I’ve been so busy wallowing in my crap that I haven’t noticed how different her deep-set eyes look. They’re sullen with dark circles that I won’t dare point out.
“You sure everything was good at his place?” she asks again, pulling the glass from her lips, then pushing away from the table.
“Oh my God. Yes. Why?”
“Well, I texted him and asked how the house turned out…” She lets the silence linger between us as she picks up her plate and cup and walks them over to the sink, dropping them inside it.
“You texted him…and?” I drag my finger across the top of my hand where Rich thumped it.
Maybe if I stroke it enough, I’ll teleport back to his kitchen so I can have a do-over. I can tell him to keep his raggedy ass hands to himself because things like that aren’t supposed to confuse my already fuzzy brain. His voice shouldn’t have made heat cloak my body, and his touch shouldn’t have made my nipples pucker against my bra. Uncle Kenny was right. I shouldn’t have gone over there.
“He says you left a pile of laundry in his room, the baseboards were still dirty, and you forgot to clean the toilets,” Aunt Faye rushes out.
“Huh?”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “He said?—”
“I heard you and I…I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I’m just telling you what he to?—”
“Tell him to send you pictures then.”
She raises her eyebrows. “So you’re saying he’s lying? I’ve never asked a client to send me pictures of what I did wrong, and I’ve never had any complaints from Rich.”
Heat sneaks up my neck, and I drop my fork. “First of all, his baseboards weren’t even freaking dirty, and he didn’t even have any laundry for me to wash. What did he want? For me to pull stuff out of my?—”
Oh.
I close my mouth.
I think he might be twisting my memories like AJ did sometimes—telling me something happened when I know it didn’t all because I messed with his stuff.
I shake my head, rubbing my hot neck. “I thought he barely talked?”
“Yeah, to Kenny.” She shrugs. “Me and Rich talk all the time.”
“Since when?”
“He’s my client, Lovie. We gotta’ communicate some way.”
“Oh yeah, because he pays you, right? You’re letting Uncle Kenny and these projects take over your life again.”
She rolls her eyes. “Why would I lie about him paying me? You can’t leave his house any way you want just because of some preconceived notion you have about him.”
There’s something about Rich that changed things around here. Aunt Faye has never worked in the Bottoms, she’s never taken a job from any guy who trained at Worthing, and as long as I’ve been alive she’sneverwalked around with dark circles.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks like I’m the insane one.
She turns her entire body around this time, leaning against the sink like she did yesterday. Her eyes brush my bandaged nails, then the rest of my body.
“I told you I was.”
She folds her arms and looks at the floor, then the rest of what she’s been trying to say comes out.
“You showed up with nothing but the clothes on your back, and you expect me to keep playing dumb? You got a different phone and a new phone number…and your nails, Lovie. Look at your nails. What the hell is going on?”
I can’t say it out loud because I can’t have her looking at me like the security guard outside of the Liberty Tower did, like the cop from New Year’s Eve, or like Blake did when I climbed into his backseat with a bloody face. I don’t want to hear that same strain of disappointment in her voice that only comes out when she talks about Mama.
