I shook my head. “Now I want to beat the crap out of the asshole who played you, too. For a variety of reasons. The first being that he got to be inside you and I haven’t.”
Gia rested her hand high on my thigh, and I almost swerved out of my lane. “We can fix that you know?” she said. “I’m not the one making us take it slow. We just passed a Holiday Inn at the last exit.”
I groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me, woman.”“Hi!” My mother opened the front door and engulfed Gia in a big hug before even acknowledging me. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
The two of them started complimenting each other on shit immediately.
“I love your necklace.”
“Blue is your color!”
“Did you change your hair?”
I rolled my eyes. “What the hell am I? Chopped liver?”
My mother stuck out her bottom lip. “Awww. Does my little boy feel neglected? Come here. Give your mamma a hug.”
Well, now it just feels forced. But I didn’t give a crap because my mother’s the shit. I squeezed her tight, and it felt freaking awesome.
When she pulled back, she looked between Gia and me with the most excited face I’ve ever seen on her. She clapped her hands a few times, barely able to contain her enthusiasm. “Come in. Come in.”
The house I grew up in was small, a typical Cape Cod-style starter home that packed many of the middle-class neighborhoods on Long Island. But my mother kept it filled with bright colors and paintings, so it always felt bigger than most of my friends’ homes for some reason. The best thing that came out of my grandfather leaving me the inheritance was that I was able to pay it off for her a few years ago.
“Wow. I love this place.” Gia looked around wide-eyed.
“I’m a bit of a wannabe decorator. I change the colors and move the furniture around all the time. When Heathcliff was little, he’d leave for school in the morning and the walls would be tan and couches red and he’d come home and we’d have blue walls and I’d have a staple gun out reupholstering the couches.”
Gia smirked at me. “Heathcliff. That sounds so funny to me, even though I know it’s his name.”
“Some of my family call him, Heath. But that never felt right to me.”
“Wasn’t he named after someone?”
Mom nodded. “My father. He was a good man. But Heathcliff never got the chance to meet him. He died when I was pregnant.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. He actually reminds me a lot of my dad. Tough guy, a little rough around the edges, but fiercely loyal and protective.”
Gia smiled. “I’ve definitely noticed the protective side.”
“I bet you have. Come on, let me show you my studio before Jeff gets here to take us to his gallery.”
“You two go ahead,” I said. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I’m gonna go out back for a quick smoke.”
The two women turned to me and frowned in unison.
“I wish you’d give that up, sweetheart,” Mom said.
“Me, too,” Gia tacked on.
I looked between the two of them and growled. “Just what I need. Two of you up my ass.”Jeff was nothing like I expected.
He looked more like a grandfather than someone my mother should be dating. Although, I suppose, technically, my mother is old enough to be a grandmother, too. I just never saw her as old because she didn’t act it and looked so young.
Jeff had gray hair, tanned skin with deep-set wrinkles, and had on a pair of loafers. I’d never even known she dated, much less got a look at a guy she spent time with, yet I expected him to look more like a rocker than a guy who sits in a damn rocker.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Gia walked up next to me as I pretended to study a painting in Jeff’s gallery. It looked like a bunch of ink splats to me, but the price tag was seven grand.
I pointed to the splat. “Would you pay seven grand for that?”
She chuckled. “I don’t have seven grand in my bank account. But if I did, I wouldn’t be wasting it on that.”
“What would you be spending it on?”
“September.”
“September?”
She sighed. “Yeah. The house we rent is twenty thousand a month in the summer months, but drops to a fraction of that in September. I just realized I only have six weeks left out there.” Our eyes caught. “I’m not ready for it to be over yet.”
Yeah. She wouldn’t be leaving if I had anything to do with it. I covered my nut for that rental with the spring and summer income. But it was too soon to ask her to stay and tell her I’d foot the bill.
She bumped her shoulder to me. “So…what do you think of your mom’s boyfriend?”