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He got behind the wheel, and she gave him directions to her new place in nearby Crescent Cove. He remained silent while they climbed the steps to her third-floor walk-up apartment, and she had to temper her urge to fill the silence with chatter. Instead she bit her lower lip and led him through her modified studio. It had a living room, an alcove for her bed and dresser and nightstand, a galley-style kitchen, and a decent-sized bathroom. All the basics, no frills. But it was hers, and she was so proud of how far she’d come.
“Check out the huge closet.” She swept back her arm to reveal the space she’d crammed with clothes and other stuff she really needed to weed through someday. “Nice, huh?”
“Very.”
“And did you see the oven? Of course it’s not fancy like yours.” She rushed back into the kitchen, well aware that her mouth had yet again shot into overdrive.
Luckily he made the appropriate noises of appreciation and didn’t ask her why she was acting as if they’d just met rather than been…friends for years. Additional proof that the man could be too sweet for words.
“So I’ll, ah, make dinner now.” She pulled open the refrigerator door and started loading ingredients in her arms. “I can pop the champagne, and you can go watch TV if you’d like. Sorry, I only get the basic stations—”
“I’ll stay right here if you don’t mind.” He shed the jacket she realized she’d never offered to take and hung it off the back of a kitchen chair before sprawling across the seat. “So we can talk while you cook for me. Which is damn sexy, by the way, even if that sets me back twenty years for saying so.”
She couldn’t fight the flush she knew stained her cheeks. “I think we can give the women’s lib movement a break tonight. Besides, you’ve cooked for me. Deliciously, I might add. Don’t get your hopes up.” She wagged a finger. “I’m no whiz like you.”
His grin almost made her lose her grip on the bottle of champagne she’d just grabbed. “I think we’ll do just fine.”
By the time they were sitting across from each other at her small table with a strawberry votive candle between them and the exquisite scent of steak fragrancing the air, her nerves had vanished. This was Justin, and she wouldn’t act odd just because she happened to be in love with him. That point might not even matter, depending on what he had to say.
Though she hoped it did. She hoped so very much.
The conversation meandered from Justin’s school to Christmas break to the great deal she’d gotten on her new place. It was in a building right on Main Street with a coffee shop, Brewed Awakening, on the main level. All safe topics.
When he mentioned stopping by his parents’ on his way out of town on Christmas Eve, she smiled politely and tried not to look too overeager. She wasn’t Dr. Templeton, her new therapist, but she was reasonably sure his voluntary visit to their house had to be a good sign.
“My counselor suggested I go over again, to try to familiarize myself with their life now and stop looking for parallels to the past.” His wry tone as he forked up baked potato slathered in butter said a lot about his opinion on that. “I’m not in charge of the world. They have their own lives, and loving someone doesn’t mean I have to agree with all their decisions. I just have to support my mom, and that includes her choice of husband.”
She tried not to react. “And you’re okay with that?”
He rubbed his face, and when he removed his hand, she noted the blessed lack of lines around his eyes. For once, he didn’t look exhausted. It had been a long while since she’d been able to say that about him. “Honestly? No. I’m just less okay with living every damn day with my stomach in knots, thinking today’s the day he’s going to hurt her again.”
“Good,” she said carefully, setting down her fork. She’d practically inhaled her own meal, as had he minus his potato. He’d poked and prodded at it until she wanted to yank away his plate. “So you like your counselor?”
Not therapist. He hadn’t yet used that word. It was always counselor. Whatever made it easier for him to deal with.
“She’s okay.” He shrugged and went back to fiddling with the potato skin, finally cutting off a small piece and popping it in his mouth. “She talks a lot.”
Her lips wiggled as she attempted valiantly not to smile. “That’s kind of her job.”
“I thought the client was supposed to talk all the time, preferably while lying on a couch. Easier to spill secrets that way.”
“Have you done that?”
“No. Mainly because I don’t have a lot of them that are mine. The abuse…that was mostly my mom’s. There was verbal stuff with me, but the biggest thing was the fear of what would happen to her. I wasn’t afraid for me. Even when I was a little kid, I was sure I could take the bastard.”
She gripped the seat of her chair to keep from rushing around the table to hug him. He might not have needed that—though she sure did—so she didn’t move. Barely even breathed. He’d started to open a valve, and she wasn’t going to do anything that might close it again before he’d gotten out what he had to.
“My counselor’s gone through a lot of textbook crap with me. You know, how you can’t control an event, only your reaction to it. I went through most of that in school, and I think Lola finds it funny that I can recite most of it back to her before she even gets the words out. It’s different when it’s you, though.” He sighed and tossed his napkin next to his almost untouched glass of champagne. “Way fucking different.”
“Night and day.”
“Lola asked me if it was easier to lose my mom now, while she was still alive. I never saw it that way.” He blew out a breath. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to her yet.”
“No. I know you’re not.”
“So that means I need to stop listening to what I should do and start trying to do it. Not because it’ll help me pretend to get better. Because I want to be better. I want my mom in my life for real. I want to be her son again.” He shut his eyes. “I want a place where I can bring my girlfriend on family holidays, and for it to mean something.”
My girlfriend.
