38

AIDEN

 

I slept with a girl in my bed last night. A girl that I’m pretty crazy about. She wrapped herself around me all night and I fuckin’ loved it.

Now, we’re back in San Diego, heading into the lobby of the condo, and my mother is standing there by the security desk. 

Fuck sakes.

She’s wearing a white power suit and enough diamonds to fund a small war. She’s got her eyes on Carly and they’re appraising. I grab Carly’s hand protectively. Carly looks up at me and then her eyes dart to my mother and I see hesitation on her face.

“You are back,” Audra greets.

“I am. I’d planned to come see you tomorrow, but good you’re here. We can chat.”

My mother looks surprised. She wasn’t expecting me to come see her. She must still think she’s effectively hiding shit.

The security guard is sitting there with uncertainty. I give him a nod. She must have been stopped from going up. I sent specific directions that no one was permitted access, even if they insisted I’d allow it. He looks relieved to see me. No doubt she’s been making his life miserable for however long she’s been standing here.

We move to the elevator and when the door opens, I gesture for my mother to enter. She does. Carly goes next. I wheel Carly’s suitcase into the elevator and press the button.

“Mother, this is Carly Adler.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carmichael,” Carly says and extends her hand.

My mother looks at it a beat, rolls her eyes and then gives Carly a limp handshake.

Carly’s face is going pink but she’s trying to be friendly.

My mother glances at me and likely sees the hard look I’m giving her, the “don’t be a bitch” look.

“You work for CC?”  Audra asks.

“Yes, I relocated just over a week ago.”

“And you’re already sleeping with my son?”

“Audra,” I snap. “Carly’s my girlfriend. You ever get me to your dinner table again, she’ll be there with me, so be very fucking careful right now.”

Her eyebrows fly up. Pretty sure my mother didn’t think the word girlfriend was still in my vocabulary.

“My apologies, Carly,” she says without any sincerity whatsoever.

Carly says nothing. She looks a little shell-shocked. A big fuckin’ switch for the way Carly’s mother was with me, that’s for certain.

“How’d you get here, Mother? Hope you didn’t drive. Your license is revoked, I’m assuming.”

She gives me a narrow-eyed look. “I have a driver.”

“Yet you drove to the Greer residence the other day in your housekeeper’s car.”

My mother’s eyes bulge.

She swallows. I give her a wide smile.

Nothing is said the rest of the elevator ride up, but the tension is thick.

We get to the apartment and Carly immediately announces, “I’ll go get unpacked. Um, nice to meet you, Mrs. Carmichael.” She rushes off towards the bedrooms with her luggage, shutting the hallway doors on her way, to give us privacy.

I put my laptop bag on the breakfast bar.

“What do you want, Audra?”

“Go ahead,” she says. “Hit me with your hate. Tell me, Aiden. All of what you’ve dug up on me. I want it all so there won’t be any blindsiding.”

She has tears in her eyes. Tears. I’m a bit thrown for a second. Her demeanor has completely altered since the elevator.

“You’re fucking Roger Greer.”

She looks at the floor.

“I knew about the fucking around, Audra, but Roger?”

She shakes her head. “That’s… I won’t get into this with my son.”

“I don’t fuckin’ understand you.”

She brushes her dyed blonde hair away from her eyes. “Anything I say to you right now is pointless, because you already hate me, so there’s nothing I can say to you, because I know you’ll use it to hurt me.”

“You obviously don’t want a relationship with me, lady, because otherwise, you’d take a leap of faith.”

“If I want one, will I get one, Aiden?”

I stare.

She folds her arms and taps her toe.

“You won’t know if you don’t try, Mom.”

She flinches.

I didn’t use the ‘Mom’ on purpose. It’s probably been since I was a teenager that I’ve called her anything but Mother or Audra.  It strikes me as weird that it has come out now. Maybe because I wish I had a fuckin’ Mom.

She’s staring at me, blinking at me, looking ready to either bolt or bawl, I don’t know.

“I’ll give you a prompt, then. Why the fuck have you sent Sienna around me, tryin’ to pull matchmaking shit?”

Last night Sienna came in, trying her “Please let’s try it one more time” bullshit, thinking her grand gesture of flying to New York would magically make me change my mind.

I told her I have a girlfriend. She didn’t believe me. She told me she knows all about my inability to commit to someone, courtesy of my mother, and she knows it’s because I still love her. I laughed in her face and she turned on the waterworks. I told her to get out of my apartment, that I’m going to phone my girlfriend to say goodnight.

She stormed out and when I heard the door knock not two minutes later, I’d about had it with that bitch. I was very fuckin’ happy to have Carly there instead.

My mother sighs.

“Talk to me,” I say, sitting down on the couch. “Pretend you and I haven’t been at war for years. Talk to me like you give a shit what I think of you.”

She blinks the tears away.  “If I talk, are you actually willing to listen, Aiden?”

“Try me.”

“I’m in love with Roger. We’ve been in love for four years.”

Love? She doesn’t use that word unless she’s talking about designer brands.

“What about Suzette? Your best friend?”

“Suzette… she’s… sometimes love just happens, Aiden. Or, you think it does. He won’t leave her. He’s running for office, so it would look bad. I thought I could convince him, but… yesterday told me otherwise.”

“You’re in love with Roger, but you’re sleeping around.”

She shakes her head. “To distract your hound dog.”

