“Thank you. Sounds good. I’m kind of looking forward to taking a hot bath.” She turned and offered me a hug. “Gia…it was an absolute pleasure meeting you. You let me know when you’d like to come for a visit. I’ll put on a pot of tea and block out the afternoon.”
Embracing her, I said, “That sounds wonderful, Melody. Thank you. I plan on it. It was so great meeting you.”
She started walking away, then stopped. “Actually, would you like to keep the painting I made tonight? I have so many. I can’t keep them all.”
“Oh my God. I would love to. Are you sure?”
“Totally. I would love for you to have it.” She walked over to where it was and handed it to me.
“Thank you so much, Melody. Seriously, this really made my night. I’m gonna hang this up in my room.”
I watched as she headed toward the stairs and disappeared. It was after closing, and Rush and I were now alone on the rooftop.
I held the painting in my hands, looking down at it. “Your mother is amazing.”
“She is.”
I placed the painting on a table then looked up at Rush for several seconds.
“What?” he asked. “You’re looking at me funny.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Let me guess…you’re wondering how with my black heart and temper I can be so different from the kind and gentle, zen-filled soul that my mother is?”
“I didn’t say that.” I laughed.
“You were thinking it.”
“No. I wasn’t thinking that exactly, because I actually do think you’re kind, too. Now I know where you get it from, that side of you. You’ve shown kindness to me. You just have a way of ruining it sometimes.” I paused. “I want you to know that I apologized to your mother for my behavior earlier. And now, I’m apologizing to you.”
“It’s fine. You know…you only traumatized her because now she thinks her precious son is a butt burglar.”
I burst into laughter. “Oh my God. Butt burglar?”
“Yeah, she’s gonna have nightmares now.” He winked.
“You’re crazy.”
We were both cracking up. At least, he didn’t hate me anymore.
When the laughter died down, he said, “I’m sorry I lost control outside earlier.”
I squinted at him. “No, you’re not.”
“You’re right. I’d probably say that shit to you all over again.”
“I figured.”
“You made me mad talking to that pansy-ass bartender. I lost my mind a little.”
“Well, if you don’t want to be with me, you have to get used to seeing stuff like that.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it, especially when it’s being thrown in front of me in my place of business.”
Not wanting to get into it with him right now, I expelled a breath. “Can we just forget this entire night ever happened? Well, except for the part where I met your cool mother?”
He surprised me when he said, “Yeah. We can do that.” Rush made his way over to the bar. “You want a night cap?”
“I’m driving home. I have Riley’s car tonight, so I shouldn’t drink.”
He ignored me, grabbing a glass anyway. “I’ll limit you to one, and I’ll make it weak.”
“What’s the catch tonight? What expletive do I have to say to earn my free drink?”
“Babe…you alluded to ass fucking in front of my mom, I would say you’re absolved for a while.”
A shiver ran down my spine, and I couldn’t figure it out if it was because of my embarrassment or the fact that he’d called me “babe.”
I covered my mouth. “Oh my God. Did tonight really happen?”
“Afraid it did.”
I watched in silence as he made some fruit concoction before slipping a little umbrella inside and sliding the glass toward me.
Taking a sip, I thought a bit more about how I immediately took to Melody. “Life is funny.”
He cocked a brow. “Funny?”
“Yeah. I was just thinking about how we’ve both sort of experienced similar but opposite life situations. I have a great dad and no mother. And you have an awesome mom and no father. Well, you have a father…but you know what I mean.”
He leaned into the bar and closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah, unfortunately, I do…know what you mean.”
“Anyway, it’s sort of something we have in common. When I was talking to your mom tonight, I found myself oddly envious of you, thinking that I would give anything to have a mother like her. Then, I had to remind myself that you’re missing something, too.”
Rush had been wiping the bar down but stopped and just looked at me.
I continued, “Anyway, I don’t even know why I’m saying this to you right now. It’s just—”
“I had the same thought when I met your dad.”
It surprised me to hear him admit that. “Really?”
“Yeah. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t have minded a cool cat like that for a father. So, you’re not crazy. It’s natural to feel envious. Sometimes you don’t realize what you’re missing until you see it right in front of you.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” He’d articulated my exact sentiments. “You’re a complex soul, Rush.”
I really wished I could’ve hung out here all night with him. Catching myself falling hard again when I was supposed to be working on getting over him, I suddenly forced myself up. “I really better get going.”
Rush came around from behind the bar and stopped right in front of me. “Be careful on the road.”
He was uncomfortably close, and his scent, the mixture of cigarettes and his signature cologne was making me weak. It reminded me of the night he spent in my bed. I was supposed to be leaving, but I hadn’t moved. My nipples were tingling, and I had the sudden urge to answer his question from earlier.
