Next up, I put on Tears In Heaven. Normally I was more of a rock type of guy, preferably classic rock, but this song… there was so much said in it. I vaguely remembered it being written for his son who’d died in a tragic accident, and that got me thinking about Elodie. Ever since I’d heard about how uninvolved Effie had been, it had been weighing on me. Did I want to be a father one day? I hadn’t ever really thought about it. I’d just taken the fact it would happen for granted, if I was honest. I loved my friend’s kids and spent a lot of time with Olivia, but I’d never had that urge to have one of my own. Again, I just assumed it would happen at some point.
What got to me was the lack of appreciation it appeared Effie had for her daughter. Here was this beautiful little girl, so full of life and love, and she hardly saw her, almost like she was a blip in her life. Everyone has a different story; I came from a stable, loving home and family with parents who adored me and my brothers, and not once had we ever felt anything other than that adoration. Katy had the same with her family, and they all worshipped the ground Elodie walked on. How do you get to the stage where a hit is worth more than your child? How do you push out a baby and then walk away from it without even making sure someone was there to look after it?
Addiction. I’d only ever smoked pot, and even then it was when I was in high school and did it because everyone else was doing it. What makes someone go for a drug that changes them and that they then rely on to survive? I understood how bad addiction could be because I’d looked it up after Katy had told me about Effie, but it made me wonder if something had happened to her at some point that she wanted to escape from? If that was the case, should I speak to the family and see if we could track her down to get some help? Leaving her to wander lost and reliant on drugs that could kill her at any moment didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t sure I was at the stage with Katy to raise something like this.
I was going to have to soon, though, because it was weighing on me.
Pulling into my drive, I looked over and saw Katy’s car in her driveway and cut the engine. Seeing it sitting there, I said fuck it and decided to just go over and see her. Just as I’d climbed out of the car and was shutting the door, I got a text from her.
Katy: Come over. I’m just doing something so you can use your key. K x
Seeing as how her keys were now attached to my own, this was no problem.
With a grin on my face, I jogged around the fence this time, and then down the path to her door.
KatyOh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. This had seemed like such a good idea on Tuesday, but now I was so anxious it felt like I was about to have a heart attack.
Gloria had called me on Monday to ask me to Jarrod’s birthday dinner… a birthday I had no clue was happening. Thinking on it, that was a stupid move of mine because obviously everyone has a birthday so I should have asked, but it just hadn’t occurred to me that it would be anytime soon. So, I’d played it off like I’d known about it, and then freaked the fuck out. Literally!
Maya had told me this played into the GYMP perfectly, because it meant I got to do something special for him to make him feel special and show him I got him. I liked to think that I got Jarrod, but I had no clue how I was meant to show him that. By Wednesday I was a nervous wreck, I’d covered his gifts, but her words about showing him he was special kept going round in my head. Books, t-shirts and Viper stuff didn’t show a man you got him and that he was special – although, I obviously wasn’t a man, so what did I know? So the question was, what did? And that’s when Maya had introduced me to her friend Tony, who’d been busy with his daughters up until then. Apparently he knew exactly what to do.
An hour later, I was standing in the middle of Scarlett Treasures wanting to die of embarrassment.
“You want something sexy slutty, not slutty slutty, you dig?” he’d asked, standing with an item that to me went with the latter of those descriptions.