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“Let’s go, my treat.”
“Thanks, Mom. For everything, really. I’m so glad to have you as my Mom. Even if you were a little tramp back in the day.”
“Honey, I was a good tramp!” she laughed louder than I’ve ever heard her laugh and it felt good to hear that.
“Damn, I love you, woman!” I hugged her suddenly, this perfect woman that made me melt with love.
“I love you too, baby, but I’m hungry. Get the hell off me.” Playful, happy, she even looked younger as we got into the car. The mom I remembered from my younger days. “Let’s jam.”
She cranked about some music from the early 2000s, and we sped down the road. I’d lost my loves for the next four weeks, but today, I’d gained a new friend, a new BFF, my mom. Brooklyn wouldn’t mind, because she hadn’t been replaced. She’d just be happy that I had the friend I needed now that I was grown. Because, like it or not, I was grown, and it was time to face up to it.
I looked at my phone and saw that the guys had landed in Germany, the first leg of their flight to Spain. I talked to them while Mom drove, and then, we sang a song about how hard life could be for kids and laughed the pain away. It was awesome.Chapter Twenty-Three
A couple of weeks later I was in a large house on the outskirts of Los Angeles, lounging by the pool. My grandmother lounged next to me, in a one-piece suit with a large straw hat over her face.
“It’s important to stay out of the sun, honey. It’s a killer,” she said as she sipped at a rum and Coke.
“I know, Grams.” I smiled at her, my own straw hat hiding my face entirely. “I don’t want freckles, and I get them if I’m out in it too much.”
“It’s that ginger gene from your grandfather’s side. Your poor dad had it bad. I used to slather him in sunscreen and keep him in long shirts, even when the world was telling us to absorb as much sun as possible and try to turn our skin into leather. I never did think it was good.”
She was a humorous woman with a lot of love to give. I’d forgiven them for the silent years when she explained how devastated losing my dad had been for them both. The pain that was still in her voice when she talked about him, told me all I needed to know. I could only imagine what they’d felt, how it must still hurt.
“It’s not. But it’s nice to be warm.” I grinned because, despite our hats and sunscreen, a huge umbrella had us in the shade. There was no chance the sun was going to get to us.
“So, about this man that keeps you busy on the phone?” she asked, and I could tell this was going to be another one of those moments that could rip my heart out.
I decided to tell her anyway because I didn’t want her to find out any other way.
“Well, there are four of them actually,” I started, and her eyebrow rose high, so high I could see it over her large sunglasses.
“Four? How do they feel about that? Or do they know?” She looked like she wanted the juicy gossip and I could only let the relief wash over me.
“Oh, they know. They’re quadruplets.” I waited for her to answer, and she made me wait when she took a sip of her drink.
“So, are they fun in bed?” She pulled her sunglasses up to reveal eyes not too different a color from mine. Dad got his eyes from his father.
“Grams!” I couldn’t help but be shocked.
“Child of the 80s, my dear. You think your generation invented cocaine and wild parties? Ha!” She swiped at a drip of sweat that crawled down from her blond hairline. “I remember parties in LA that would make you fall over in a faint, little love. Wild times.”
Just like Mom had done, Grams was now reminiscing about the old days. Old days that were apparently wilder than I thought. I’m not sure why it all shocked me, but it did. Mom hadn’t mentioned drugs, but the rest was the same.
“Your grandad and I met at a swingers club, you know? I’d gone with a friend and met him there.” She grinned wickedly and my eyes went wide.
“Seriously?”
“Oh yes. Quite seriously. That’s how your grandad made his money, after all, he made, ahem, adult films.”
I could have fainted; she’d shocked me so much.
“Porn, Grams?” I was fairly certain I’d fallen into some alternate reality, but she just chuckled.
“Somebody had to make them. And he made a lot of money at them, so I didn’t complain.”
“He wasn’t, like, in them, was he?” I didn’t want to know, but I had to know too.
