“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right back.” Shaw kisses me on the cheek before he heads out the door. I notice that he’s left the twenty on the edge of the counter. I grab it and hand it back to my mom. Her smile quickly fades. Now she’s glaring at me, her eyebrows going up.
“I know, Mom.”
“Look, I know you don’t have to listen to me when it comes to romance. I haven’t set the best example.” My mom doesn’t believe in marriage. She’s had a series of boyfriends over the years, all good men, who all left when they realized she’s serious about not becoming a Mrs. Anybody. My dad has his own family, grown kids with his wife, and he’s still bitter that my mom wasn’ttheone. She’s currently dating a high school Vice Principal named Harold. Another good man. We’ll see what happens.
“I would never say that. I don’t even think that. Harold is great.”
“Okay, but I do want you to listen to me. You two need to be careful. Like I said, I obviously don’t know the girl, but this is ten steps further than what you two had with Corrine. Her mother couldn’t comprehend a healthy polyamorous relationship, fine. Whatever. Have you two considered what this means for this young woman’s life?”
“I have.”
“What’s her name? What does she do?”
“Her name is Brooklyn. She’s an A.D.A. from the Bronx.”
“Vaughn.”
“I know.” For the second time in twenty-four hours, I regret not going with Shaw.
* * *
“What did Miss Lynetta have to say?” Shaw asks when we’re back in his car. We’d spent the rest of the afternoon helping my mom around the house and now we’re heading to my place for dinner. I thought it was safer to wait to debrief him on the piece of her mind she’d given me about Brooklyn while he was out getting chocolate and wood glue.
“Just what you’d expect. The extended version of ‘don’t fuck around and get Brooklyn fired from her highly political job. Don’t fuck around and end up with the cops wondering if the three of you planned this whole thing.’”
“Ooof,” Shaw groans.
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to think that way, ’cause it’s not true and the cops are too lazy to open a closed case just to point the finger in the wrong direction, but…”
“But what?”
“For some reason, I keep thinking about Mrs. Johnson and what she would do if she found out.”
“If she found out about Brook? Or if she found out about us with any woman? ’Cause I don’t think she’d be too jazzed about either of those scenarios.”
“You’re right.”
“And, to be honest, I don’t give a shit what she thinks. We were good to her daughter and her daughter wanted to be with us for a while. Whatever happened, all of it involved her daughter making her own grown-ass decisions. The only person she should be pissed at is the man who took her daughter away.”
“You’re right.”
“What’s really eating you?” Shaw asks.
“Man, I don’t know. That this feels—shit. It feels good to me. I want to get to know Brook better, but you know me.”
“I do. And you’re right. Your intuition is pretty spot on. But your mom is right too. This isn’t just about us and after last night, I want to make sure neither of us forget it.”
I reach over and squeeze his thigh. “I’m glad you two had that time together. Jealous as hell I couldn’t be there for the fun parts, though.”
“You missed the extremely rare sight of me shedding tears too.”
“Babe.” Shaw told me they talked and gave me a good summary of their conversation, but he hadn’t said anything about breaking down, in front of Brooklyn, no less.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s not a big deal that you cried, but it’s a good thing that you let it out. How did Brooklyn react?”
“She handled it well. Offered support. Let me get it out. Like I said, we had a good talk.”