Wow. I blink. “You’re cheating on my father with his best friend and you’re cheating on his best friend with your personal trainer, the gardener, and the waiter at the country club in order to protect Roger?”

She says nothing. This woman and her logic…

“What’s the deal with Sienna?” I ask.

“She caught me at the house when Suzette was away, so I had to think fast on my feet. That was a few days before I had the Greers over for dinner.”

Well, that explains it.

“So, you pretended you were there to see her about getting back with me and orchestrated that dinner as part of it.”

She gives a quick nod.

I shake my head. “Well, here we are, then. Dad’s got Cancer and you upped the life insurance payout in case he croaks. You’re gonna have to go to court for assaulting an officer and a DUI. You slept through your daughter giving birth to your granddaughter because you were too drunk to move. You’re sleeping with Dad’s best friend ten years after your affair with his brother who killed himself out of guilt. What else have we got?”

“I think that’s about it,” she whispers. “I’ve decided to end it with Roger. This has been too exhausting. I met him yesterday to try to convince him we need to come clean now before he starts campaigning harder. He won’t give me a straight answer about leaving Suzette and he’s talking about my being arrested as well as my sexual dalliances being a potential problem. And he doesn’t want your father to know. So, ultimatum done, he’s full of excuses and that tells me all I need to know. I need to move on. I… I want to fix things with us, with your brother and sister, but especially you and I, Aiden, because our relationship is the one with the most damage.”

“Fix things?”

She nods. “I’m thinking I should ask your father for a divorce as a start. Maybe take some time to figure out how I can be happy again.”

“Let me get this straight. You came in here with venom in your veins, insulted my girlfriend, and I drop that I know you’re sleeping with Roger and now you’ve seen the error of your ways?” I’m shaking my head.

“All this has been weighing on me, Aiden. It’s all just clear right now. I know it won’t be easy, but… my children hate me, my husband in name only has Cancer, and the man I love is refusing to leave his wife. I have to be pragmatic.  I didn’t think I’d come in here and get a chance to fix things with you, but if there’s the smallest chance…”

I stare at her. And then I let the rest of the truth fly.  “For the past year, I’ve had DNA test results in a safety deposit box, afraid to open them, afraid to find out that Auz and me aren’t Quentin’s children, that one or both of us are Mitchell Carmichael’s kids.”

Her mouth drops. “I… I wasn’t with anyone but your father until you were both in high school.”

I stare at her.

“You’re Quentin’s sons. Both of you. Honest, Aiden. I…” she’s pale. She has no idea I’ve been carrying this around with me.

I shake my head. “I know. We opened the envelopes last week. Auz did. I opened mine last Saturday with Dad there.”

She clutches at her throat and sits down on the couch beside me.

“Aiden, I’m sorry.”

She sounds sincere. Is she?

“I’m sorry you carried that for… a year?”

“A year.”

“Honey…”

“Save it.”

She’s silent a moment, and then she speaks. “I was using Bella to try to gain information about you when I was trying to determine if you knew about Roger or not. I’ll meet with her tomorrow and give her a pay-off to make her go away.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll deal with Bella.” I’m grinding my teeth. “She was a bad call, Audra. She involved the security guard who used his master key to get into the apartment and stole Carly’s grandmother’s jewelry and the sick perv stole Carly’s panties. They cloned my phone, too.”

“If it helps, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He’s been arrested. We got the jewelry back. But, no, Mother. It doesn’t help.”

“I’ll leave now, go think about how to best move forward with my life. I hope there comes a time when you and I can---”

“Don’t bet on it. Come clean with Dad, though. He needs to know about Roger. Either from you or from me. That’s his best friend and---”

“I’ll come clean. And don’t bet on it? At least it’s better than a no.”

She gives me a look of pain and walks by me toward the door, stopping and touching my cheek briefly before she goes.

***

I sit for a minute, then I get up and knock on Carly’s door and open it.

She’s on her bed with earphones on, headbanging as she’s scrolling on her phone.

Fuck, she’s cute. She’s done her best to give me privacy. I’ve done nothing to deserve this girl but, fuck… I’m pretty sure at this moment that despite that, I’m not going to let anything fuck this up. She’s real. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. And she’s right up there with my sister and with Suki in terms of being good and genuine to her core.

I decide that we need to go back to New York next month, I want her with me, Auz, and Adele when we take Suki out for her 70th birthday dinner.

Carly spots me so she pulls her headphones off.

“Good song?” I ask.

She nods. “AC/DC. Back in Black.”

“Another thing you and I have in common. AC/DC.”

“I noticed,” she says, beaming at me. “How is everything?”

I flop onto her bed, my head landing in her lap.

She plays with my hair sweetly and then runs her nails lightly up and down my cheek.

And then I tell her all about my relationship with my mother as well as all that just happened. I even tell her about holding the fuckin’ DNA tests for a year like a masochistic idiot.

She looks on the verge of tears at that news and I see it’s because she’s feeling for me.

She leans down and gives me a soft, sweet kiss on the lips.  “Maybe she’s ready to repair your relationship. You’re right to be cautious, though.”

“I think I need to go see my father,” I say. “I’m gonna go do that. Want me to bring back dinner? Indian? Chinese?”

She nods. “Chinese sounds good.”

“You have preferences or…”

“Surprise me,” she says. “Nothing spicy.”

“You got it, peaches.” I kiss her. She wraps her arms around me and she feels really fucking good.

“Back soon,” I say.