Nine
Savage
“It’s soooo good,” Laila coos, like she’s in the midst of slowly riding my cock, rather than merely eating a bowl of Italian fish soup. “You didn’t over-promise on this at all, Adrian.”
I smile at her across our fancy dining room table. “I’m glad it turned out well. You never know. As you saw, I’m not particularly ‘detail oriented’ when I cook.”
She snickers. “Honestly, I was surprised you were such a shit show while making this. I was under the impression you make this dish frequently.”
I shake my head. “I don’t have a kitchen, remember? Before tonight, I’ve only made this one time without Mimi standing right there to help me.”
“What was the one time?”
“Mimi’s seventieth birthday.”
“How’d it turn out?”
“Not so great.”
We both laugh.
“How old were you?” she asks.
“Seventeen. I’d just gotten my first job at a grocery store as a bagger, which meant I could afford all the ingredients, thanks to my fat paycheck and employee discount. I thought I was such a baller when I got that job. I thought I was Reed fucking Rivers.”
She giggles. “I bet you got flirted with a ton while bagging nice ladies’ groceries.”
“I did. My co-workers used to tease me that whatever register I happened to be working always had the longest line.”
Laila snickers. “Of course, it did.” She takes another zealous bite of food, before saying, “So, what you’re telling me is you discovered at an early age you’re drop-dead gorgeous.”
I feel my cheeks bloom. I know she’s being light-hearted, but at her comment, memories of my early years flicker across my mind—times when, to put it mildly, I didn’t feel ‘drop-dead gorgeous’ in the slightest.
Whatever Laila sees on my face, it causes her to furrow her brow. “I was just teasing you. Sort of. You can’t help that’s your face.”
“No offense taken. I just . . .” I don’t know how to finish the sentence, so I don’t.
Laila shifts in her chair, obviously trying to read me. But when she can’t crack the code, she looks down and takes another bite of food.
“So . . . you said Mimi is your dad’s mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Did your family go to your grandma’s house and cook a nice meal for her on her birthday every year, or was Mimi’s seventieth birthday an extra-special thing?”
I take a sip of water. “Mimi’s seventieth was the only time I was stupid enough to try to cook a big meal for her. Like I said, I wanted to impress her, not only with my cooking skills, but with my deep pockets.”
“That’s so cute, Savage.”
I pause. If I say this next thing, there will be no turning back. I’ll open the door to talking about the real stuff. The shit I don’t say in interviews. The stories I only tell Kendrick and Kai, since they were living in Mimi’s apartment complex when I arrived on my grandmother’s doorstep like a lost puppy.
I take another sip of water and decide: Fuck it. Laila’s already met Mimi, and she’s going to be talking to my grandmother every night for the next three months. I might as well give Laila a full picture of why Mimi means so much to me. “I didn’t ‘go’ to Mimi’s house for her birthday, by the way. I lived with Mimi. She was my only parent, beginning at age twelve.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize that.”
“Mm-hmm.” I take a bite of food.
Laila cocks her head to the side. “Why did you start living with Mimi? Did something bad happen to your parents?”
I take a long sip of water, gearing up for the conversation we’re about to have. “Not in the way you mean. I’m sure if you asked my mom, she’d say I was the ‘bad’ thing that happened to her.”
Laila’s features contort with sympathy. “Oh.”
“Or, at the very least,” I add, “I was the ‘highly inconvenient’ thing that made all subsequent bad things unavoidable. You know my band’s song ‘Sorry for the Inconvenience’?”
She nods.
“That song is a big ‘fuck you’ to both my parents.”
Laila puts down her spoon. “You mentioned your ‘asshole father’ when we drank that bottle of whiskey in Providence. But I didn’t realize you have an asshole mother, too.”
“She’s not an asshole. At least, she tried to raise me for a while, unlike him. She’s just not a person who ever should have had a kid.”
“I can’t imagine. My mom is so grateful to have my sister and me. And now, my niece. She always says we’re the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“That’s what Mimi always says about me.”
“Were your parents in a relationship?”
“No. It was a one-night stand. My father knocked up the bartender—my mother—at his favorite bar. Once my mom realized she was pregnant, she tracked my father down, but he denied I was his.”
“No paternity test?”
I shrug. “I’ve never asked her about it. My hunch is she wasn’t sure who the father was. By the time I was a toddler, though, it was a moot point. I looked just like him. She said she brought me to him when I was two or three and demanded he take me for a while, so she could have some fun again.”