me from behind. “You’ve had a crazy week. I don’t think less of you for not asking.”
“You probably should.”
“No,” he says, “I shouldn’t. We all come from a certain worldview. Some things are built into it. And we learn those limits, we grow as people.”
I close my eyes and relax against his chest. Take the lesson, move on. Open up. Try. Okay. Actually, I won’t have to try, because I know deep down that I will never forget the shame of this moment. I will never forget the kind of assumptions I made about him.
“Okay,” I say out loud.
“Good.”
“Actually,” I say, “do you think we could have our date tonight?”
He turns me around to face him. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to ask all the questions I have now.”
A lazy smile drifts across his mouth. “There you go being all impatient again.”
“You bring it out in me.”
“Do I?” I notice his eyes are focused on my mouth.
I tilt my face up, giving him the hint. “You bring a lot of things out in me.”
He kisses me, soft, slow and deep. We don’t come up for air, and my head spins. I grip his arms to keep from falling down.
“You win,” he says, finally breaking away. “As long as you’re okay with stopping by my house quickly so I can change.”
“Fine with me.” Who am I to argue with a chance to watch him change? That’s a sight I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.
I try not to sulk on the way to the mystery restaurant—James still won’t tell me where we’re going. He also made me stay in the car at his house. “Do you really think that if you come inside that we’re going to make it the restaurant?” he’d said. I mean…he had a point…but still.
I sigh audibly in my seat now, and James laughs. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” I say, putting on a mask of disappointment. “You denied me a chance to ogle you.”
“Don’t worry.” He puts his hand on my leg. “I plan on giving you many more chances.”
We pull up to a restaurant that borders the beach. It’s Italian, and I smile that he made a point to choose my favorite. We’re seated right away at a table overlooking the beach, and a soft breeze off the ocean plays through my hair. The late afternoon sun slants toward us and the beach is practically shimmering.
I glance over the menu, and even though I feel like I should be adventurous, I opt for comfort. I order the baked ziti, James orders fettuccini and a bottle of wine. Good wine.
“So,” James says when the waiter leaves, “you said you had a bunch of questions. Shoot.”
I grab a piece of bread from the basket and spread butter on it to buy myself some time. Now that I have the opportunity to ask, I’m not sure what to ask first. I guess I’ll start with the most immediate. “What do you really do?”
“I’m a contractor. Specifically I try to focus on low-income housing, but there’s not always work in that area. I take the contracts I can get and do my best to stay in that vein. The Harrison Foundation has given me several contracts. They’re a good company. It would be great if you worked for them.”
“I hope so,” I murmur. “But if that’s what you do, then why are you cleaning my pool?”
The waiter stops by with our wine and pours us each a glass. I savor the first sip while waiting for his answer.
“Contracts don’t last forever,” he says, “and when there are none to be had, I still need a job. So I take on occasional landscaping gigs. I haven’t had to do it in a while, but I have a friend named Mike whose dad is having surgery this week. He likes working for your dad—he gives nice bonuses. Mike didn’t want the company to give his place at your house to someone else, so I said I’d fill in for him while he’s with his dad.”
Wow, I think to myself, his willingness is amazing. And he’s so kind.
“Mike also works on my crew when he can, so it’s the least he can do.”
“You have a crew?”
He takes a sip of wine and smiles. “If you can call them that. They’re mainly friends who are good with their hands. When I have extra money in the budget, I bring them on to help. Makes the job go faster, and they get paid.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I say, shoving another piece of bread in my mouth. His actions are staggering, really. I know that my father would never even consider doing something like that. There’s a twinge in my chest as I realize it. I need something else from him, something lighter, and the first words out of my mouth are, “How old are you?”
He laughs at the abrupt shift in topic. “I’m twenty-seven.”
“Do you have siblings?”
His face falls. “Maybe.”
My breath catches, and I know I’ve stumbled onto something serious without meaning to. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
James holds out a hand. “It’s okay. My family history is complicated.” He takes a deep sip of wine, and it seems like he’s bracing myself.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say.
“I know,” he says, “but it’s a huge part of where I am today. So I want to.” He takes another sip of wine. “My mother…she had me young. She wasn’t on good terms with her parents to begin with, and they kicked her out when she got pregnant. She worked odd jobs here and there, but there aren’t many opportunities for underage pregnant women.”
I nod, my brows knitting together in sympathy. “Yeah…”
“In the end, the story is unfortunately pretty typical. She lived in shelters when she could, on the streets when she couldn’t. She did what she had to, and unfortunately that mostly meant prostitution.” He breaks off as the waiter brings us our food. I can’t help but feel that it would be inappropriate to eat right now.
“I don’t remember a lot of that,” he continues. “Honestly. I do remember living in a house with a big backyard. There was a guy my mom was with, and he let us stay with him for a while. I remember being happier than I’d ever been while I was there. But then that guy was out of the picture and we had to leave. It became the same old thing of a different guy every night. Not long after, the cops were called and I was in the system.”
> “Foster care?” I ask.
“Yeah, I bounced around a bunch of different homes until I was sixteen. I probably wasn’t a great kid. I had a lot of anger issues and I could never seem to settle in one place for long. My last foster home was bad. I butted heads with the guy, and we were at each other’s throats. I think at some point he was probably a good foster parent, but it got lost along the way. Really, if he had a bunch of kids like me living with him I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d go off all the time…all he wanted was his check and for the kids to be quiet, and that wasn’t me.”
He stops and takes a bite of his pasta, but I still can’t eat.
“We fought all the time and it got bad. We both hit each other multiple times. He threatened to get me thrown in juvie if I did it again, so I left. It wasn’t the smartest move, but by that time I knew that the social workers almost always believe the foster parents over the kid.”
I take a sip of my wine, and nod my head. “Where did you go?”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
My heart plummets. “You were homeless.”
“For a while, yeah.” He looks at me and frowns. “Vera, eat. It’s all right. Ancient history.”
“How did you get here, then?”
He smiles. “Construction. After fending for myself for awhile I overheard someone talking about a construction job that was hiring people off the street since they needed workers so badly. At that point I was scrawny as anything, but I showed up. I lied about my age, I lied about where I lived, and they gave me the job. One of the foremen, Antony, he knew I was full of shit but he gave me the job anyway. He told me I had one day to prove myself and if I didn’t, I was out.”
