AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I feel his lips on my forehead, and he squeezes me back. We sit for a moment.
He kisses me again, and then eases away though not far. “I don’t know that you ever get over a loss like that. I don’t think your mother has.”
“She’s never dated.” I lean back, letting the sun hit my face. I don’t like talking about things like this, but it feels right with him. “I think time stopped for her, and she’s just waiting until she gets to see him again. It made her bitter. I wish I could have been the kind of daughter she wanted. Apparently that’s Anika.”
“I find it interesting she’s made such a connection with your friends. Did she have that before you moved out?”
“No. I mean, she was nice to them. She liked Harper and Ani, but I wouldn’t say she took a special interest in either of them.” It was why it felt so weird for them to have a whole relationship with her.
“Have you considered that the friendship with Ani is so she can keep up with what you’re doing?”
I snort at the idea. And then wish I didn’t snort at all. It’s not a sexy sound. “I highly doubt that.”
“I don’t know.” Heath sounds unsure. “She said she feels uncomfortable in the world you move in.”
“She doesn’t understand it.” And the truth is I don’t understand her. I get that there are things about the tech business people who live outside of it don’t get, but in the end it’s all the same hard work and the same hard workers getting screwed by the top dogs. It’s capitalism at its finest, and I would think she would applaud me for learning how to navigate those waters.
“Most people don’t, and it changes constantly,” Heath points out. “All I’m saying is her problems with CeCe might be more about losing you than you think. Even people who don’t express them have emotions. For a while after my parents died I shut down. I barely made friends in high school because I didn’t want ties that could be broken.”
I can’t stand the thought of him as a lonely teenager. Heath is a light in the world, the guy who everybody can be friends with. “But you had your grandmother.”
“Only because she wouldn’t let me shut her out.” He takes a long breath, as though thinking about that time weighs on him. “She made me see a therapist, and when that didn’t seem to work, she tried something else. One night she brought a bunch of files into my room and told me she would pay me if I would make a database for her. I was already into computers, so it seemed like a way to make some cash.”
“She gave you her client files.” I’ve wondered exactly how he’d gotten so invested in her business. I’d thought it might simply be because of the family ties, but this makes more sense.
He nods. “And I started building this database. The next weekend she asked me to join her for a client meeting. So I could take notes. I was a faster typist, she said.”
Of course Lydia had found a way to bridge their worlds. “She brought you into her business and got to learn about something you were interested in.”
“She did, and I was weirdly fascinated by the idea that she could take two people and figure out if they had a shot. I’ve gone with her on over two hundred meetings at this point, and I’ve followed up with a lot of her older clients. What I figured out during those meetings was that it was worth it.”
I’m not following him. “Worth it?”
“I figured out that what my parents had, the love they felt for each other, it was worth it no matter how it ended. Grief is a weird thing. It can warp the way you look at the world. Especially depending on where a person is in life. You were very young, and I know you felt grief…”
He doesn’t have to qualify it for me. “I was very young. I felt the loss of my father, and I still feel it, but it’s a wistful thing. A wish that didn’t come true. Sometimes I barely remember him. I can remember that he loved me, remember I loved him. Or maybe that’s a trick of my mind, a way to stay close to someone I never truly knew. It’s not the same for my mom. They had been together since they were in high school. They should have been together for fifty or sixty more years. Her world ended that day, but the problem was I was still in it.”
His hand covers mine. “I don’t think so. And I don’t think she would exchange you for your dad. I know I’m glad you’re here.”
