“What’d she say, duchess?” he asked, seeming to sense my need to say it, and also the need to have encouragement to get it out.
“She said I made her look like a monster. Then lit it up with the edge of her cigarette. It burned up right there in the kitchen sink. All that work,” I added, the pain still a raw thing, right there in my heart. Even after all these years. Even with an adult mind that knew my mother for what she was – an abusive, alcoholic, selfish woman who had no more love for me than a dog had for his fleas.
“Your mom was a bitch,” he said, the crassness making a smile tug at my lips.
“Yes, she was. Is, I imagine,” I added.
“How long ago did you cut ties?”
“The day I graduated high school. I never looked back. But she’s alive out there somewhere still.”
“How can you be sure?”
“She sends letters,” I admitted, cringing like I did every single time Mateo would bring me the mail, and I would see her handwriting there. “To my office in the city.”
“What does she write?”
“Nasty things. About how I would never be where I am without her. Or how I owe her.”
“Tell me you never sent her a dime.”
“I sent her exactly forty dollars,” I told him. At his curious brow raise, I shrugged. “That was the cost for my one and only art class before she declared I was no Michelangelo, and that she wasn’t wasting her hard-earned money trying to teach a cow to speak Spanish.”
“Good for you,” he said, giving me those warm eyes paired with a warm smile that did that gosh darn warm thing to my insides yet again.
“You really think I could make a go of this?” I asked, taking my pad away from him, flipping the pages, and closing the cover.
“Absolutely. Won’t promise you you’ll make a fortune, but you could sell this stuff. People would buy it.”
“Whose name will I be signing on it?” I asked, feeling my stomach churn a little at the idea of having to be someone new.
“You get to keep your first name. Time and time again, I find that changing a first name is a recipe for disaster. And since there is no clever way to cut down your first name, you’ll keep it as-is. Your last names will have to go though.”
“I can live with that. They’re my mother and father’s names anyway.”
“Both?” he asked.
“Yeah. My mom’s last name was Blythe. And since my dad, a Meuller, was a deadbeat who dropped in and out of her life, she said she’d be damned if she gave me his last name only. So she hyphenated to help make school paperwork and everything easier.”
“Why didn’t you change it before you started your career?”
“It wasn’t a conscious choice. I was making moves in the design business, using my name because it was my name. I didn’t have the time to try to change all my papers. Then, suddenly, someone important got a hold of one of my bags. And it was too late. My name was my identity in the business.”
“Well, how do you feel about being a Livingston?”
“I can live with that,” I agreed, glad it wasn’t something ridiculous.
“Good. Now, what is for lunch?”
“Remember those sandwiches you spoke so highly of?” I asked as I got up to go to the fridge where I had put a few bowls of ice around his lunch to keep it cool. “I made you two turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on rye,” I told him, holding out the plate.
“You seriously not going to eat again?” he asked, looking actually angry at the very idea.
“I have a sandwich too,” I informed him with a chin lift. “Well, I don’t think you can call it a sandwich without bread.”
“How can it not have bread?” he asked, taking his food over to the table to eat, and I felt a surging feeling inside at the idea of him being so eager to eat something I made him, no matter how simple that something was.
“I have turkey and tomato wrapped in lettuce,” I told him, walking over to the table to sit down with him.
“And that is gonna fill you up?” he asked, eyeing my admittedly much less-filled plate than his dubiously.
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t hurt this whole starting over thing if you put on some weight.”
“I can’t,” I told him, shrugging.
“Can’t?”
“I guess it is genetic. My father was always tall and thin. My mom was almost gaunt-looking all my life. I used to be insecure about it, try to cram carbs and fat and sugar. But it never did anything but make me feel sluggish.”
I had learned to embrace it, the thinness. It wasn’t in vogue these days. Fuller bodies, curves, were the rage. I narrowly missed the days when mostly straight-up-and-down women were in fashion. But that was okay. I had accepted my long legs, my lack of hips, my barely-there breasts. I had learned to dress in a way that made the most of my figure, especially my behind. It worked for me. Even if it wasn’t today’s ideal.