AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My laptop.” It was the whole reason we came.
“We’ll get it later.” He tugs me toward the door.
They’re still fighting as we make our escape.
Chapter Seventeen
“So that was fun. Are they always like that?” Heath hands me a bottle of water.
I’m on a bench in Balsley Park, still feeling shell shocked. We pretty much ran away, leaving my mom and CeCe to fight things out—I’ll pay for that at some point. “Yes. Though they don’t tend to do it to each other’s faces. They’re more behind the back fighters.”
He sits down beside me on the bench. At this time of the morning, the park is filled with kids playing on the small playground, and the scent of pizza is in the air as they gear up for lunchtime. “I got the feeling they weren’t friends. I didn’t realize they hate each other.”
“My mom hates CeCe. I doubt CeCe thinks much about my mother. When I said behind the back fighting, I really meant my mom just complains about CeCe all the time.” I haven’t really thought about what a wedge that had put between us.
“You two seemed to be having a serious conversation when I came back.” He says the words cautiously, as though he’s not sure he should wade into this particular pool. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is exactly the way it has been since I started working for CeCe.”
“That’s weird. So things were good between you and your mom before?”
“I don’t know that I would say they were good. Look, after my dad died, my mom kind of shut down. I mean she still took care of me, but it was clear even to a kid that she was going through the motions. The only time she’s ever really animated is when she’s talking about my dad or CeCe and my career. I did invite her, you know.” I don’t want him to think I cut off ties with my mom when I’d been in California. “When I was settled in San Francisco I asked her to come out at least four times, and she always made an excuse. If I wanted to see her for the holidays, I had to come here.”
“And you would have to miss work because I would bet you worked weekends and holidays, too.”
“Yeah. So I missed a few Christmases.” Too many. “I think it was easier to work than to come home and deal with her. Somewhere along the way she became a problem I have to deal with, and I stopped enjoying being around her. She has her work and her friends, and I think if I move again, it might be years before we talk.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I would bet Heath had studied some psych in school. Or maybe he’d learned how to talk to people from his grandmother. Lydia could get me talking, too. “I miss her sometimes. Even though I always felt how sad she was, when I was younger she did things with me. Like she would come to my school plays, and we would get ice cream after. She used to take me out for pizza once a week and we would talk. She would help me with my homework. And then I got to be a teenager and we kind of drifted apart.”
“Drifted? Or fought? I remember being a teen,” Heath prompts.
Talking about this makes me antsy, but it’s a problem I suddenly feel like I need to resolve. “Yeah, there was a lot of fighting. She didn’t like all the time I was spending on things like robotics. I think she wishes I was more feminine.”
“Have you asked her?”
“I don’t know that she would tell me the truth,” I reply. “After I started working with CeCe, she blamed everything on her. The last few years we’ve barely talked. I was surprised when she let me move back in. I now know it’s because she sees me as a source of rent. If I’m honest with myself, I feel a little like an orphan, which is ridiculous because I’m a grown woman.”
“That’s not ridiculous at all. I feel that every day. I was fifteen when my parents died. I was actually in the car,” he says. “I was asleep in the back. They think that’s why I came out of it with relatively no injuries. Broken arm was all I got from a head-on collision with a truck running with its headlights off. Still hurts from time to time, but the point is I woke up in a hospital bed and my grandmother had to tell me they were gone.”
I sense he’s going to say more, but I turn and wrap my arms around him because I can’t stand the thought of these two people I’ve come to…appreciate so much being in that position. I hug him tight and do that thing where I wish him all good things.
