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“My mom left when I was two. I don’t even remember her. My dad was an abusive drunk who used me as a punching bag. I left the day I turned sixteen.”
“Shit Zoe, I’m sorry,” he says.
I shrug.
“It is what it is. There are plenty of people who have it far worse than me.”
He moves his arm, releasing my hand, and I think for a horrible moment I’ve said too much. He doesn’t want me now that he knows I am so ugly inside that even my own mother didn’t want me.
He turns his wrist and takes my hand in his and my heart soars. He isn’t quite ready to run a mile just yet. My hand tingles where he touches it.
“So do you live with some other family?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“No. I have a little apartment. My grandmother, the only person in my family who ever seemed to give a fuck about me, died when I was twelve. She left me some money, money that my deadbeat dad couldn’t touch. It was released to me on my sixteenth birthday. She wanted me to use it for college, but I honestly didn’t think I’d make it to college if I stayed at home. So I used it to buy my place. There was enough left over to see me through a few years, and I work a few shifts as a waitress where I can to make it go further.”
I pause and take a deep breath as a feeling of loneliness floods through me.
“When I said what you did outside of the bar was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, I guess I meant the second nicest. Because my grandma saved me from the life I was living. But it’s lonely, Mac. I’m all alone in the world. And what you did for me reminded me that not everyone looks at me and sees trash.”
He squeezes my hand tightly and when he speaks again, his voice is rough, full of emotion.
“You will never be alone again,” he says. “Not now. Not ever.”
Something tells me he’s not just saying that to make me feel better. It tells me that he means those words. That I am somehow his now. The realization sends a rush of excitement through my stomach and my pussy. To belong to him, to be his. To have someone by my side. It’s something I’ve only ever dared to dream of.
“I get it, you know,” he says after a couple of minutes of reflective silence. “Being alone I mean.”
I find it hard to believe that someone like Mac would ever have to be alone. I mean, the guy is sex appeal walking.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had girlfriends and stuff, but it’s never felt real. There’s never been that connection where you just know it’s meant to be,” he says as though he read my mind.
I do know what he means, and the way he says it like it’s changed and he feels that connection now sends another shiver through me. I know if we keep going down this road, I’m going to end up blurting out something stupid and scaring him away, so I move the conversation back around to something safer.
“Do you have any family?” I ask. “Just you said you knew what it’s like to be alone.”
He shrugs.
“I was never really alone as such. I never knew my dad, but it didn’t matter because my mom was all I needed. She worked three jobs to keep a roof over our heads, and yet she still made time for me. I had a great childhood. But then when I was fifteen, she got cancer. She was dead two months after her diagnosis.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I say in a pained whisper.
To have someone who cares, someone who would do anything for you, and then have them ripped cruelly away is surely worse than knowing that no one gives a fuck one way or the other about you.
“I can’t imagine how awful that must have been,” I add.
“Yeah. It was pretty rough. I had no other family, so I ended up in the system. I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have to wait long before I was found a foster family. And they were nice people. Not abusive or anything like that. They made me feel welcome.”
“But?” I prompt him.
I can hear the but in his voice, and I know there’s more to the story.
“But no matter how much they loved me, I couldn’t let myself love them back because it felt like I was betraying my mom,” he says.
Suddenly I can see him as a fifteen-year-old boy, lost and alone. Craving affection and yet pushing it away. My heart breaks for him, and I reach out and squeeze his arm with the hand not holding his. I press myself against his side.
