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“No. You know, it’s about a girl. I left something at her place, and it’s going to be awkward.” She shows me her phone, as though that explains anything.
“I can take your mom home,” Dean assures her.
Reese races out before I can say anything else, leaving me staring after her.
“You ready?” Dean asks, bringing my attention back to him.
We load up in his Jeep and he takes my hand again, the way he did yesterday. I don’t know why I let him. As we drive, I begin to wonder if this is what Reese was going for. Is she trying to hook me up with Dean? She’s never tried to set me up before, why would she start now?
And then it hits me. She doesn’t think I can take care of myself! With her leaving in less than a month, she must be desperate to leave me with someone that can take care of me.
The realization of what my own kid is trying to do irritates me. I yank my hand out of Dean’s so hard he turns to look at me with a frown. Feeling slightly guilty, I pretend to rub my arm and smile. That seems to satisfy him.
I watch him while he drives, relaxed and happy. I’ve never seen him without some sort of smile on his face. While I’m generally a pretty chill person myself, I can’t say life has been easy enough to always be content. Must be nice, I think.
“This is it,” I say, pointing to the grey house, so much like every other one on the street. In fact, they are so similar it was hard for me to find my own house, and I’d often drive by it. Last year I decided enough was enough, and hung a metal dolphin over the garage. Worked like a charm.
Dean pulls into the driveway and turning off the car, gets out.
“Okay, thank you for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask, following him to the front door.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in for refreshments?” he asks with a twinkle in his eyes.
“It’s almost bedtime.” When he makes no move to leave, I realize he’s made up his mind to come in. “Would you like some refreshments?” I ask.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He walks into the dark house behind me. Even when I turn on the light in the foyer and the kitchen, the house still seems dim. Dumping everything onto the kitchen table, I yell out to the living room, “Would you like some water, coffee, wine?”
“Water please.”
Grabbing a bottle from the fridge, I take it to him. He’s carefully going over the myriad of framed photos in the old entertainment center that takes up an entire wall of the living room. I watch him warily, wondering what he’s thinking about as he sees my life.
“Is that you?” he asks, pointing to a skinny teenager with platinum hair, a black Harley Davidson jacket and combat boots. She’s leaning against a tiled counter, giving the camera a rock on hand signal.
I squint into the picture. “Yup. I’d just turned sixteen. Thought I knew stuff. Turns out I didn’t know shit.”
“I love it. You must have been a wild child.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” I say with a hint of sarcasm. All I can do is thank god every day Reese didn’t turn out like me.
The next photograph he peers into has me standing beside a small child blowing out birthday candles. I hadn’t aged much by that point, yet I looked so much older. Having a kid will do that to you, I suppose.
Beside me in several of the pictures is my exact duplicate. “My twin, Liz,” I inform him when he looks up with the question in his eyes. “You may have seen her at Maxx with me. You can tell us apart by the clothes. See here,” I show him another one. “She always had those casual business type outfits. Believe it or not, she’s only fifteen in this one.”
“I like your style more,” he says. “Your mother?” he asks, pointing at an older woman with strawberry blonde hair and a redheaded child in several of them.
“No. That’s my Aunt Jackie. And the little girl with her is my cousin, Winn. Actually, you might get a chance to meet them if you make it to the end. They’ll be coming to see me in Key West.”
Ignoring the jab, he asks. “Which ones are your parents?”
The stab of regret isn’t foreign to me whenever I think of my mother and father, but still it makes me wince.
“Aunt Jacks raised me.”
“Did your parents pass?” he digs a little more.
“No. Um, I got pregnant at sixteen. Not much after that picture of me was taken.”
