In the future.
Wayin the future with how this conversation was going.
“I don’t think we need to tell people about us either,” she said.
“You want what we have to stay a secret?” he asked. “When your parents and brother know? My grandmother too?”
He had a point. “I meant we don’t have to announce it to anyone.”
He laughed. “I’ve never announced anything in my life.”
“There you go,” she said, moving out of his arms. Just proved her point again. He was probably monkey branching for the past decade, moving from woman to woman. No need to let people know if that was the case.
How did she end up like this when it was the last thing she ever wanted?
She opened her oven door to check on dinner. Baked ziti with chunks of spicy sausage. Easy enough to do and she needed a distraction from the route this conversation was traveling down.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes, why?” she asked. She opened the fridge and pulled out a beer to hold up to him. He shook his head, so she grabbed two glasses and filled them with water. These were the only two things she’d seen him drink other than coffee in the morning.
“You seem off,” he said. “Like something is bothering you.”
“Nah. It’s all good. Just crazy at work. Lots going on.”
He hesitated for a moment. As if he was trying to decide whether or not to push her more. She was disappointed when he didn’t. “I’m sure it’s hard to keep it all straight.”
“Much easier than keeping your schedule straight,” she said. “Not sure how you do it.”
“I’ve got my fireman’s schedule uploaded into my phone. I share it with my grandmother and she does the scheduling at the bar.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I gave her a lot of things to do to get her off her feet, but she is still out there dealing with customers.”
“You know, I find it very sweet that you do that for your grandmother. Can I ask, is the business only in your name?”
“It is,” he said. “She didn’t have the best credit, then with her age, and no solid retirement set up, the loan would have beenharder. I’ve got some investments I’ve done for her over the years. She doesn’t know about them.”
“Awww.” She moved over and put her arms around his neck. Maybe he didn’t treat women in a relationship all that seriously but he did his grandmother. That went a long way with her. “I would have never thought of this from you.”
He squinted one eye at her. “Cuz you thought I was a dick?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But when we were kids, no one really knew much about you. You were always getting in trouble for something. Fights too.”
“I was labeled a troublemaker long before I got in trouble.”
“I want to argue with that, but I can’t because I don’t know.”
“Let me break it down for you. My mother was a kid herself when she had me. If she knew who my father was, she never shared it with me or my grandmother. She liked to party. Drinking, drugs and whoring. We lived with my grandmother and many times she left for weeks on end.”
“I’m sorry, Chance. I didn’t know.”
“Few did. If they had, I might have been taken away. My grandmother took care of me the best she could. We didn’t have much. My mother worked a bunch of dead-end jobs she was always being fired from. My grandmother has been in the food service industry her whole life.”
“She worked at your pub and you bought it when she might have lost her job,” she said.
He’d explained that already. It sounded to her as if Rhea’s pride wouldn’t let her not work, but it’d be hard at her age to get another job, Jocelyn was positive.
