I pulled my hand from his and reached for my coffee on the table, taking a long drink. The sticker on the cup was a great distraction. Chase was patient as he waited for me to continue, though I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to tell him.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he eventually said.
“It happened to you, too.”
He tried to pull me into his arms, but I didn’t let him. This time I needed space.
“Yeah,” he said. “But you were basically a baby, Mare. That’s hard. Hard for your mom, too.”
I leapt from the couch, antsy with this conversation now. He had no idea.
“My mom was never around, Chase. If she wasn’t working, she was on dates with guys or hanging with her friends. I was an inconvenience for her. The second I could, I got out of there.”
This was a mistake—I knew we shouldn’t have brought up our pasts.
I noticed my bed and made my way to it, the anxiety of the messiness setting in. It was unusual for me to have left it unmade for as long as I did.
I needed order.
I needed organization.
There were no surprises with me. Secrets maybe, but no surprises. If I had order and organization in my life, I knew what to expect.
“Let me help you,” Chase said. He sensed my discomfort, I could tell.
He folded the throw blanket and helped drape it on the end of the bed. He did a pretty nice job, almost as if he might have one on his own bed. I couldn’t remember from the time I was there.
My mind wandered to last night and who he might have been with.
And where.
Did he see Amanda again? Was that who he spent last night with, trying to forget about me?
Or did he hook up with a stranger?
I wasn’t sure which one bothered me more. Or if I truly wanted to know. I had no say. We weren’t together. Yet that green monster always seemed to find its way in, no matter what.
Once the bed was made, he came around to where I was and stood in front of me, waiting. Waiting for me to, I don’t know, look at him or tell him I was OK.
But I wasn’t. My past was not what I wanted to be talking about, and I think he finally figured that out.
“It’s hard growing up with one parent sometimes, isn’t it?” he asked.
The couch almost groaned as he fell against it. Small dust clouds flew into the sunrays coming through the window. The tiny particles distracted me from his question, but then I saw him staring at the ceiling. Lost in his own thoughts.
Once I joined him on the couch, he chuckled to himself. My eyes drifted to see him running a hand through his hair as he did.
“I don’t know about your mom, but my dad kinda sucked at the single-parent thing.”
The mention of his dad made my heart stop, but I realized this was reminiscing. This would not be centered around me.
“He thought since we weren’t toddlers, ya know, eight and ten, we could take care of ourselves.” The pause Chase took accentuated the sarcasm of his father’s actions. “He was more concerned about his company. He would later tell us it was our legacy and hewasthinking of us by going to work all the time.”
The years I worked for Robert Parker, I knew him to be fair. Tough, but fair. He wasn’t an easy boss to have, that was for sure. I had to be on my game at all times. But he taught me a lot and did so much more for me even before I stepped foot into the offices of PFA.
Hearing about this side of him was eye-opening.
Chase turned toward me on the couch. His look softened.
