AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She huffs out a laugh. We exchange a long look. I’d give up a kidney to be able to read her mind right now.
“Do you want me to come in?” I ask finally.
“No, it’s okay. I don’t want Callie to ask questions.”
I don’t like the idea of her being alone with her thoughts. “Why don’t you tell her any of this, Zale? She’s your best friend.”
Azalea bites her lip and looks at me, her expression almost shy. “No, she’s not. You are.”
Ignoring the pinch in my heart, I gesture toward her building. “Then go pack a bag and come stay the night with me.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
But I know she’s lying. She’s not okay. “Listen. I’m not going to let you sit around by yourself, stewing about this all night. So you can either tell Callie, let me up, or come over and stay with me. Pax went back home for the weekend. You won’t have to worry about anyone but me.”
She chews at her bottom lip. When she sighs, her shoulders slump, and I know she’s giving in. “Okay,” she says. “Are any of my clothes still at your place?”
I fight a smile. “Yeah, there’s a few things.”
“Then let’s go.”
It’sonlylateafternoonwhen we get to my apartment, but we’re exhausted from a long day. We drag ourselves up the stairs as if it’s midnight, Azalea holding the bag of takeout we got on the way over here while I carry our drinks. She goes into the bathroom to change, and I take the opportunity to pop some aspirin and plate up our food. When she emerges, I smile at her familiar pink llama pajama pants. I’ve never told her they’re my favorite. I wonder if she somehow knows—if that’s why she left them here.
There’s a comfortable quiet between us as we eat our food standing at the kitchen island and then migrate into the living room. I sit down on the couch, and she tosses a pillow into my lap before stretching out with her head on it.
“What do you want to watch?” I ask, one hand in her hair and the other using the remote to scroll mindlessly through the list of streaming services.
“Something funny.”
I select the next sitcom I come across, letting it pick up from the episode we left off on. I’m tired enough that I’d probably be drifting off if I were alone, and my eyelids are heavy for sure. But Azalea laying across my lap keeps me wide awake.
The first episode ends and bleeds into the second, and I blurt out, “How are we so normal right now?”
She rolls onto her back so she can look up at me. “Hmm?”
“A few days ago, we hadn’t spoken in months. Today you met your mom.” I mindlessly start twirling a strand of her hair around my finger. She flicks her eyes in that direction. “How are we just sitting here like everything’s normal?”
“I don’t think we’re sitting here like everything’s normal,” she tells me. “I think we’re sitting here because everything’snot, but we’re still us, so here we are.”
We’re still us.
Thank God for that.
“Will you tell me what happened today?” I ask.
Azalea reaches for the remote and pauses the show. Then she turns onto her side, facing me, her breath fanning across my stomach through the material of my shirt. She plays idly with a loose thread on her pillow. “I was a colicky baby, apparently,” she begins, her voice even in a carefully controlled way, “and Dad was never home. She had to quit college when she got pregnant, and she never went back. She’s still a stay-at-home mom and wishes she wasn’t. She didn’t want me then, she doesn’t want me now, and, to sum up, I ruined her life.”
“What the fuck?” I sputter angrily. “She said all that to you?”
“Not the part about ruining her life. I used context clues for that one. Oh,” she adds, like she just remembered something, “and she also threatened to get a restraining order against me if I ever contacted her or her family again.”
Now I’m seeing red. My blood is boiling. I have that woman’s address, and I’m fixing to drive back down to Kansas City and give her a piece of my mind. How could she treat her own daughter like that? Doesn’t she realize what she’s missing out on? “What a fucking—”
“Stop,” Azalea says, sitting up. “I’m not happy about it, but she never pretended to want a relationship with me. She knew she didn’t want to be my mom, so she left. My dad tracked her down to have her terminate her rights, and she did. If I’d ever bothered to think about it from her perspective instead of mine, maybe I would have realized that she made her choice a long time ago. I had no reason to think she’d want me to show up in her new life.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so I open my arms to her, and she throws herself into my lap. I haul her close, letting our fronts press together as her thighs fall open to rest on either side of me. With her arms tight around my neck, face pressed to my shoulder, she continues in a small voice: “My dad has some things to answer for, too, and I’m not ready to deal with that. He’s all I’ve had my whole life, Mav.”
“I know,” I soothe. “I know, baby.”
