“Edith Rose Millen!”
“Wha—” I mumbled, doing my best to wake.
Light blinded me, John’s long body shifting against my back. There in my doorway stood Mom, cheeks slashed with red and fury blazing in her eyes. And strangely enough, Matt, her old ex-boyfriend, was standing in my room too.
“What the hell is going on here?” yelled Mom, towering over the two of us.
Shit, shit, shit. “Mom. I can—”
“You can what?” Her gaze darted between me and John, finally settling on him. “Oh my God, is that the boy from the Drop Stop? It is.”
“Ma’am. I . . .” John hastily retracted the arm he’d had wrapped around my waist, the leg he’d had thrown over one of mine. I couldn’t look at him. Embarrassment swallowed me whole and spat me back out just for fun.
“He’s my friend.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes.
“He’s your friend?” mom parroted, anger filling every word.
“Yes.”
Matt stepped forward, putting a hand on Mom’s lower back. “Easy.”
She threw him a foul look before returning to the problem at hand. Me. “Edie, you have exactly ten seconds to explain this before you’re grounded for life. Hell, you’re grounded for life anyway.”
And I don’t know, I just . . . didn’t really care. Not in the way I should have. Now, with my mind mostly awake, the drama didn’t seem so soul-crushingly huge.
“He’s my friend, Mom, and he’s important to me. Very important.” Best male friend at any rate. Hang would understand. “I realize this looks bad and I’m not supposed to have people over, let alone have a boy in bed with me. But his pants are on and so are mine. So please calm down.”
“Calm down?” Mom echoed me again, disbelief blanking her face.
“She’s got a point about the pants,” said Matt.
Mom did not reply.
Matt raised his brows at me, mouth grim. Meanwhile, John stealthily searched for his shirt among the bedding. What a clusterfuck. I could feel the rage growing in her, the righteous parenting fury. Of all the nights for her to decide to burst into my bedroom at . . . God, it was four in the morning. Mom wavered on her feet slightly, arms crossed and face lined. Immediately, Matt moved closer, slipping an arm around her waist and anchoring her to his side. Mom’s dress was tight and her heels high. The whole scene made me suspicious. The man had always been my favorite of Mom’s few boyfriends, but Mom didn’t have men stay over.
“What’s going on, anyway?” I said. “Why is Matt here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, Matt.”
A nod from him.
“We’re not talking about that now,” said Mom through gritted teeth. “Are you pregnant?”
“No!” I cried.
“Are you having sex with him?” A polished red fingernail took aim straight at John’s heart.
“God, Mom. Nothing happened. We were just lying here together, okay?” Which was basically the truth.
A smirk and low chuckle from Matt. Jerk. To think he’d been my favorite, but no longer. Even if he did teach me how to play pool. Meanwhile, the look Mom hurled at him over her shoulder would have nuked a lesser man. Matt just shrugged it off.
“She’s seventeen, babe,” he said. “Come on. Think about the sort of shit you or I got up to at that age.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I think I should go.” John finally found his shirt, pulling it on over his head. “Do you want me to go?”
“I think that would be best,” snarled Mom.
“I’ll talk to you later.” I grimaced. “Sorry about this.”
He nodded, picking up his shoes. Mom’s laser eyes bore into him as he slipped past, heading out into the hallway. It would be the first time he’d ever actually used our front door, funnily enough. Or not funny at all, as the look on Mom’s face indicated.
“Hold up,” I said, cocking my head, confused as all hell. “Is that an engagement ring?”
Mom’s mouth opened slightly. Matt just kind of smiled.
“What the hell?” I demanded.
“Could you give us a minute?” Mom asked Matt.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he answered, walking away.
“I love him,” said Mom, after he’d gone. “I couldn’t say no to him again.”
“That’s why you barged in here at this hour?”
“We may have had a little champagne to celebrate. I was excited.” Her voice firmed. “Also, it’s my house. I’ll barge in where I like, when I like, thank you very much.”
Bewildered, I shook my head. “So, let me see if I’ve got this right. You got back together with Matt months ago, lied to me about it, and now you’re getting married? And what do you mean you couldn’t say no to him again? He asked you before?”
Mom sighed, sitting beside me on my bed. Weirdest four-o’clock-in-the-morning family meeting ever.