“I’ve never had anyone come in through my back door, but I would be open to it with the right person. Very open.”
Before I could capture his reaction, I slipped past him and headed for the stairs.
I went to bed hard.
I woke up hard.
I was totally fucked.
There was no talking my dick down after those words exited Gia’s mouth last night.
Very open.
Fuck. Me.
I needed to get myself in check before I had to go to breakfast with my mother.
After yet another jerk-off session in a long, cold shower, I finally made my way downstairs. I didn’t even normally love jerking off. I much preferred being inside of an actual woman, but jerking off to thoughts of anal sex with Gia—well, that was just about the best I was gonna get aside from the real thing.
Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen when I finally emerged.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“Morning, Ma,” I said, pouring some of the coffee she’d made.
“I wasn’t sure if you were ever coming down.”
“Yeah, I slept in. We should go eat. I’m starving.”
Starving for Gia’s ass.
“Actually, I wanted to wait for you to come down, but I can’t go to breakfast. I have to get back home. I completely forgot my new couch is getting delivered this afternoon.”
“Oh. Well, that sucks.”
“Why don’t you call Gia? Ask her to go to breakfast. I really like her.”
“Ma…”
“Sit down, Heathcliff.”
Fuck. My mother sitting me down and calling me by my given name was never a good sign. The last time she’d had me sit for a little one-on-one was when I was seventeen and she told me our dog died.”
I pulled the chair out and planted my ass in it anyway.
“You know I rarely poke my nose into your private business.”
And after last night’s ass debauchery, I figured it would stay that way.
“I know…”
“You don’t talk about women. In fact, pretty much the only time I even laid eyes on the women you…met??
?was when I saw them climbing out of your bedroom window in the middle of the night when you were a teenager.”
My eyes widened. “You knew about that?”
She laughed. “Of course. And the water you filled my liquor bottles with to replace the alcohol you’d stolen. And the first tattoo you got at sixteen, but didn’t show me until you were eighteen. And all the times you rolled my car out of the driveway and borrowed it for the evening when I’d taken away your privileges for coming home late. By the way, I do appreciate you filling up the tank each time after you stole it.”
I shook my head. “How come you never said anything about all that shit?”
“Because it’s all part of growing up, sweetheart. I kept my eye on you from a distance to make sure you weren’t going overboard or getting yourself into too much trouble. But I needed to let you live a little and experiment while you were under my roof. If you didn’t start raising hell until you moved out, there would be no one to watch you. It’s like those kids who drink for the first time when they go off to college. They’re the ones who get hurt more than the kids who have experimented and learned their lessons already at home.”
“Well…I’m not sure what to say. I’m sorry, I guess. For bringing girls home and being rotten.”
My mother smiled. “That’s not necessary. The point of my bringing this up to you now wasn’t to make you feel bad or to have you apologize. It’s to show you that while you might think you’re hiding things from me, you’re not always as good at it as you think.”
“I’m not following you, Ma.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “You have feelings for Gia. And she has them for you. Strong ones.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “She’s not a casual fu…” I caught myself just in time. “She’s not someone you have a good time with and walk away from without hurting, Ma.”
“So why do you need to walk away and hurt her?”
I opened my mouth to answer and realized I honestly didn’t have one to give.
My mother offered me a sad smile. “Sweetheart, sometimes the risk of what bad things could happen keeps us from experiencing all the good things life has to offer.”
My mother wasn’t the type of person to throw out advice lightly. The best parts of me were the things that I learned by watching how she acted. So I contemplated what she’d said for a few minutes. I wanted to be with Gia…and not in the normal way I wanted to be with women—which usually capped out at a meal and a few hours in bed. I wanted to sit around and talk to her. I wanted to take her to my mother’s to watch the way her eyes lit up when she looked at the paintings for the first time. Of course, I was also borderline obsessed with being inside her—not just getting her off and finishing myself off either. I wanted to fill every orifice of that damn woman. A few days ago, I’d dreamt of fucking that ballsy mouth of hers. Apparently yesterday it was ass day. So why wasn’t I giving being together a chance?
There was only one answer, and I didn’t like it very much at all.
I’m fucking afraid.
Coming to that realization, I looked up at my mother who’d been sitting there quietly just sipping her tea and waiting for me. Her eyes searched my face before she spoke again. “When you’re afraid to fall in love with someone, it’s usually because you’ve already started to fall, sweetheart.”
And here I thought I was so slick all these years, keeping everything from my mother. I shook my head again. “Have you always been such a philosopher, and I didn’t see it?”
She laughed. “Some of the best philosophers on love failed at love themselves, you know.”
That broke my heart to hear my mother say. I knew my father had fucked her over, but I never really questioned why she didn’t have a boyfriend most of my growing up. This was already a strange talk…what the fuck…
“How come you never dated when I was growing up?”
