“Well,” I started, felt Driver’s presence, turned, gave him a huge smile as I took a beer from him and turned back as Buck took the other one and then Driver moved away. “You learn that in foster care.”
Buck had started to lift the bottle to his mouth, but he stopped when his head jerked around, and his narrowed, lovely, rich, dark-brown eyes hit me.
“What?” he asked so quietly, I barely heard him.
But I heard him.
I was sucking back beer, staring at him and nodding all at the same time. I dropped my chin and my beer hand and looked at him.
“I mean, I messed up with Rogan, but I didn’t know that. He was handsome and he wore suits and he drove a nice car and he acted from the beginning like he really liked me. Not to mention he had a seriously cool name. I mean Rogan Kirk. Great name,” I stated.
I took another pull on my beer, swallowed it, and kept right on blathering.
“My birth mother gave me up for adoption then my adoptive father took off on my new mom when I was five, and she handled it for a while then, when I was seven, she killed herself, so I went to her sister. But she had four kids already, her husband had left her too, and things were tough. I wasn’t blood anyway, so she called social services and they put me into foster care. That’s how I met Tia. We were in a home together. I met her when I was twelve. We were thick as thieves. She was great. Like having a sister. She liked Rogan too. Neither of us expected to get something like that. We both expected to get something like…something like…” I trailed off and then stated, “Well, obviously, something like Esposito.”
When I shut up, I saw he was staring at me.
He kept doing this for a bit, before he said, “Jesus, Clara.”
“I know.” I threw out my hand with the bottle in it. “No one knows that, right? No one knows why I believed in Rogan. Or why I wanted to believe.” I sucked back more beer and went on, “In those articles, they didn’t talk about how I worked my ass off at school to get academic scholarships to go to college. Which didn’t cover it all, by the way. I had to get student loans and I paid those off. No one knows that.”
I threw back more beer.
And kept blabbing.
“They also didn’t talk about the student loans I took out to get my masters which I also paid off with my money. Money I earned. Rogan offered, but I said no. I didn’t think it was fair. They didn’t ask me questions about that. They didn’t try to investigate why I was blind to what Rogan was doing. He treated me great. He traveled a lot, but when he was home, our marriage was awesome.”
I leaned into Buck on the last word then leaned back and slugged more beer before continuing.
“I’d worked hard to get what I had. I thought Rogan was my reward. I thought, finally, finally,” I leaned in again and stayed there, “it was my turn to have a taste of the good life.”
“Baby,” he whispered.
“But I was wrong,” I went on like he said not a word and sat back. “And that’s what I learned. You make all the right moves. You don’t get into trouble, and Buck,” I aimed a look at him, though not entirely successfully, “drinking until you’re smashed is the wrong move. That’ll piss off foster parents, get you kicked to a new place, or worse. So you be good. You do what you’re told. You study and get good grades and be where they tell you to be or where you say you’re going to be. You don’t make trouble. You don’t ask questions. You don’t have expectations. You just wake up and get through each day doing the best you can and putting every foot right.”
I threw back another swallow of beer.
And again kept talking.
“So I did all that, and I have to tell you, I’ve thought about it, like, loads, how I put my foot wrong with Rogan. But I swear, I swear, he gave me no clue. We had a great marriage, great sex, shoo!” I threw my hand out again. “I mean, seriously, he’s a jerk of the jerkiest order, but you have to hand it to him, he has stamina if he was sleeping with all those women and still able to do the things he did to me.” I leaned in again. “And how often and with such energy.”
“Are you saying you’re not pissed at him?” Buck asked, and I tried to focus more fully on him.
“Oh no. If it wasn’t illegal and if prison didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me, I would have killed him,” I stated breezily. “I’m just saying he was great in bed.”