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Fuck it all.I need to man up. I know that. It’s just that my mom’s call has left me feeling sucker punched. Not even my dad’s gentle probing with an offer for lunch, which means a talk and advice I don’t want or need, can get me to really face it.
I tap my hand on the steering wheel of my service vehicle as I wait for the light to change from red to green. Just a regular old patrol, nothing urgent on my plate, although that might change. And to be honest, I can do with the distraction.
But apparently that isn’t happening. Instead, I am left with my thoughts and old resentments that bubble right beneath the surface.
I know what will happen if I see my mother. She’ll push for me and Brandi to see my brother and his wife and that’s something I am not ready for.
Because in all honesty, I want to keep it how it is. Not seeing her. If I do…
My hand grips the wheel hard.
If I do, what will I do if old feelings I think have gone rear up? Not the resentment and anger and dislike of Jessica, but those other ones of lust and love I think have long since gone?
I don’t think they are there. But do I really want to find out? And why should it be me, rather than Tyler reaching out?
My phone buzzes as the light changes and I press the gas pedal, driving through town with cold and gray day outside not touching me in the warm interior of the vehicle. It buzzes again and I hit answer, Brandi’s voice filling the space.
“Just wanted to say hi,” she says.
I frown at the note of something in her voice. It’s like a threadiness, something needy that I don’t recognize. “Everything okay, baby?”
That is another reason I don’t want to go diving into old wounds—Brandi and the baby.
Everything is so new it shines and I am still finding my way around. I’ve told her I love her in the throes of passion and honestly, I do love her. At least, I think that’s what it is. It’s been a long time and I want her with an ache I can’t deny, but it’s a different thing to what I’d felt with Jessica and… well, I’d been over that one, and this is different. I am different. And this is good. I can breathe.
But new is still new and there are times the pressures get to me. The trying to figure out things when they should have been figured out before I’d knocked her up, before I’d moved her in, before I’d put that ring on her finger.
“Yes,” she says in a way that makes me think things aren’t all right at all. “I’m fine. I just missed you.”
“I miss you, too. I’d rather be with you than on patrol.”
She doesn’t laugh, just sighs in that Brandi way. Sometimes that annoys the hell out of me, the way she holds back, her quietness that sometimes borders on meekness when I know she isn’t that inside, not down deep. She just has those layers of hesitancy, of reserve, the things I understand when we aren’t together under one roof but now that we are, surely those things should have disappeared around me.
Instead, she insists on keeping things in. On walking on eggshells she seems to lay out in front of her.
“I’m home from work. I went to the shopping strip and picked up some things.”
“I thought you were having lunch with Maya.”
I turn left onto a small street and cruise down.
“After lunch,” she says. “You know.”
I don’t know. I start to tap my fingers against the wheel. “I wish I had time today for more than a bite.”
“I thought I saw you.”
“Shopping?” I frown. My brother? I haven’t mentioned any of that to her. I don’t want her upset, not when she is pregnant. And not until I know how I am handling things. If I am handling things.
Yes, because I can sweep people under rugs and pretend they aren’t there. I almost laugh except it isn’t funny at all.
“Nope, baby, I’ve been stuck at work.”
“When are you coming home? I… I just picked up some stuff for dinner.”
My frown deepens. “Probably the usual time, depending.”
“Okay, I’ll just get everything ready and throw it together when you come in.”
