She smiled, but said nothing more. Oh, right. I was supposed to be doing the talking.
“My dad was a tiling expert. Did the usual stuff, kitchens and baths, but did a ton of custom work too. He’d take me on jobs with him when they fell on the weekend and my mom was working. He’d have me swirl on the adhesive, showing me just the right amount, the right technique. He had a great eye for colors and designs that you might not think would work well together, but they did.” I sat back in the chair, remembering.
I laid a hand on my bare stomach and noticed that Lily’s eyes followed my movement. There was just a tiny movement from her legs, but I knew that she liked watching me, liked my body. Which was only fair, because I was crazy about her long, lean—but just enough curves in the right places—body.
“And so he taught you? Your dad?” she asked, pulling my mind away from her body…as much as it ever could be.
“Yeah. Well, not really. I was just a kid, so it was more ‘See what I’m doing here, Lucas’ kind of stuff. Though he’d let me mix the grout up and things like that. But I watched. I…watched.”
I still remembered his strong and beat-up hands as he’d apply the adhesive. The precision with which he’d place the tile, even for custom mosaic work. Work that looked like he was making it up as he went, though I now knew he must have seen it in his head. Most times he didn’t even bother with the plastic dividers between tiles, so sure was he of his own skill at placing the ceramic and glass tiles.
“How old did you say you were when he died?”
“Twelve,” I said with no hesitation. Cursing the near croak that came out in my voice. I couldn’t look at Lily, didn’t want to see any pity from her. Instead, I stared out the window, seeing the Bribury campus from a view I’d never seen before. Inside and high up. It was a beautiful, small campus. Hard to imagine there was such ugliness only a short car ride away.
“He worked very hard to make a good living. My mom worked hard too. We didn’t have a lot, but he got us out of the worst neighborhoods. I mean, we weren’t on the Bribury side of town…” I waved at the scene outside the window. She didn’t say anything, and I silently thanked her. I didn’t need to hear any rich-girl guilt about how she was sure we did the best we could or some such shit. But Lily didn’t do that. She just waited. I could feel her eyes on me, but I kept my gaze out the window.
“So, yeah, we weren’t in the worst neighborhood in town, but it was bad enough. My dad was shot during a convenience store robbery. Just in there to get a pack of cigarettes on his way home from work.”
“Oh my God. Oh, Lucas, I’m so sorry.” Still she did not move. Thankfully, or I probably wouldn’t have been able to go on. Would most likely be bawling like a baby against Lily’s soft tits.
I nodded, acknowledging her words of sympathy. “Yeah, it was bad. It really threw my mom. She was basically catatonic for a year. She lost her job as a secretary here on campus, ’cause she just wouldn’t show up. Later I realized she’d started…self-medicating, trying to block out the pain.” I swallowed, the words hard to speak. Hard to think about that time in my life, but also because…
“That’s what you did, too,” she said, totally getting it. Totally getting me. “With the Oxy. Blocked out the pain. And not just from your shoulder.”
No, not just my shoulder. It was the pain that I had lost my one chance at making a better life. That salvation, an easy life for my mom and Andy, had been in my grasp, with the likelihood of an NFL contract, when it all was just torn away, like the tendon in my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I said softly, almost a whisper. There was no judgment in Lily’s voice, but I still judged myself. And came up short every time.
But now, now it seemed I was getting a second chance to do it right. Oh, it might not be the money of the NFL, or the joy of watching my mom and Andy move into a swanky new place. But this? Taking care of Andy and seeing that my mom gets help? Working a good, honest job where I wasn’t looking over my shoulder all the time? Knowing what money I made was paying the rent on Andy and my mom’s place and not going straight to a dealer for more Oxy?
Yeah, I was not going to fuck up this second chance.
I looked at her then, finally able to handle what looking at a naked Lily would do to me in this vulnerable state. She’d covered up her ass with the ocean-like blanket, but her back was still visible. A back I’d run my tongue down just an hour ago. A back made strong from hours in the pool, yet still so female and soft.
Lily was part of my second chance, for sure. And again I told myself to not fuck this up.
“So, anyway,” I said, needing to get back on track so I didn’t crawl back into bed with her and totally blow off picking up Andy. “The guy who used to work with my father tiling, Frank, went to work at Bribury after my dad died. When I came back from USC, he called and asked if I wanted a job on the facilities crew there. Here,” I corrected myself, taking in my surroundings. “He’d worked his way up the past ten years and is head of the maintenance crew.”
“That was nice of him, to look out for you.”
“Yeah, but I told him no. Told him I was doing okay. I’d moved in with Stick and was…doing some work with him. I was throwing a few bucks my mom’s way to help out. And I didn’t really want a regular gig like he was offering.”
“Because then you couldn’t be high all the time.” Again, no judgment, just relaying the facts as she guessed them. And, of course, she was right.
“Right. And it was working for a while, and I seemed to think it could go on that way indefinitely.” I shook my head at my own idiocy. “Stupid fuck,” I said. She didn’t argue with me.
“Then I realized my mom was using again. She’d started about a year after my dad died. Party drugs at first with the married scumbag who left her pregnant. I don’t think she used when she was pregnant, but I’m not sure. But after that asshole walked away from her, and she’d had Andy, she turned to harder stuff.” I had tried to block out those years. Me being fifteen and wanting only to play ball and get laid but having a bawling, squealing, baby half brother at home and a mother who could have been in any kind of shape at any given time. “I kind of checked out then. I wasn’t much help to her. I was only looking out for myself.”
“You were a kid yourself,” she said.
She was right, and I knew that on an intellectual level. But on a gut level? “I was scared and selfish.”
“Again, a kid.” Her voice was a little firmer now. I nodded, agreeing. I would never totally let myself off the hook for being emotionally AWOL those years, but I was trying to make up for it now.
“Anyway, my mom maintained. A functional junkie, I guess you’d call it. She held down jobs…until she didn’t. Andy was always taken care of, but that was also due to Mrs. Jankowski.” It was one of the reasons I’d moved into my mom’s place instead of taking Andy to the apartment I shared with Stick. Besides that apartment not being a proper environment for a six-year-old, Mrs. Jankowski, being a caring woman who loved Andy and was basically a shut-in, was a godsend.
I waved a hand, not wanting to talk about all this shit anymore. “You know the rest. My mom started using again six months ago. I got clean. I went and saw Frank, asked him if the job was still available. He could have told me to go fuck myself, he would have had every right.”
