Chapter Thirteen
The lovebirds from next door lingered after dinner and I was tossing down Jameson like it was aqua. Something I never did, but Ella was in three sets of more than capable hands, we were safely out of Mexico, and some days just needed to be obliterated by a hard fuck or a good drunk. And since Lee wasn’t here, that left booze.
My gaze surreptitiously roamed the room. Not that I needed to be stealth. No one was paying much notice to me. I didn’t even feel part of the gathering.
Sean was holed up with Patricia on the couch, and they were conversing rapidly in that way people who know each other well talk. Skyler—I took a long pull of scotch to steady me for that one—was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Ella playing video games. And me? I was trying to pretend I wasn’t looking at my cell every few minutes.
Two fucking days since I’d walked out and not a single call or text from Lee. Worse, my worry for him was escalating. Communication silence wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It kept me from knowing he was all right and it fed my internal alarm because it was unlike him.
I tapped in my passcode and fixed on the screen.
Nothing.
Damn him.
Just because we were over didn’t mean I didn’t care.
He must know that…
“Are you all right, Graham?”
Patricia’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Great, Mom. That was an incredible dinner. I can’t get food like that in Mexico.”
Her face glowed. “It was good, wasn’t it? And it was nice for Skyler to remember apple cobbler is your favorite and to bring it. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was. Thanks a lot, Skyler.”
I smiled at him with a chin bob and refilled my glass as an avoidance tactic from remembering that moment they’d arrived with the cobbler.
Staring at the dish—he’d made it himself, and I don’t know why that made it more irksome, but it did—it shot through me like a nuclear blast: enormous cobbler in hand; eager, hopeful smile on Skyler’s face; and I knew he’d either been hacking into my cloud for months reading my personal shit, or worse, dessert was a not-so-subtle cheer-me-up gesture by my mother via him.
Did everyone in the fucking room know my personal shit? That I’d split with Leland? Yep, I was pretty sure that they did.
Patricia frowned. “You looked tired, son. It was a long drive here. You should go to bed. I can take care of Ella.”
Translation—neither me nor an army was getting Patricia’s pretend granddaughter from her clutches. Her concern for me was a secondary issue.
Fine, she’d given me an out from her dinner party, and I was taking it. I rose to my feet. “Thanks, Mom. See you in the morning.” I did the best I could to plaster a smile on my face. “Sean. Skyler. Great having you over.”
Sean’s eyes lit up. “It was good to catch up and hear about all the exciting things in Mexico.”
“Yes, well, we’ll do it again real soon.”
As I made my way to Ella to kiss her good night, my mom piped up. “You won’t have to wait long. They’ll be here tomorrow. Breakfast is at six. We do it early before Skyler has to start work.”
“Can’t be late,” Skyler teased. “Not with my boss living next door.”
Fuck my life—my two ex-lovers were living together and had appropriated my mother as their own, intel I hadn’t known before I decided to stay here.
I leaned over, touched my lips to Ella’s golden curls, managed two words—“Good night”—and headed for my bedroom.
Once my door closed behind me, I dropped my exterior charade of calm, cool, and collected, and let the shit I was feeling roil. Without undressing, I stretched out on my bed and tried to figure out what to do now.
The longest evening of my life and it was only 8:30 p.m. But I was glad to be out of there. I tossed down the remainder of my drink and set the glass on the nightstand.
Still no TV in the room. Patricia could redecorate a room floor to ceiling in under half a day for Ella, but she couldn’t get around to having installed the TV I requested after my last stay at home fifteen months ago.
Leaning over, I felt for the bottle I kept hidden under the bed. Jesus Christ, I was a grown man and I had to hide shit from my mother if I wanted to keep it.
Nothing.
Damn it, did Patricia find it?
Was she snooping through the things I’d left here while she cleaned? She better not have found the magazines. I would need them in my lonely bed…nope, the scotch was there.
Hooah.
Maybe my jerking-off-to pictures remained in the dresser, too. I opened the nightstand drawer. Lube supply and condoms with my other gear.
Seeing the condoms made my heart lodge in my throat. Fuck, was I single again? I stared at my cell phone and instead reached for my bottle.
The next morning I woke up to pounding on the door and inside my head. “Graham, are you coming to breakfast?” I heard Patricia ask through the door.
Lifting my head made me wince. Sprawled out atop the blankets, yesterday’s clothes on, empty bottle, and battery-dead cell. And yep, I grabbed it to see if there were notifications before I answered my mom.
“Give me ten, Mom. I need to hop in the shower.”
“OK, but don’t take long. Ella’s awake. I let her sleep in my room last night. Poor dear, she looked worried about being alone in her bedroom. I hope that’s all right? And Sean and Skyler are here. It’s a beautiful day. Get moving.”
Every sentence of Patricia’s morning briefing made my hangover throb more. “Fine, Mom. I’m moving.”
After a quick shit, shower, and shave, I dressed and ambled to the kitchen. Empty. It was only quarter past six. The chow line couldn’t have been shut down this early. Damn it, she hadn’t fed me.
I heard laughter. Oh, breakfast was a scavenger hunt today. Where was everyone?
