“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and then he’s gone.
We fix our own plates, and I love her cooking so much, combined with the fact that I’m a stress eater, and my plate is heaping. We sit down at the rustic iron-and-glass table on the wooden deck overlooking the beach below the hillside, and eat in happy silence.
• • •
Present
That is until now, when my mom takes all my plans to avoid talks of King and all the mistakes we’re making with each other left and right and she throws it all right out the window.
“Do you know what you’re doing with this boy?” she repeats her earlier question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hedge.
“Adrienne Malone, I did not raise you to lie to your mother,” she says sternly.
“Like I said, it’s all a mess,” I say, dropping my half-eaten sandwich to my plate and pushing it away.
“What’s a mess?”
“My life,” I reply.
“Now, it can’t be all that bad.”
My mom thinks there is nothing I can’t do. I love her for it, but right now, I just want her to tell me how to unfuck my life, and doesn’t that just make me feel even worse, because at twenty-seven years old, I should not need my mom to fix my problems. Right now, they just seem so… overwhelming.
“It is. It really is,” I say, and then I tell her all about Dad’s plans to retire and about Bobby wanting me to give up everything for him and get out of his way. I tell her about King and how he makes me feel both good and bad. And I tell her about the mysterious letter writer who wants to kill me. “So what am I going to do? I should break everything off with him, right?”
“Oh, my darling girl, you haven’t got a prayer.”
Chapter 11
Lightning
Ineed to go faster. It’s the only way to clear my head.
I push down on the accelerator going into the next curve. I keep pushing and pushing and don’t let up. I can’t drive myself around town; I can’t be alone. I can’t focus so that I can win the next race and work my way to the head of DHR. But here, I can just drive laps. I can push myself and let everything in my brain just… go. Just flit away.
Yesterday, after King checked the perimeter of my mom’s hillside home, giving me the opportunity to spill my guts to my favorite person, he did as promised and joined us on the patio for lunch.
“Please, help yourself and join us,” she said when he walked back around the house.
“Thank you.”
I wasn’t actually sure what he was going to do. Would he reject my mom’s invitation with the excuse of duty, or would he take her offer? I was surprised when he walked to the side table and fixed himself a plate before sitting down in between Mom and me at the large round table.
“So tell me about yourself,” my mom asked, and I felt my spine stiffen. I didn’t know how King would react to her interrogation. My cheeks also burned, because I was twenty-seven years old and both my parents still treated me like I’m sixteen and going out on my first date. I can handle them one at a time, but both of them in one morning was too much.
“I’m thirty-four and from Texas,” he said between bites of fruit salad.
“And you’re in private security?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No ma’ams here,” she replied with a laugh.
“I have to,” he drawled with a smirk playing about the side of his full lips. “If I didn’t, my mom would beat my ass.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that.”