“He wanted to get married the last time we were seeing each other. But you were so young . . .”
I scrunched up my face. “I wasn’t a baby. I was eleven.”
“Yes, and your hormones were raging.” She ruffled my hair with one hand. “I needed to be there for you. Plus, you might have liked Matt, but you weren’t ready for more. To have someone move in with us and be part of our life, full-time . . . it’s a big deal. If he even dared to try and stay too late, you’d start looking at the clock and glue yourself to my side.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Mom shrugged. “You were a little possessive. But you needed me more than he did. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It obviously is if I broke up you and the love of your life.” My eyes got itchy despite my best efforts. I was struggling to deal with this revelation and its history in the wake of being busted in bed with John. Guilt, discovery, loss, anger, and compassion bounced around in my mind, turning my insides upside down. “God, I was such a jerk.”
“You were a kid who needed her mom and didn’t deal with change too well.” Her arm slipped around my shoulders, drawing me in against her. “I’d say that’s pretty normal.”
“You shouldn’t have let me just break you up. And you shouldn’t have lied to me about seeing him again, either.”
“I chose to put you first and I do not regret that.”
Crap. A tear slipped over my cheek and I rubbed it away quickly with the palm of my hand. “Well, you should; you deserve a life too. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. And anyway, it all wound up perfectly fine.” She pressed a kiss to the top of my head, holding her hand out to let the ring sparkle in the light. “Right up until the part where I found you in bed with the local drug dealer. I put you first all those years ago because I wanted a good life for you. We were both working together for that. But now you’re throwing that all away. Even since—”
“That’s not who he is,” I cut her off. “He doesn’t do that anymore. Honest, Mom. He moved in with his uncle and he’s really trying hard at school. His uncle has this landscaping business and John works for him all the time. He’s a good person, I swear.” I sniffed, putting a lid on the weepies.
“No wonder your grades have been plummeting,” she said, deaf to my words.
“If anything, he keeps me on track.”
Her brow wrinkled in disbelief. “How?”
“Since the shooting, I just can’t seem to care about some things. Stuff like grades and schoolwork all seems so . . . I don’t know, irrelevant. But John’s not like that. He wants to achieve. He makes me study, helps me with math homework—”
“Climbs into bed with you . . .”
My lips sealed shut. Deep breaths. “Yes, I obviously like him in that way and he likes me. That’s kind of normal for people my age, you know?”
She swore under her breath.
“Come on, I was bound to discover sex and have a boyfriend eventually. It’s not like you didn’t party and have boyfriends when you were my age. You’ve told me you did.” Which reminded me. “Not that John and I are together. Exactly. Like that.”
“You’re a booty call for him?”
“No! No, I’m . . . I don’t know. We’re working it out.”
More muttered swearing. “Christ, kid. Out of all of the people in this town.”
“He’s the only one who gets me. Who knows what it was like, going through what happened that night,” I said. “And he’s the only one I know for sure would risk himself to keep me safe. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“Edie, I know he saved your life and I’m grateful to him for that.” She stopped to take a breath and I dived right in again.
“Then give him a chance,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes. No hesitation. “He really is important to me, Mom. I’m not giving him up.”
“You will if I decide you’re not allowed to see him.”
“No.”
Her jaw tightened. “Look, your grandma would just love to have you go live with her.”
“I’m not moving to Arizona, either.”
“Edie—”
“I’m serious,” I ground out, anger and frustration making my blood boil.
“So am I.” Mom stopped speaking, exhaling hard.
“You don’t understand—he’s good for me, Mom. Talking to him, being with him, it’s a big part of what’s keeping me sane these days,” I said, trying to keep my voice even when what I really wanted to do was scream. “Much more than popping pills and seeing a shrink. You should be thanking him.”
“Wow, yeah,” she said. “Next time I find him in bed with my underage daughter I will definitely do that.”
“We weren’t even doing anything. Just sleeping, for God’s sake.”
“Kid, you didn’t even tell me you’d been in contact with him, let alone in some intense, possibly co-dependent situation.” She rose to her feet, slowly shaking her head. “Christ. I think we both need to calm down . . . talk about this later.”
“Just remember, you lied to me too.”
“I’m in my thirties; you’re not even eighteen!”
“But I will be soon.”
Mom shot me a dark look. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk about this later.”
Hell yes, we would.