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“Your standards are appallingly low.” He shook his head. “I’m going back home. I’ll be reachable on my personal number if you need me.”
“Bree giving you another chance?” I asked.
He’d been practically domesticated by her. Shit, I’d given up on that gig after my one and only failed attempt. Why settle for one woman when I could have however many I wanted each night?
“I hope she does.” Bradley’s brow creased, and suddenly, he seemed less like the confident business manager and more like my geeky grade-school friend. He knew my issues as well as I knew his. The past year had been tough on both of us. But this girl mattered to him.
Giving me a serious look, he said, “Make this break count, Rush. I plan to. Get your head together. We’ve got from Christmas through New Year’s off, then we’re back out on the road.”
Stuck at the stop light an hour later, I impatiently drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. The street sign seemed to mock me, probably because I’d seen it before. At least three times.
How the fuck did I end up circling back to the same corner on Wilshire?
I glared at my navigation display. Unreliable piece of shit. This wasn’t anywhere near the hotel where my next hookup was waiting.
I zoomed in on the map. Maybe I could take Hollywood Boulevard around and then just cut back in at . . . Fuck. That route for whatever reason was all red. A parking-lot standstill. And I didn’t know this part of town well enough to formulate an alternative.
My phone rang. The display switched off the map to reveal it was my mother calling.
My heart stuttered. Our communication was irregular, especially sparse since the funeral. Her phoning at this time of night led me to immediately anticipate a crisis.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “Is everything okay?”
“No, not really.”
“Are you sick?” My vocal cords lowered to a strained rasp. An out-of-the-blue phone call similar to this one had broken the bad news about my father. A massive heart attack. Gone within a matter of hours, before I could even say good-bye.
Had I come to terms with it? Had she?
Hardly.
“No, Rush.” Her voice sounded a little strange, as if I’d caught her off guard. “I just had my yearly routine checkup.”
“Okay. Good.” Shaky, I steered the 911 to a nearby curb. Since I was using the Bluetooth connection, I hadn’t taken my hands off the wheel, but it was too distracting to drive while talking to her. “So, what’s up?”
A quick glance out the windows confirmed I wasn’t in the best part of town. Porn shop. A couple of skeezy-looking bars. A by-the-hour motel. I clicked the locks.
“I’m lonely. Sad. I rarely hear from you anymore. You’re my boy, and I miss you.”
Her voice hitched, and my stomach bottomed out as if it had been dropped from a height.
“Mom, I’m sorry. It’s just been crazy busy . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what the fuck to say. Even before the rift between us, I hadn’t been any good at the emotional stuff. It wasn’t the way I was raised.
Life had been rough growing up in the heartland. Dad had been a farmer and rancher, the family livelihood largely dependent on the Indiana weather. Our lives revolved around pragmatism and planning.
There wasn’t any thought of getting in touch with our feelings, no understanding for a son who preferred to express his creativity through music. And certainly no neutral ground for reconciliation after I left them and chased after my unlikely dreams.
And now the man who had modeled the values of strength and silent stoicism was gone. Far beyond my reach. The chance for us to explore those feelings was taken with him.
“It’s my first Christmas without your father,” she reminded me, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. “The house is too quiet. Like a tomb with your brother and Brenda away on their honeymoon.”
Randy had never moved away from home. The ever-dutiful son, he’d taken over the management of the farm after Dad died. But with him out of town, it wasn’t surprising she had reached out to me.
I didn’t much like the idea of her being all alone in the big empty farmhouse, miles away from the nearest neighbor. Worry and guilt branded the center of my chest. I hadn’t been out to visit her since the funeral.
“I was going through my old scrapbooks after the Johnsons stopped by to check on me,” she said. “Do you remember the year Thunder climbed up the Christmas tree?”
“Yeah, Mom,” I whispered. I’d forgotten about that cat. “He was just a kitten. He was so small, he looked like one of the ornaments.”
