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“Sorry,” she muttered, trying to take a step away from him.
His hand clamped on her arm. “Nope.” He held her still. “Talk to me. What just happened there?”
Clearing her throat, she looked around the room. Her gaze landed on a platter she’d bought at the dollar store for Max’s first birthday. She’d painted it so it didn’t look so plain. She hadn’t wanted him to look back at his birthday photos and be embarrassed by how sparse everything looked. “Let’s just say my family had a different reaction than yours to becoming grandparents.”
“What do you mean?”
She cleared her throat again. “Um…” She pushed out a long breath. “My family is pretty conservative.”
His finger traced the line of the tattoo on her forearm. “Yeah, you mentioned they weren’t big fans of the direction your art went.”
She snorted out a humorless laugh. “That’s one way to put it.” Needing to put some space between them, she picked up her bottle of beer and took a sip. “You want to sit?” she asked, gesturing toward the sofa.
“Sure.” Jeff followed her over to the sofa and sat beside her.
Shoot, she’d been hoping he would sit in the opposite chair to give her a bit of breathing room, but it seemed he had other plans.
He tapped her knee. “Talk to me.”
She dropped her head back and looked up at the ceiling. “My family isn’t like yours.”
“Okay.” He waited.
“I told you I was a disappointment to them, what with getting pregnant and dropping out of art school.”
“A little yeah.”
“I have a complicated relationship with my parents.” She tapped her hand nervously against her thigh. “In a nutshell, when I got pregnant with Max they kicked me out.”
Jeff’s brows knit together. “I thought you said they were your support system in Tucson.”
“Yeah, they were sort of. Thus the move to San Diego.” She waved her hand around the room. How was she supposed to explain a family like hers to someone like him? Someone whose parents would fly halfway across the country the minute they learned about their grandchild. “So um…like I mentioned, my parents kicked me out when I got pregnant. I dropped out of school and got a job, but occasionally I still needed some help from friends and my brother. When Max was about three years old, I got sick and ended up in the hospital for a few days.”
“Jesus, Kia,” Jeff muttered.
“It was fine.” She tried to brush it off. “A little surgery, some antibiotics and rest, and I was good to go.”
“A little surgery?”
“My appendix ruptured, and I got pretty sick because I didn’t go to the hospital.”
“What do you mean you didn’t go to the hospital?” His eyes widened with horror.
She raised her eyebrow and looked at him. Had he not been listening about the whole single mom, dropout, struggling to make ends meet part of the story? “Insurance is expensive, so…” She shrugged. “Anyway, I asked my brother to take Max. He panicked and took him to my parents, who I hadn’t spoken to in three years.” Memories of that time assaulted her. It had been the most terrifying time of her life. “After that, we came to an agreement that they could babysit now and then, and I’d take Max to church.” She ran her tongue along her teeth like she’d be able to clear the foul taste in her mouth. “Max and I spent a lot of time at church.” She looked at the tattoos on her arms. “Unfortunately, it didn’t take.”
“Hang on. I feel like you’re leaving a lot out here.” Jeff shifted on the couch, so he was facing her fully.
She didn’t want to tell him all this. She’d worked so hard to leave all that shit behind her. “God, this is—When I went to pick up Max from their house, they took one look at me, and my tattoos, and they didn’t want to give him back.”
Jeff’s head snapped backwards. “What do you mean they didn’t want to give him back?”
She rubbed a hand across her face. “It was a messed up time in my life.”
“What does that mean?” Jeff asked. “Jesus, spit it out.”
“To my parents getting pregnant was shameful—getting tattoos, unforgivable.” She sighed. “I don’t know how to explain this in a way that makes sense to someone on the outside.”
“Try.”
