“Steele and I got into it a little bit,” I said.
“Bad?”
I shrugged.
“He’s just emotional and passionate,” I said.
Tara arched an eyebrow at my last adjective.
“I just mean that when he starts to argue, he gets really into it and doesn’t let up.”
“That sounds like Steele to me.”
You have to ask her.
“Tara, did he ever say anything to you about his father or anything with his family?”
Tara shook her head.
“Never.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
That seemed virtually impossible. How could you date someone for two years and not at least learn who their parents were? How…maybe I had, somehow, overestimated the quality of their relationship.
Small wonder Tara always had eyes for Brock. Which means you’d better be careful in how you interact with Steele.
Handsome and daring as he may be.
Or might Tara not have been perfect in the relationship, either?
“How?”
Tara shrugged. She seemed unfazed by this fact.Good news for Brock, I guess.
“He never took me to see his parents, not once. He never wanted anything to do with them. He said his mother was controlling and his father didn’t matter.”
“Jesus.”
So much for her not being great in their relationship.
“He would sometimes leave on Sundays to go and visit her. I offered to come a couple of times, but every time I did, Steele said that I’d dump him if I spent more than fifteen seconds with his mother. If you ask me, I think his dad walked out on him when he was young, and his mother resents men because of it.”
But that only addressed half of the questions in my head. The “that’s not the thing to be sorry about.” Was it also family?
“Any siblings?”
“He said something similar, that he was the only Harrison that should matter. It felt odd, but I was young and stupid and tried to be into him. I overlooked a lot of red flags with that guy.”
And yet here I am, asking about all those red flags. Maybe the breakup enabled him to lower them. Or maybe he’s got them raised even higher because of it.
“Why? I didn’t think you were that curious about Steele.”
“Ew, no, I’m not,” I said, making a disgusted face. “It just came up in conversation this morning and I felt like you would know. It’s not like I’m going to have drinks with him ever again.”
Tara smiled.
