“Well, someone’s going to snatch this kid up,” Mom said. “So it might as well be you.”
“Then ask him for me. I’m serious.”
“I will, once he’s ready. Like I said, he’s raw. He’s trained almost exclusively on paint buckets.”
The fork dropped from my hand, clanging onto the plate and bouncing over the edge of the table. The mewl that escaped my mouth drew everyone’s attention.
“Grace, are you okay?”
I couldn’t talk. Could barely breathe. My body flushed from top to toes. Beats. Mom was talking about Beats. It had to be. My mother. My mother knew him.
“She’s choking,” Dad yelled, reaching over and heroically smacking my back in an attempt to dislodge the chicken he assumed was stuck in my throat.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” I lied, nearly beaten off my chair by his punches. Righting myself, I tentatively asked, “Is his name Beats?”
“Beats?” Her forehead wrinkled. “No, who’s that?”
I was forced to come up with a split-second lie. “Just a drummer on social media who plays on buckets.”
“Oh, no. Not him. This kid’s name is Rory. Rory Higgins.”
* * *
I excusedmyself when my mother left the table, never so relieved that she’d forced me to share my location on her phone and vice versa. It meant I could follow her directly to Camden Place and smoke the evasive drummer right out of his hiding spot. Beats was alive and well, which meant all the crying I’d done for him was for naught. This whole time, he’d just been ghosting me. Steam squealed through my ears.
Arriving shortly after my mother, I made sure to park in a different lot to ensure confidentiality. I then turned off my tracking. I would need ample, undisturbed time to rip Beats a new one. No, not Beats. The slippery sucker was named Rory. Was that really so hard for him to admit? He could’ve kept his last name a secret and still given me Rory, which would have prevented me from writing his stripper name, Beats, into my diary for the past seven months. My mood soured. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved he was alive or if I wanted to rekill him.
I tracked my mother to the recreation center and followed the sound of the drums through the long hallway. Peeking into the open door, I saw them in the back of the class, Beats on the stool and my mother standing just to the right of him. They seemed so in sync, so focused on a goal. Beats had put on some much-needed weight, and his hair was shorter than before, pretty boy in style, but he still maintained that same wild, edgy look I found so attractive. Observing him now, I understood why. It was the way his eyes were set, with a tired squinch in them, and added to that, the darker pigment of the skin circling them, which set them off in striking fashion.
Yet there was something different in the way he interacted with my mother. He was so relaxed, so engaged. Not looking for the nearest exit. It hit me then that the foster kid who didn’t trust adults trusted my mother. Something about that spoke to me, and despite my anger at being dumped, the sweetness of the moment touched my heart.
My mother was healing him.
While they were absorbed in conversation, I slipped into the room and tucked myself behind a podium. With my head resting against the wall, I listened to my mother and Beats interacting and was struck by their familiarity. Their mutual respect. Their friendship, even.
My mom didn’t always get a fair shake. Emma had resented her for her actions when Jake went missing. So had Kyle and, to an extent, Quinn too. But I understood my mother in a way that my other siblings didn’t. Iwasmy mother in so many ways. Both fiercely devoted to family, we’d stop at nothing to protect the ones we loved, but we could just as easily fade into the background when our strength wasn’t needed. My gregarious father was like the sturdy walls of our home, but my practical mother had always been the bedrock.
Watching her now with Beats, I was so proud of her. Like me, she’d been able to look past his shield and see the broken boy behind. Even though he’d abandoned me, I still wanted the best for him, and I loved that my mother was drawing out his talent just as she’d done for Jake before him. Quinn had benefitted too, despite him not realizing his wounds also needed healing.
An hour passed, maybe more, before the two finally called it a night. When I’d heard Beats playing on the street all those months ago, I’d thought he was perfect, but now that my mother had corrected his quirks and introduced tricks to improve his timing, I was amazed. My mother had taken something that was already great and made it incredible.
I slipped out the door, exited the building, and hid behind a gathering of bushes as I waited for the unlikely pair to exit. And they did, together, making small talk as Beats walked my mom out to her car. Ah, he was making sure she got off safely. But he was still a scoundrel, and I couldn’t forget that, no matter how incredibly hot he was.
It was on his way back that I stepped into the light, startling him so thoroughly that his body slammed into the brick retaining wall.
“Son of a fuck!” Beats bounced back, his hands at the ready.
“Stop!” I said, seriously concerned he might punch me.
Beats blinked, placing his right foot a step closer and examining me in the dim light. “Grace?”
He said my name in question form, steeped in disbelief.
“Yes. If you hit me, I’ll kick you in the nuts.”
His hands instantly dropped to his sides. “What are you doing here?”
“I think the question is, what areyoudoing here, alive and well?”
