“If she doesn’t back out on me. She’s really shy, timid around new people.”
“You better tell her if she plans on sticking around, she needs to get over that, or else Cora is going to put together an ambush and the girls will end up on her doorstep without you there as a buffer.”
That was exactly what would happen, so I made a mental reminder to push Saint a little harder the next time we hung out. I didn’t mind pushing her, usually the results ended up with us naked and wrapped around each other, but I was still leery of pushing too far because I just didn’t know where her breaking point was. And frankly, I didn’t know where mine was either. I liked her, really liked her, in bed and out of it, but there was always something unknown about her that kept me on the edge. She was a strong girl, had to be in order to do her job and be as good at it as she obviously was, but outside of her work and away from the hospital, there was a veil of vulnerability and unease that surrounded her. I could practically see the struggle she was having within herself when we were together. She wanted to be with me, wanted to spend time together, but the gears in her head would start turning and I could see her trying to figure out how much of herself she could give to me and still feel safe.
I was also doing my best to show her a good time. Ever since the incident in the backseat of my car, I kept it in the forefront of my mind that she essentially had missed out on all the teenage nonsense that went along with boys figuring out how to get into a girl’s pants. So I took her to the movies and tried to get my hands in her shirt. I took her out for pizza and made out with her on her doorstep when I dropped her off. I tried to get her to go on a double date with Rule and Shaw, but she had balked at the idea, not ready to be that fully ingrained in my life yet, which led to the question of what exactly we were doing together.
I had never spent more than one night or one weekend with the same girl, so to me we were doing something that looked like starting a relationship. To her, though, I just didn’t know. She texted me, called me when she had free time, but never stayed the night at my place when she came over and never asked me to stay when I was at hers. Granted, she never asked me to leave either, but there was just a lot of gray area happening, and I felt like I was navigating all of it blindly since I had never even been interested in starting something with anyone before. I knew she was special. I just didn’t know how to show her that beyond what I was already doing.
The drive to Brookside went quick, mostly because my mind was running over everything and didn’t give me a minute of peace. I pulled into the driveway and breathed out a grateful sigh that at least my idiot stepfather’s SUV wasn’t anywhere to be seen, unless it was in the garage. That was highly unlikely because what good did it do in the garage where the neighbors couldn’t see it, marvel at its awesomeness, and be eaten alive with envy at Grant Loften’s obvious wealth and prestige? Fucker. I would never hate anyone as much as I hated that guy and God willing there would come a time that my fist and his face had a meeting.
My entire childhood had been spent under his disapproving eyes. I could never do anything right, was always treated like a burden by him. One of my clearest memories of his sheer shitheadedness had been when I couldn’t have been more than four or five. I had just discovered crayons. I loved the colors, loved to swirl designs on anything and everything I could get my little, unruly hands on, including the walls. It was just crayon and what little kid didn’t draw on the wall? But to Grant it had been a crime akin to murder. To this day I can see him snapping every single one of the crayons and making me watch. I remembered the acrid smell of bleach as he made me scrub not just my bedroom wall where my art lived, but all the walls in the house. I was just a little kid, but to him that didn’t matter. Just like now, he never thought I did anything right.
What made it worse was the fact that he obviously loved my mom, treated her like she was a queen, and gave her whatever she wanted. He just had no time or use for me. And I would never, ever forgive him for making her choose between the two of us. Of course my mother should have picked me, I was her child, it was her job to love me unconditionally, but she hadn’t, and it was Grant who had made her have to make that call.
He was a man that had always been about appearance, a man all about prestige and perception, so the fact that I looked the way I did, acted how I wanted, had never made my time under his roof pleasant. As an adult … every single time he looked down his nose at me, every time he puckered his lips in disdain at what I was wearing or what I was saying … it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to knock all his perfectly veneered teeth down his throat.
I jogged up the walkway that had a light dusting of snow on it still and knocked on the door. How sad was it that I was a stranger in the place that was supposed to be where my family lived? I saw my mom’s dark head peek through the window and then it took a solid four minutes for her to decide to open the door. We faced each other through the glass of the storm door and there was no mistaking the look of disappointment that flashed across her eyes when she took in my black hoodie, baseball hat, and jeans. I looked like I looked every other day of the year, and it was always lacking in her eyes. It shouldn’t still sting. I was an adult, had been on my own for way longer than she had ever pretended to raise me, but still there was always a tiny part of me that wanted her to see worth in me even though it always ended up with me feeling like she had drop-kicked my heart.
“What are you doing here? You didn’t call, Nashville.”
God, with the full name. I think she used it mostly because she knew how much it irked me.
“No I didn’t, but I want to talk to you for a minute, and I figured I could catch you at home.”
She played with the diamond necklace at her throat and put a hand on the door. My mom was a fairly tiny woman. I got my dark skin tone and hair from somewhere in her lineage. I could only assume everything else that made me who I was I got from Phil. Thank goodness for small favors.
“Grant will be home shortly. He won’t like that you dropped by unannounced.”
And just like it had always been, what Grant liked always won out over what was right and decent.
“It won’t take too long, Mom. Seriously, just give me five minutes.”
“You drove for two hours just to talk for five minutes, Nashville? That makes no sense.” Always with the censure and disapproval. It was a miracle I had managed to turn out as normal as I had.