“Don’t you need to get your butt out of bed before the sun goes down?” Mom asks, standing at my bedroom door and looking really pissed. In truth, she’s been looking like that for the last two weeks.

“I just got in bed an hour ago,” I mumble pulling a pillow over my head, to hide from the light she turned on, and from her. If I had my way, I’d hide from the world at this point.

“That’s not my fault. You need to get your ass up and shave that chia pet off your face before you go into work.”

“What’s your problem?” I grumble sitting up.

“Did you really just ask me that?” Mom huffs and in hindsight that might not have been the best come back. I really need to learn to hold my mouth around my mom—at least until I move out.

“Mom—”

“Don’t you Mom me. I don’t think you’re my blood. They switched you at the hospital. It’s the only explanation.”

“That’s kind of hard to believe since Blue and I were born at the same time.”

“Then it’s clear Blue got the brains.”

“Okay, Mom just come out with it.”

“I’m ashamed to call you my son, Black Horn.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t you mom me, boy. You’re dragging your dick in the dirt here and it’s hurting my poor Orchid.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t talk about my dick. I don’t see how I’m hurting Addie… Addie, that’s her name by the way.”

“Orchid is hurting, even if you’re too dumb to realize it.”

“How is it hurting her? We were just dating. It didn’t get serious.”

“Serious for a boy and serious for a girl are two different things my boy. Just because you didn’t slam home base, doesn’t mean it wasn’t serious. A girl like Addie wouldn’t let you even get past first base if she didn’t care.”

“What’s with all the baseball talk?”

“Green called and we’ve been discussing his team. But that’s not your business. Quit trying to change the subject,” she says sitting down on the bed. “Don’t you care about her?”

“I do,” I admit and that nervous, almost painful feeling, hits me as I finally speak the words out loud. “I really do. Probably more than I have for any woman, including Linda but…”

“But, what?” Mom says, surprisingly somber.

“This mess with Linda hurt, Mom. It hurt my bank account, my life in general, it completely left me on my ass and moving back home. I’m too old for that, but here I am. And it hurt…”

“If you say your heart I swear I’m going to grab Green’s bat and knock you up-side of the head.”

So much for somber Mom…

“Hell no. I didn’t have my heart involved… at least not deeply, but it was good enough that I would have stayed in it.”

“Then you do have shit for brains.”

“Not really. I never realized that there was more to relationships, at least not until I saw what Gray found with CC or White with Kayla. I saw how much that shit hurt both Petal and Luka and I never wanted that. Linda was…” I trail off because the words that come to mind sound as lame as I’m starting to feel.

“Out with it,” Mom demands, never one to let me hide—let anyone hide, really.

“She was good enough… safe…”

“Because you didn’t really have anything invested.”

“Pretty much.”

“Is that really all you want out of life? It took me years to find my Jansen. That means I’m not going to get to enjoy that love as long as I want. You need to stop being an idiot and claim your girl now. I know you boys don’t think I know much, but I know one thing, Black,” she says getting up.

“What’s that?”

“If you don’t try to fix this with that girl you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

I just sit there and look at her. I think about what she says, but there’s one fact that she’s not understanding.

“Mom the last thing Addie needs saddled with is a man whose past includes a psycho ex, destroyed credit and who, at thirty-one, is living with his mother and can’t even get an old battle axe to rent to him. Not to mention the landlord will probably sue me because Linda was sub-leasing under me, even if the court did make that arrangement. You take in the fact that I went from being a detective on a major police---”

“You can come up with excuses until the cows come home, boy. Not going to change the most important thing.”

“What’s that?” I ask, as Mom gets up off the bed. She walks toward the door, saying nothing. “Mom?”

She reaches down on my dresser to a paper I hadn’t noticed before. Mom must have put it there while I was sleeping.

“Mr. Graves has given the okay for you to buy a house. All you have to do is find one.”

“Mom I don’t know—”

“It can be here or in Dallas, Black. You just need to get off your ass and decide what you want.”

“Mom…”

“And if it’s Orchid you might need to get a move on and get her out of that damn apartment she’s living in.”

“Apartment?”

“On North Street, dear. Which you would know if you had your head out of your ass,” she says as she leaves.

Fuck!