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“I’m not sure asshole quite covers it,” she finally says and she even manages a small smile. It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t touch her eyes, but it’s there just the same.
“Dickhead?”
“I think you’re insulting dickheads everywhere.”
“Maybe I could just leave it at I’m sorry for right now?” I suggest.
“I’ll think about it. What are you doing here?”
“It’s a park. I was clearing my head and saw you.” I shrug, giving her the truth, even if it is the bare bones of it.
“I meant in Texas. Shouldn’t you have jumped a plane straight back to California? I would have thought when I kicked you out of the house last week you would have left immediately.”
“I’m thinking of moving to Texas permanently,” I answer. I watch as her eyes dilate, her body tightens and I’m afraid I’ve pushed it too far again. But whatever she’s feeling, she buckles it down and rises above it.
“I thought you guys had to stay close to your team. Don’t you have practices and things?”
“I was cut from the team. It was happening before I met you in Vegas and part of the reason my head was in the space it was in,” I tell her and then I wince because I realize how that sounded and it’s not what I meant. “I didn’t mean… Fuck, Faith, I… Help a man out here, will you? I always seem to be putting my foot in my mouth when it comes to you.”
Then the strangest thing happens. Faith… giggles.
“I got it, Big Daddy. Life had been kicking you in the balls and you got drunk.”
“Pretty much. You know, I think I’ve missed you calling me Big Daddy. Never thought that would happen,” I say, shaking my head and sitting on the bench beside her. She tenses, so tightly I can feel it in the air, but she doesn’t stand up and leave. So maybe I’m getting somewhere.
“Freak,” she mutters.
“You don’t seem as angry as you were last week,” I tell her, trying to tentatively direct the conversation.
“I’ve had some time to think things over. I suppose you finding out about the baby the way you did and where you did wasn’t ideal.”
“You can say that again,” I agree, feeling…hope.
“You were still an ass,” she grumbles and I don’t really have anything to say to that, because I was.
“I want us to be friends, Faith.”
“Friends?” she asks, disbelief and maybe shock mingled in her voice.
“Is that so hard to believe? You’re having my child. That’s a bond between us no matter what our past is.”
“Doesn’t seem to me, Titan, like you want to be part of this child’s life.”
“I do. If I didn’t I would have never come to Texas, Faith.”
“So you’re saying we start over? Become…”
“Friends.”
“How much of a bitch does it make me if I tell you I’m not sure I want to be friends with you?”
“That just means I’ll have to try hard to make you see what I already know.”
“What’s that?”
“That we’ll make great friends.”
She doesn’t really respond to that and her face is filled with skepticism, but for the first time since I decided to come to Texas I’m feeling a little better about the decision.
I just hope I can prove to her we can be friends. We have to be… because I really want to be a part of my child’s life. With every day I spend thinking about it, I’m more and more certain of that.
It’s everything else I’m feeling lost with.
thirty-eight
faith
“Good Lord, Ida Sue. It’s a thousand degrees in here. What’s going on?” I ask, walking through the living room.
I’m not exaggerating either. It’s miserable in here. I mean, outside was warm, because this is Texas and the heat has picked today to play with us, but inside Ida Sue’s house is a whole other dimension—and that dimension is hell.
“It’s hot as Cyan’s balls after his all-night sex parties,” my cousin Mary growls. Her hair is pushed on top of her head, she’s using a paper fan and she’s wearing a bikini top and cut-off shorts—all that and she’s still sweating like a hooker in church.
I’m starting to rethink wearing my jeans and T-shirt myself.
“Hey, Blossom! I’m in the kitchen!”
Mary barely acknowledges me. As mean as she looks right now, that might be a good thing. Still, before I leave the room she literally growls at me, “This is all your fault, Faith.” Then she stomps off.
I have no idea what she means. Mary and I have always gotten along. I shrug it off, thinking the heat just makes her grouchy. I walk into the kitchen, wondering if I can convince Ida Sue we should go out to eat.
“Ida Sue, this heat can’t be good for the ba—” I stop when my gaze locks on the scene in front of me. “—by…”
