Chapter Thirty
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Dizzy swung out of the passenger side of Leann’s car. During the drive, she’d bounced back and forth between angry and happy while Leann tried to be the voice of reason. The problem was Dizzy didn’t want to be reasonable; she wanted to be mad or glad. Dammit, she was so confused she didn’t know what she wanted other than chocolate and lots of it.
She was frustrated that Trip had lawyered up.
Relieved that the police were finally taking her seriously.
Angry that Easton had looked so calm and cool.
Happy that she’d managed to keep her dignity in front of him.
“Thank you for driving me home. I do appreciate it. I made some chocolate chip cookies. How about a couple and a cup of coffee? Or do you need to get back to the office?”
“I would never turn one of your baked goods down. Anderson can do without me for a little while.”
They entered the house and dropped their purses on the kitchen table. The back door was wide open so Tami and Louis must have been in the backyard enjoying the day. It was a bit chilly but the sun made the weather quite comfortable.
Dizzy headed straight for the coffee pot. “I’ll get the coffee going–”
Leann’s gasp had her whirling around to see what had shocked her friend so badly that she was standing in the doorway, her face white as a sheet.
“What’s wrong?” Dizzy looked out the back door and groaned, wanting to dig a hole in the backyard and bury herself, never to be seen again. Her parents had two yoga mats on the back lawn.
They were doing yoga.
In the nude.
Currently they were in Downward Facing Dog.
Dizzy was pretty sure Leann would never do yoga again. If she didn’t gouge out her eyes out on the spot.
“I’m going to have to move,” Dizzy muttered under her breath, making a beeline for Tami and Louis. What were they thinking? This was the suburbs, not their former old house in the boonies. There were laws about indecent exposure.
“Tami! Louis! You can’t do that out here!” Dizzy grabbed their robes hung on the porch railing on her way. “For heaven’s sake, cover up before my neighbors call the police.”
Tami and Louis rose to their feet and didn’t look a bit repentant. They also didn’t put on their robes.
“We were just letting go of our stress,” Tami explained. “It’s therapy.”
“You’re naked,” Dizzy shot back. “This is a family neighborhood and you can’t walk around naked in it. People don’t like that. I’m serious about this. You need to go out somewhere deserted for that.”
“People should mind their own business,” Louis said with a huff. “If they don’t like what they see, they can turn away.”
People were going to need a bottle of eye bleach and a therapist.
“The human body is a work of art,” Tami argued, finally shrugging into the robe that Dizzy was holding out for her. “It’s meant to be displayed, not hidden. We taught you not to be ashamed of your body.”
“And I’m not, but other people don’t have the same ideas, and we have to respect the way other people think and believe, right? You can do yoga inside the house.”
Preferably when Dizzy wasn’t at home. The human body was a beautiful work of art but it was a little weird to see her parents naked. She’d never been comfortable with it even when she was younger and didn’t realize nudity was a thing.
“Society is so judgmental,” her mother said, shaking her head in disappointment. “And now our daughter is too. This is a sad day.”
Dizzy wasn’t sure of much these days but she was definitely sure that she wasn’t going to take any crap from her parents about being judgmental. Breezing past them, she headed to the kitchen with Leann in tow. “Yes, that’s the problem with society today. We’re judgmental. Except that you’re judging them for judging you.”
Leann quietly took a seat at the kitchen table as Dizzy reached for the box of coffee filters in the cabinet but her countertop didn’t look quite right. It took her a moment to realize that her coffee pot was missing.
It was the last straw.
She’d take their crappy comments about her life and her stress and her friends. But they were not going to take her caffeinated buddy. They’d gone too far this time.
Whirling around, she marched right up to them, anger churning in her gut. Whenever she was mad she cried and she didn’t want to do that this time. Her parents needed to know she was pissed as hell.
She could feel how red her face was by the heat under her skin. She was literally shaking with rage. “Where is my coffeemaker?”
Tami and Louis looked at each other and smiled. Like this was a happy occasion. Fools. Her father stepped forward. “Caffeine is not good for you when you’re under stress, pumpkin. We’ll replace it with a nice juice machine. You can juice fruits and vegetables. Much healthier. We’ll run into town today and buy one.”
She’d heard about people seeing red but she’d never realized that a person actually could indeed see red. Yet, here she was with a red haze in front of her eyes. Too bad she hadn’t had it a few minutes ago when they were naked in her backyard. “Put it back.”
“Now, Dizzy,” Tami began, but Dizzy was having none of it.
“Put it back now,” she hissed. She knew good and well this was about more than the coffee pot, but did they?
Tami frowned and shook her head. “This is why you’re so tense.”
Dizzy’s fingers furled into fists and with all the emotions that she had whirring inside of her frustration was the winner.
“I’m tense because I witnessed my neighbor strangling a woman and hardly anyone in this town believes me.” Dizzy’s voice was rising with every other word. “And do you know why they don’t believe me? Because I’m different and weird. But I learned something since you got here. I’m really not that strange. I’m more like them than I am like you. I bet that doesn’t make you happy, does it?”
