Chapter 13
Kelsi
“It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love.”
~ Rowan O’Sullivan
“What time are we supposed to be there?” I gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“Mrs. O’Sullivan said six. Sharp.” Milo responded as he climbed into the passenger seat.
I glanced at the dashboard. It was five fifty-five. Milo texted me ten minutes ago and told me that we were supposed to have dinner with Bryson’s parents tonight. I’d just finished up with my last client of the day and was able to close up and rush home. I glanced down at my black slacks and cream cotton shirt. I could either run in and change or be on time. It was no contest. Being late was not an option.
“Milo.” I looked over my shoulder as I pulled out of the driveway. “Next time someone invites us to dinner, do not agree to it until you talk to me.”
“You don’t have to come. You can just drop me off.”
“No, I can’t. That would be rude.”
He sighed indicating he thought I was overreacting. “It’s not a big deal.”
One thing I’d learned in parenting a teenager, or almost teenager, was to pick my battles. This wasn’t worth the fight, but everything in me wanted to read him the riot act. To make him see that this was a big deal. But that was only because I was embarrassed about how I looked after a long day at work. And maybe also because my nerves were popping like bubble wrap under a truck at the thought of meeting Bryson’s mom.
It was obvious from how both Bryson and Milo talked about her that she was an incredible woman. I wasn’t insecure about a lot of things. I’d always wanted to have more curves but I made peace with my thin frame years ago. I would’ve loved to be a doctor but was aware there was no way I could’ve passed chemistry. My personality rubbed some people the wrong way because I didn’t pull punches, and I was okay with that. But the thought of meeting anyone’s mom made me want to puke. I knew it had to stem from issues with my own mom, but just because I knew the source didn’t change the problem.
“Did you get the things I asked you to?” I glanced in the rearview as I changed lanes.
He held up the bag I hadn’t noticed he had. I’d told him to look in the boxes in the garage and find the one that had the bottle of wine in it.
“Okay. Take out the bottle and rip the note off of it.” I wasn’t normally a re-gifter but desperate times and all that.
“Congrats on distribution?” Milo read the card with a question in his voice as he tore it off. “KiKi Beauty, to infinity and beyond, Love R.”
My brother looked up at me and repeated, “To infinity and beyond?”
“Russell liked to say that.” It hadn’t bothered me when we were together, but hearing my little brother say it made me think differently.
“What’s KiKi Beauty?”
“My beauty line. I make lotions and stuff. Actually, I was going to see if you might want to help me with that tomorrow. I know it’s your only day off so if you don’t want to it’s okay.”
When he didn’t say anything, I looked over and saw he was still staring down at the card. “You named it KiKi?”
“Yep. I missed you so much and naming it KiKi made me feel like you were with me. Like it was ours.”
Milo’s first word wasn’t mom or dad or baba, it was KiKi. He said it and reached his arms out. I’d been trying for months to get him to say Kelsi. He never called me Kelsi until I left Detroit. The first call home I’d told him I loved him and he’d said: “Bye, Kelsi.” It had ripped my heart out.
“I’ll help you tomorrow,” Milo said as I parked in front of Bryson’s parents’ house.
“Thanks.” I smiled.
He handed me the wine and got out of the car.
I stared down at it and briefly considered downing the entire thing but decided against it. Even liquid courage didn’t outweigh showing up empty handed.
It’s just dinner. I can do this.
I swung my door open with determination and was shocked when I looked up and saw Bryson walking towards my car. He’d texted me earlier that he was working tonight. “What are you doing here?”
“This is my parents’, house. If anyone should be asking that it should be me.”
I smiled and shook my head. “You said that you were working tonight.”
“Oh, so you did get that text. I wasn’t sure.”
I hadn’t texted him back because I was too happy that he’d texted me. Since there was no way I was going to tell him that, I went with a different version of the truth. “I was working.”
His right brow rose. “Working so hard you could check texts.”
“I had to make sure it wasn’t important.”
He placed his hand over his heart like I’d hurt him and stumbled back.
“You know what I mean,” I swatted his arm playfully. “I had to make sure Milo was okay.”
“Ohhh, is that what you meant?” he teased.
“You are so annoying,” I said through a smile that betrayed my insult.
“Annoyingly sexy. I know. I’ve been told.”
“Oh please,” I rolled my eyes. “Are you ever going to answer my question?’
He got serious. “I got someone to cover when I found out my mom invited you and Milo.”
“You missed work. For me?” Bella had just been telling me what a workaholic Bryson was. She said he was always at the bar and she’d been surprised to see him when he dropped Milo off.
He nodded, and a warmth spread through me.
Before I could respond, the front screen banged open, and Bryson’s dad stepped out on the porch. “You plan on hogging the dinner guests all night, bud?”
Bryson’s eyes remained trained on me. “Yes.”
I tried not to smile as big as my lips were trying to pull. Jade was right, Bryson’s ego was big enough without me swooning over him.
As we walked up the brick pathway to the house, I felt Bryson’s hand rest on my lower back, and the sensation evaporated my nervousness like hot water poured over dry ice. I still felt them, but they were smoke as opposed to a hard substance. I could handle smoky nerves.
“Is that Kelsi?” I heard a female voice call out when I walked through the front door. “Come on back here, dear.”
“Why don’t you go on in? I need to borrow my son to help me with a project Milo and I are working on in the basement.”
