“You know I love you, Ana. And in the moment I will always take your side. I will always defend and support you. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. I think what you have here is a great opportunity for a lot of things. Healing. Closure. Establishing a relationship between Brody and his father. And I don’t think you’re in the right emotional headspace to deal with all of it.”
“Which is why I stopped talking about it,” I said.
“Just know that whatever you decide, I’ll support you, but I will never lie to you. If I think you’re fucking up, I’ll tell you. I won’t attempt to change what you’re doing, but I’ll always tell you the truth.”
“Which is why I love you. So, with all that love between us, please, can we drop it?”
Kristi nodded and went back to folding clothes, and I made my way into the stockroom to do inventory. The second the door closed behind me, his face popped into my mind. He looked so grown up. So handsome. So incredible standing there in his faded jeans and his tight T-shirt.
His face had gone from a boyish handsome to a full-grown handsome. His scruff was neatly trimmed and his piercing green eyes sparkled with delight. His shaggy light brown hair wasn’t shaggy at all but neatly parted to the side in a professional manner. And his body. Fuck. He filled out his clothes in ways that made my skin crawl.
I hated that I had wanted to stay around him at the bar.
Kristi was right. Brody deserved a relationship with his father. And I knew Tyler deserved to know he had a son. But I wasn’t ready for any of that. I wasn’t ready to field those conversations and the anger that would come my way. I wasn’t ready to upend the life that had taken me eight years to build simply because Tyler had come swooping back into the picture. Why did it have to change just because he existed? What about Brody’s stability? Or mine?
Didn’t any of that matter?
Ripping open boxes, I started taking stock of things. I keyed new items into the system and discarded the broken-down boxes out back. I enjoyed that kind of work, the kind that required mental capacity as well as physical capacity. I lost myself in that kind of work, the kind that had a rhythm and a rhyme. I knew what was coming and it was predictable even on its worst days.
I enjoyed predictable. I could see predictable coming.
Tyler had never been predictable. Brody had never been predictable.
It wasn’t until I opened the last box in the stockroom that I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks.
Tyler
After spending all day Friday thinking about my encounter with Ana, I decided to go out and do a little scouting. I knew where she worked, and with how anxious she had been to get away from me, I would have to engineer another meeting between us to see her again. I punched the name Curvy Belle into my GPS, and it pulled up a store in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
Wow. Her shop must have been really successful to have real estate like that.
I pulled up and parked, taking in the facade of the building. The logo for the store was creative: two upside down bells fused together to make the shape of a curvy woman. The storefront was fluid and seductive, which set the tone as I walked in. Racks of clothing meant for bigger women in all shapes and sizes and textures surrounded me. There were patterns and animal prints and designer fashion, some even with a name on them I recognized.
Ana had become her own fashion designer.
How had I not known this about her? How had I not seen her blatant passion and desire for fashion? It wasn’t as if she had opened up to me all those years ago about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Maybe she had been self-conscious about it or thought I would make fun of her or something?
I shook the thoughts from my head as I ran my hand over the tag of a pair of stretchy jeans.
“Ana P.,” I said to myself.
“She’s the designer.”
I panned my eyes to the young, cheery woman behind the cash register.
“And the owner of this place. And the CEO. She sort of does everything. She’s my idol.”
“These are beautiful clothes,” I said.
“Oh, they really are. I’m wearing one of her dresses right now. She made it especially for me since my bottom half is so—” She held her hands out and blew a raspberry into the air, and I chuckled.
“Is she in here often?” I said.
“Actually, no. I mean, she comes in during the week at random times to check up on things and do inventory, but she isn’t here for regular hours during the day. And she’s never in on the weekends.”