That question was said in a whisper after all the yelling. She didn’t know whether she was coming or going anymore. She was just so confused as to how she was supposed to be feeling. She only knew two things for sure. One, that Trip needed to be brought to justice, and two, that she was probably in love with Easton. Everything else was a blur.
Just like that these two people weren’t annoying or troublesome or making her insane. They were her parents and Tami’s arms were open wide. Dizzy flew into them with a sob, letting her mother stroke her hair and whisper soft words of encouragement. Louis, who prided himself on being a male in touch with his feminine side, joined in, dropping a kiss on the top of her head and making silly faces. He used to do that when she was a child and she’d skinned her knee. She’d end up giggling while her mother cleaned the wound and applied a Band-aid.
“Um, I think I better go. I have a meeting I forgot all about.”
Leann had inched her way to the door and looked ready to flee. Dizzy didn’t blame her a bit. The Foster family was in a three-alarm crisis and she was sure she didn’t want to witness or be a part of it.
“Thank you for bringing Dizzy home,” Tami said. “Sorry about the coffee.”
Leann muttered something like no problem and then zipped out of the door.
“Thank you for being nice to Leann,” Dizzy said in between sniffles. Her cheeks were damp from crying and she hated crying. She’d done it far too often lately. “You weren’t nice to Easton.”
“We’re the same that we’ve always been,” Tami said. “You’re the one that’s changed.”
Dizzy opened her mouth to defend herself but her mother shook her head and continued.
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s just different. We’re not disappointed. We love you, Dizzy. We just want you to be happy.”
“Easton makes me happy.”
Her parents exchanged a glance that Dizzy couldn’t decipher but Louis didn’t keep her in suspense. “Then that’s all we need to know. We admit that he isn’t what we pictured, pumpkin, but if he’s what you want then that’s what we want for you.”
That statement couldn’t have been easy for her parents to make and they didn’t look happy about saying it, but they also didn’t look like they were going to argue, either.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” She hiccupped as a fresh spate of tears began. “Easton and I broke up.”
“Because of us.”
The way Tami said it didn’t make it sound like a question.
“Yes, he hates the idea that you don’t like him or his family. He’s proud to be an Anderson and rightly so.”
Louis’s brows shot up. “So you just gave up? Let him walk away? That doesn’t sound like my little pumpkin. She would have fought for what she wanted. Maybe you don’t care about him as much as you think you do. Maybe it’s just the sex.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks and she wished the earth would open up and swallow her. She did not want this conversation with her parents. “It’s not just the sex.”
Her mother shrugged and tapped her chin. “He is a sexy man, and he has big feet too. Any girl would want to get into his pants. But looks aren’t everything, you know. The real question is does he know what to do with his–”
“Tami! Please stop. I will say I haven’t missed this.”
Dizzy buried her face in her hands, completely mortified.
“I’m just saying that there’s more to a man than his looks.” Her mother was chuckling and so was Louis. “Young people these days are so prudish. Sex is a perfectly normal biological need, and I’m assuming our daughter is not a virgin.”
Not even close but that wasn’t the point.
She didn’t raise her head from her hands, preferring not to look her parents in the eye. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow, either.
“Please let’s not talk about sex.”
“Fine,” Tami huffed. “What do you want to talk about? How wimpy you are? How you let life happen to you instead of going after what you want?”
Dizzy’s head jerked up and her eyes widened. “That’s a crappy thing to say. You’re parents. You’re supposed to try and make me feel better about myself. You’re supposed to build my self-esteem.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Louis replied with a grin, wrapping his arm around his wife.
“What crazy kind of ABC Afterschool Special is this? I’m not feeling all that great about myself when you call me wimpy.”
“Then do something about it,” Tami answer promptly. “Or you can stay here and be miserable.”
“I don’t want to be miserable,” she answered automatically.
“And you want Easton.” Her mother’s gaze ran over her daughter. “And yet here you are blaming us for losing him when you could be with him working things out.”
It was a little their fault but she and Easton had a whole lot of ownership in this argument too.
“I don’t blame you–”
“Lovely,” Tami said, pushing her toward the door. “Now go get him. I don’t want to hear you cry about him for the next fifty or sixty years and on into your next reincarnation. Go work this out. Your father and I still have more primal screaming therapy, plus we’re not done with our nude yoga. Unless you’d rather give up on Easton and join us. Your father’s favorite is the Eagle pose. It’s good for his sciatica.”
Oh hell no.
Dizzy was going to need to bake cookies for the entire cul de sac after her parents left to apologize. For the screaming. For the nudity. And anything else her parents might think up between now and then.
Retrieving her purse from the table by the door, Dizzy dug for her car keys. “I’m going to talk to him.”
“Have fun and make sure he sees to your sexual needs as much as his own, pumpkin,” her father said with a wave. “We love you.”
They did. She was sure of it.
“I love you too.”
After the strangest pep talk ever, she was ready to go work things out with Easton. She was ready to admit that she loved him. He might love her or he might not but he cared, and that was a start. Time to take this Anderson bull by the horns and get her man.
This wasn’t about her parents. Or what they believed or what she believed. This was about the two of them scared to death and getting cold feet. Time to warm up those toes.
It was time to be happy.