Dining room—nope.
Patio doors open.
Beautiful day—we were eating outside.
Against my better judgment, I went in the direction of the smell of food, telling myself with each somewhat painful step—shower hadn’t washed away the hangover—that I had to join them because Ella was out there.
I halted with one foot on the pavement, half of me in the house.
What the fuck?
Who barbecues pancakes?
Patricia. Right there. Grill fired up, iron spatula in hand, and patio table decoratively set.
“There you are,” she announced cheerfully, and every set of eyes fixed on me. “Sleepyhead. I thought I was going to have to go wake you again. You must have been exhausted from all the travel. I don’t recall a time you’ve ever slept past 0430.”
My thought processes weren’t snappy and I couldn’t rally from what I was seeing. “Since when do you barbecue pancakes?”
Her face brightened. “Since Sean and Skyler gave me this great grill attachment for my birthday. I’ve been wanting one forever. Wasn’t that sweet of them?”
“You weren’t supposed to open that, Patty,” Sean chided, filling his coffee mug. “Your birthday isn’t for another six days.”
“Told you it was a bad idea to bring it to her early, babe,” Skyler pointed out before he landed a sloppy kiss on Sean’s lips. Christ, right there in front of Ella.
“I can now cook everything outdoors on hot days,” Mom babbled enthusiastically as she pointed at things. “See, they even got me a steamer attachment. I’ll do those garlic artichokes you love when I make dinner. Won’t that be nice?”
She darted back and forth like a cyclone, delivering pancakes to plates, her pretty face supercharged with happiness. No one on earth would ever convince me Mom didn’t have some kind of happy-helper stashed in the house.
Weed?
Pills?
Whatever. Just because I couldn’t find it didn’t mean it didn’t exist. No one was this perky at 6:00 a.m.
“Looking forward to it, Mom,” I said, dropping a kiss on her head before giving one to Ella. I looked in the carafe. Empty. Great. “Do you have some more coffee somewhere?”
“In the kitchen. I use a Keurig now. The boys got me that for Christmas. You missed one heck of a party. Whole neighborhood and gift exchange. These boys”—oh fuck, twice in under a minute—“know how to throw together a bash. My birthday party is going to be lit. You’ll get to meet my BFF, Margie. She lives next door to the boys. You don’t turn fifty-five every day.”
They all laughed.
Yep, the hits kept rolling.
“You don’t look over thirty, Patty.” Sean pushed up from his chair and took the carafe from my hand. “I’ll get the coffee. Eat while it’s hot. I’m stuffed already.”
Stuffed already?
They were turning into Patricia clones.
Fuck—I started to laugh and sank down on my chair. “Thanks, Sean.”
“You OK, Poppy?” Ella asked before shoving a forkful of pancake in her mouth, and out of my peripheral vision, dual isn’t that sweet? expressions rose on Patricia and Skyler’s faces.
I laughed harder. “I’m good, sweetheart. Now let me taste these great pancakes Grandma barbecued for us.”
Ella nodded enthusiastically “Good, huh?” she asked while I was still chewing.
My eyes widened once I could taste them.
Damn.
Smokey hickory flavor and all.
They were the best pancakes I’d ever eaten.
***
Four days later, I still hadn’t heard word one from Lee. I never expected that. It wasn’t the man I knew and loved. The silence between us was unbearable and I signed on to everything the girls wanted to do to keep from thinking and worrying about him.
Sitting in the backyard with Patricia’s usual rat pack, watching the sunset as the boys—fuck, even I was calling them that in my head after hearing it a hundred times a day—tried to teach Ella how to play badminton, I had to admit that the first half of the week hadn’t been completely a forced march.
I hated not being with Lee and that he forced me to leave him. I missed him. My body ached for him. He possessed my heart and thoughts as strong as ever, even with nineteen hundred miles between us and complete communication silence.
Fuck, he’d fallen off the grid. I couldn’t even track him with the Black Star app, and yes, at times at night I couldn’t stop myself and needed to see his red dot in Mexico City.
Only, last night, no dot. He’d figured out what I’d done to his cellphone and deleted it.
That hit me like a brick, but it was probably for the best. Seeing the red dot before bed each night hurt. I wasn’t going to get over him by behaving like Skyler the stalker.
And somehow, despite the pain of our breakup and all the eccentricity that happened in Patricia’s house, there were times I almost enjoyed myself. There was plenty to laugh about here, though I wasn’t at the able-to-laugh stage yet. The most I could do was a faint chuckle now and then when confronted by something too peculiar not to laugh.
Much to my astonishment, I was glad I’d made my first stop Patricia after Lee. She kept me occupied and from doing stupid things. Like running back to him. Or calling him. Or accepting we weren’t together anymore by fucking someone else to officially end us.
That part of living with Patricia again I was grateful for. Hit it and quit—not that I had opportunity and want, or even could escape the house with Mom’s vigilant watch and Ella here—would have been a sorry move to make after loving Leland with all my heart.
Well, if one looked hard enough in any circumstance they could find the silver lining. Even in this one.
