I stood there, just blinking at her, for a few long moments. “How did you know?”
Busy with the coffeemaker, she turned her head to face me and her brows lifted. Then she chuckled and turned back to the machine. “I’m your mother, and besides, you’ve never had a great poker face. What’s her name?”
“Her?”
She sighed heavily. “Yes, Tanner. Her. There are very few things in life that would put that look in your eye, and since I haven’t seen it much before, I know it’s got to be about a woman. You’ve finally met your match, haven’t you?”
“No,” I replied on instinct. She shot me a knowing look while she went to get mugs out of the cabinet, and I released a slow breath and reconsidered. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know. There’s this girl I really like, but I messed up with her and now I can’t seem to stop doing it.”
“If a man messes up with you, that’s how you know how he really feels,” she chirped. “At least, you do if he actually seems to worry about whatever mess he made. You men are really quite transparent. If you screw up and you don’t give a flying fish, it’s obvious you don’t care about her, but once you start stressing about it so much that it keeps happening, that’s how you know. What’s her name?”
“Larisa,” I replied, then told my mom all about her. I ended with last night’s faux pas, adding that I really needed to get my own life heading back in some kind of direction. “I guess I’m just feeling untethered now that I have nothing to try for or to focus on. It’s scrambling my brains.”
“What you need is a passion,” she said knowingly, stirring the cream and sugar into the filled mugs. “It doesn’t need to be a job, but something that will make you feel like a productive part of society.”
“Like what?” I asked, genuinely curious if she had any ideas because I sure as hell didn’t.
She handed my mug over then wrapped her hands around hers, cradling it to her chest. She leaned back against the counter, her eyes faraway. “The what depends on you. What would you like to do? You can do absolutely anything, so think about something you’ve always wanted to do and do it.”
“I’ve always wanted to do something to give back. I’d like to help people,” I said, letting the words come out of me without thinking too much about them. Just spit-balling. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to get too involved with something day to day. If I’m going to do it, I need to find a cause that I can support without having to spend all day, every day on it.”
“Why?”
“I like the freedom I have now,” I said. “I’ve always been so focused on getting good enough to make it and then maintaining my form that I’ve never slowed down. This is the first time I can afford to take it easy and give some real thought to what I spend the rest of my life doing. I’m not in a rush to over-commit right now.”
She cocked her head, eyes slowly traveling to mine. “Why don’t you talk to your Larisa about it? You might be most comfortable with putting on a show of being rich, carefree, and untouchable, but that might not be what she wants. She might be more comfortable with the thought of getting close to you if you open up to her a bit about some of the challenges in your own life.”
“You might have a point there.” I took a sip of my coffee while I thought it over. “It’s not something I need to decide on today, though. While I’m here, how about we finish our coffee then go outside? You can give me some more life advice while I grab the gardening equipment and some tools. There’s some stuff to be done out here and I might as well start being productive by doing something for you.”
She smiled. “Sure thing, but if you think the house needing a little maintenance is going to scare me into going into a care home, you’re dead wrong.”
Fuck. “I wasn’t hoping it would scare you into it, but I did think it might make you consider that if you do go into a home, you wouldn’t have any maintenance to do at all.”
“That’s fair, but I like doing the maintenance. It reminds me that this place is mine and that it is what I make it. I won’t get that in a care home, and I’m not ready to let it go just yet.”
I couldn’t fault her for it, but as I sipped my coffee and took in the slight layer of dust on the floor and the bit of grime in the corners, I knew I could only indulge her for so much longer. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman, but soon enough, that was going to mean doing something for her that would ensure her safety, even if she didn’t want me to do it.