Ah, that’s where my brother was. Milo told me that he’d been helping Mr. O’Sullivan refurbish an old pool table. He’d said that Mr. O’Sullivan told him he could come over and use it anytime he wanted after they were done.
Bryson rubbed his thumb in a circle, and my knees went weak as he asked, “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured him.
It was sweet that he was so concerned about me, and I had to admit I was a little shaken up at the last minute surprise of dinner with his parents. But I was a big girl. He didn’t need to hold my hand while I met his mom…it would be nice, but not necessary.
He smiled, and for a fleeting moment, I thought he was going to lean down and kiss me. The strangest part was it felt like the most natural thing he could do. When he followed his dad into the basement without kissing me, it felt wrong.
That made absolutely no sense, but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of trying to decipher its meaning when I heard Bryson’s mom call out again.
“Kelsi, dear!”
“Coming,” I answered as I walked to the back of the house where the kitchen was located.
I entered the kitchen to find Mrs. O’Sullivan elbows deep in a large pot, mixing the ingredients with her hands. She was a stout woman with dark hair that had streaks of gray in it. Her eyes were the same electric blue as her children’s, and her smile was as contagious.
“Hi,” I waved.
“Well, aren’t you just the prettiest thing. I see why my son is so taken with you.”
Bryson’s mom knew he liked me? It was so odd for me to have someone be so open and transparent about how he felt when we weren’t even dating, and to have everyone in town know about it. I’d never experienced that before. Most of the guys I’d been with never wanted to “label” our relationship. And even Russell, who was the most serious, didn’t introduce me to his parents until we moved in together.
I didn’t know how to respond to her statement, so I ignored it completely. “Thank you so much for inviting us for dinner.” I held out the wine. “Where would you like me to put this?”
Mrs. O’Sullivan tsked. “Oh now, you didn’t have to bring anything.”
I almost didn’t.
She lifted her shoulder and wiped her round cheek as she instructed, “You can just set that right next to the fridge.”
I crossed the room and set the bottle down beside the stainless steel refrigerator. “Can I do anything to help?”
“How are you at chopping and dicing?”
“Mediocre,” I answered honestly.
She laughed and my smoke nerves cleared. “That’s good enough for me. That celery needs chopping, and those onions need dicing.”
“Got it.” I washed my hands and began prepping the produce.
Before I’d cut into the first stock of celery, Mrs. O’Sullivan said, “So Milo tells me that your mother is in jail.”
Wow. I guess the small talk was over. I was glad that I’d learned at an early age not to be ashamed by my mother’s actions. If I hadn’t, I would’ve spent the past twenty-four years paralyzed by humiliation.
“Yes. She is.”
“What for?”
This woman was direct and to the point. I loved it. I hated when people beat around the bush. It made me feel like they were trying to get something over on me. Again, residual mom issues.
“She was dating a married man and tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Mrs. O’Sullivan gasped as she lifted her hand, which was covered in breadcrumbs, and did the sign of the cross.
Yep. That was the correct response. I figured after hearing that she wouldn’t be inviting me over for any more dinners. I just hoped that she didn’t take it out on Milo. He loved spending time here and if our mother’s sins prevented him from doing that, it would be just one more heartbreaking thing that I couldn’t protect him from.
I tried to put that out of my head as I concentrated on chopping the celery.
“And how long will she be in prison, then?”
“She took a plea deal and was sentenced to ten years.” I scooped the pieces into the bowl beside the cutting block. “She’ll be eligible for parole in half that.”
Mrs. O’Sullivan carried the large pan she’d been mixing in to the stove. “It’s like a Lifetime movie, but it’s your real life.”
I never thought of it in those terms, but she was right.
After washing her hands, she took me completely by surprise when she pulled me into a tight hug. “You poor, poor dears. I can’t even imagine what that must be like. Your own mother.”
For a second, my arms remained by my sides like Milo’s had when I’d tried to give him hugs after getting him out of the group home. But after a few moments, tears pooled in my eyes and I let myself sink into the warmth and comforting embrace and wrapped my arms around her.
A part of me that I’d thought I’d buried deep in the depths of my soul resurfaced. My need for maternal nurturing. When I was young I used to dream of a mom that hugged me, that told me she loved me, that protected me. By the time I was seven I knew that was never going to happen, my survival instinct kicked in, and I went numb. I suppressed all of those feelings, but one hug from Mrs. O’Sullivan and they flooded through me. Tears fell down my face, not from sadness over what I’d never had, but for gratitude over feeling it, even just this once.
“Everything okay in here?” Bryson’s deep voice cut through my overwhelming emotions.
I released the bear hold I’d had on his mom and sniffed, wiping my eyes and trying to compose myself.
“Everything’s fine, son.” She waved her hand dismissively, seeming totally unfazed at my emotional display as if it was totally normal for a person to cry on her, five minutes after meeting her. “Here, taste this. Tell me if this needs more salt.”
Bryson cut a questioning look my direction and I smiled in response and continued my task. He tasted the dish and told her that not only did it need salt, it also could use some pepper. That’s when Mr. O’Sullivan and Milo joined us. Then a few minutes later Jade arrived. They were all asked to taste test, and all had different opinions over what was needed or not.
I watched the interaction of a family, joking and teasing each other as they made Sunday dinner, knowing that for the rest of my life I would remember this moment and treasure the fact that, even if it was just once, Milo and I were a part of it.