Patricia ran a home so full of the odd and the downright quirky that it was enough to keep even an overly precocious child’s thoughts entertained.
Since our arrival and Mom latching onto her, Ella had hardly spared a second to drill me on why we’d hotfooted out of Mexico so abruptly, and more of a relief, though she missed Leland, it wasn’t a tear-filled or constant unrelenting issue that would have been unbearable for me. Unbearable because missing him had grown into an excruciating constant state for me.
Still, the days weren’t easy, though I could say mildly pleasant, to sit side by side with my mother in the evening watching Patricia’s world. Which, for all intents and purposes, I’d concluded existed of me, Ella, and no doubt soon to be deliciously happy Mr. and Mr. Sean & Skyler.
Patricia’s laugh caused me to shift my stare from the antics on the lawn and settle on her face. A smile tugged at my lips. Mom was vivacious and lovely when her face glowed as it was watching her boys carry on with her granddaughter.
I reached for my mug. I was ending the nights with coffee these days because one good bender my first night here was enough. It hadn’t made me feel better about the state of my life and Ella didn’t need to see me hungover again.
I stretched back in my chair and angled my body to face Patricia better. As much as I loved my mother, it hit me that I didn’t know a lot about her beyond what I could glean from observation. That admission made me feel like a heel. I was all she had. And damn, I wasn’t as generous with my life and time as I should be with her.
“Are you happy, Mom?”
She snapped around as if my question startled and surprised her. “Of course I’m happy. You’re here. Ella’s here. Why would you wonder that? Honey, you can stay here as long as you need to. I love having you two here.”
“That’s not what I meant, Mom. What I was wondering—” I made a careful search for words because I was already regretting having started this. “You were married to Dad for a long time. Isn’t it hard for you to live alone?”
“No. I was married to your father and that’s it. Don’t need a new man to fill my love tank. It’s not empty. In fact, it’s overfilled. I’m living my life exactly how I want to. I’m alone because it’s my choice.” She made a sympathetic pout. “You’re just wondering that, dear, because you think you’re alone now and you don’t want to be. I can see things, Graham, even though you think I can’t. You’re missing Leland. You ever going to tell me what happened between the two of you?”
“Nothing happened. And you’re wrong. I want to know about you, Mom.”
Her lips puckered in a not fooling me way and my fingers tightened around my coffee because this wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to. No surprise. When did anything ever go with Patricia the way I wanted it to?
Then I remembered the by choice comment. “Mom, have you considered maybe starting to date?”
Her lids flew wide. “Oh, Graham. What a silly question.”
“Why? You’re still young. Attractive. You know Ella and I won’t be here forever.”
Her brow puckered from that last sentence then she shook her head, eyes sparkly with amusement. “Thank you for worrying about me, but I’ll be just fine once you make up with Leland and you two head home. I’m happy with my life exactly as it is.”
As it is?
She lived alone, taking classes at community college in a wide variety of random subjects that ranged from cooking to the history of whatever, and her social set, other than Margie, consisted exclusively of Sean and Skyler.
“There’s no downside to seeing what’s out there. There are services. Senior mixers at the church. Bingo night.”
She chided me with her eyes, annoyed, then said, “No point and nothing but downside. You don’t know what it’s like out there at my age. It seems every eligible male over fifty either won’t pass a background check or is gay. Good for you—well, half the available population of single men being gay if you and Leland don’t work it out—but one hundred percent not worth the bother for me.”
How she said that—with an air of experience—made my brows lower. “Are you telling me you do date?”
“Oh.” She flushed and abruptly started gathering our dinner dishes. “Never mind.”
I found her sudden fluster cute and alarming.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t have to tell you everything, Graham. You’re such a meddler—don’t know who you inherited that from—and there wasn’t anything that needed sharing with you. A dinner here and there. A lunch or two. Always the wrong type of men. If they’re straight they’re too young, and if they’re age-appropriate they’re not worth my time.”
“What do you mean too young?”
“Margie down the street likes to tease me about being a cougar every time we go clubbing, but I don’t think I’d be defined exactly as that because it’s not like I’m out there prowling for younger guys. They latch onto me. Attracting the interest of men under forty isn’t exactly difficult. In fact, it’s harder to get them to believe a fifty-five-year-old woman doesn’t want to go to bed with them.”
The coffee spurted from my mouth. Prowling? Clubbing? Cougar? Crap, thanks a lot Margie for expanding Patricia’s vocabulary and getting her out of the house in exactly the wrong ways. And what the hell kind of men were trying to pressure my mother into sex?
“Mom,” I groaned.
“Well, you did ask.”
There was so much wrong here I didn’t know where to begin. I decided to start small and escalate.
“Mom, women your age don’t call themselves cougars.”
“That’s what Margie said we were.” Her eyes grew enormous. “What should we call ourselves?”
Nope—not answering.
I held my shaking head in my hands and waited for my internal cringing to abate. “Mom, for me, don’t ever call yourself a cougar again. OK?”
I sucked in deeply a few cleansing breaths to wash this discussion from my system, and when I finally peeked up at her, Patricia was grinning. “Got you.”