The question caused my hand to jerk and topple my drink. The lid held, but I felt as flustered as I would have had it spilled.
“Sorry.”
“Low blood sugar again?”
“Must be.” I took a huge gulp from my drink. “This is helping.”
He was still eyeing me a little askance, though I couldn’t tell if it was due to physical concern or him picking up on the fact that I was delaying answering him.
“So?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Selena about Chase; I did. But she’d want to know everything about him, and she’d 100 percent end up telling Mom, who’d insist on having Chase over. With Nick, Mom already knew him, so she’d given me a little leeway on the meet-the-parents dinner front. But she’d never even seen Chase, which meant I wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Which also meant he’d meet Dad, which…no.
“I guess it’s just been kind of hectic for a while, what with her dropping out of college and trying to become a singer. Every time we talk lately, it’s about that or softball.” I had to put my drink down and hide my shaking hands under the table when I returned the question. “What about you? You haven’t mentioned me either.”
Chase smiled at me. “Brandon’s got his own girl problems going on. Didn’t feel like rubbing it in how good things are going with mine.”
One corner of my mouth lifted. “Good, huh?”
He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on the table. “Great.”
The other corner lifted and my heart rate sped up. The table was too big for me to lean forward and…meet him…but the idea had me tingling all the way down to my toes.
When our food came, Chase sat back against his chair. “And anyway, Brandon’s never been great with…”
“Girls?”
“That too.” He laughed, picking up his carne asada taco. “More just relationships. His dad never remarried after his mom died, never even dated that I know of. So the idea of being with someone or even really hearing about it secondhand…not my cousin’s favorite thing.”
“Your uncle must have really loved her.” My voice sounded so far away in my ears. It wasn’t strained or shaky. I almost felt like I was in a trance, watching myself calmly ask questions about the woman my dad had had an affair with. “What was her name?”
“Maggie—Margaret McCormick.”
Maggie.My mom’s name was Adriana. It always sounded so nice in my head along with my dad’s: Dennis and Adriana. I liked them together. Dennis and Maggie clashed with a physical pain in my chest, a throb that I half lifted my hand to press away.
“And yeah, he loved her,” Chase went on. “My mom must have taken thousands of photos of them, and it’s impossible to miss, but I don’t think Brandon has seen half of them. Uncle Bran can’t bring himself to look at them, so they’re buried in boxes somewhere in the abyss that is my mom’s garage…”
“What?” I asked, my hand sliding toward him, distracted from all the info Chase was giving me by the way his voice fell off.
He bit into his taco and chewed a long time before swallowing and answering me. “I told you my mom is a photographer. What I didn’t tell you is that she’s also kind of a hoarder.” He lifted his taco again but stopped it an inch from his mouth and lowered it back to his plate. “I hate that word. You immediately think of those TV shows with people buried under newspapers and broken toaster collections or something. She’s not like that.”
She was like something, though. The muscles along the side of Chase’s jaw tightened.
“She has a hard time letting go of things. After my father left, she tried to keep everything.”
“I get that.”
Chase didn’t smile, not exactly. “Yeah, well, it’s a problem. I had an apartment with a few guys right after high school, but I had to move back home recently. I brought my last box the day we met.”
I’d been pretty well consumed with my own issues that night, but I remembered him saying he hadn’t had the greatest day. When I’d asked why he’d felt the need to smash something afterward, he’d told me to ask him later. I guessed it was later.
“There are three bedrooms, but hers is the only one you can still get into. I don’t even know if there’s still a bed in my old room.”
“Then where do you sleep?”
“On the couch.”
I made a face. Chase was the opposite of small. Even if it was a massive couch, I doubted it was comfortable.