She sighed. “I actually really loved your father. He wasn’t the person he is today when he was with me back then. At least he didn’t seem to show me that side of him. Or I didn’t want to see it. But I was blindsided when I found out he was married, and in that moment he revealed his true colors. It took me a long time to heal, and I was busy raising my beautiful son…working…painting. I used the excuse of being busy to justify not letting anyone in. You probably don’t want to hear this…but I wasn’t celibate all the years you were growing up, even though you never met anyone.”
“You’re right. I definitely don’t want to hear that.”
She smiled. “My outlook on relationships wasn’t much better than yours is now. In fact, that’s why it’s so clear to me what’s going on with you. It’s like looking in the mirror at my life years ago in a lot of ways.”
“And here you are giving me advice. Even though you don’t take it yourself.”
She got up and put her mug into the sink before sitting back down. “Actually, I have taken my own advice. I’ve been seeing someone.”
My brows jumped. This was just getting fucking weird. “Oh yeah?”
“His name is Jeff. He’s an art gallery curator. We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year now.”
“A year? Why haven’t you ever mentioned him? Or brought him with you on a visit?”
“I don’t know. I guess in the beginning I assumed it would be my typical relationship. I hadn’t expected it to blossom so beautifully.”
Wow. Just wow.
“You’re just opening up about everything today, aren’t you?”
Mom laughed and stood. I took a close look at her for the first time in a long time. She looked really happy. “I need to get going for my couch delivery. If I miss it, they’ll charge me another delivery fee. Why don’t you and Gia come in next week one day and have lunch. I’ll show her my work, and then we can all go over to Jeff’s gallery and check out the show he has on display and have some dinner. I think it’s time you meet him.”
She walked to me, and I stood and enveloped her in a big hug. I had an ache in my chest when the thought that Gia didn’t have a mother to do this with popped into my head. It made me want to share mine with her.
“I’ll load your car for you.”
Watching Mom drive away, I waved one last time when I caught her looking back at me in the rearview mirror. I stood at the bottom of my driveway for a few minutes just thinking. Until it hit me. Had I just set up a double date with my mother—and a woman I wasn’t dating?
I was fake repairing a car…this was a first.
While I ignored my mother’s suggestion of taking Gia to breakfast, I decided to use the day to pretend to fix Gia’s car—the car I’d already fixed and never told her about. The car I’d repaired and then lost a bet to have a reason to do the repairs I’d already done. Anything that had to do with this woman wound up being a little fucking nutty for some reason.
But here I was, with a Nissan jacked up in the air while I lay beneath it listening to music and pretending to do shit. I’d knocked on the door and gotten Gia’s keys, feigning that they were necessary to fix the brakes and tire. Luckily, the combo of serious shit I talked about with my mother this morning and whacking off seemed to keep me from embarrassing myself when she answered the door groggy eyed, wearing a skimpy pair of shorts and a tank top with no fucking bra on.
I’d told her I’d come to pay my bet debt and needed to get started so I could head over to the construction site at one of my properties. But the truth was, the crew wasn’t working on Saturday. I just wanted to head off her inviting me to stay or anything. My head was still spinning from my conversation with my mother, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to spend time with Gia.
About a half-hour into my fake repair, I felt a tap at my leg so I climbed out from under the car.
Fuck me.
I couldn’t even attempt to hide the way I leered. Gia was standing next to the car wearing a yellow bikini and holding what looked like two glasses of iced tea. Her ample tits were perky as all fuck and the
little bikini top barely covered her areolas.
“What the hell are you wearing?” I finally growled.
She looked down. “A bathing suit. It’s beautiful out, so I’m going to lie out by the pool for an hour or two before starting to write.”
“That’s not a bathing suit, those are scraps of a bathing suit that someone shredded.”
She tilted her head. “Are you saying you don’t like it?”
“Do you wear that in public?”
“Not usually. I only wear it in the yard because it’s so skimpy. But it’s perfect for tanning.”
“Good.” I grabbed the tea from her hand without asking and chugged it down. Today was warm, but suddenly I was starting to sweat. “Thanks for the tea. You should go back into the yard before you get cited for indecent exposure.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re a jerk.”
“Yes. I know that. You’ve made that clear. To me…and my mother.”
She pouted. “Are you going to make me feel bad about that forever?”
I grinned. “Probably.”
Gia stuck her tongue out at me. God, I want to see that thing lick the head of my cock.
I sat down on the driveway, readying to lie back and finish up my pretend repair. “Don’t stick that thing out, unless you plan to use it, little girl.”
“I’ll be by the pool if you need me.”
I crawled back under the car. “Fine.”
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. This was Gia I was dealing with. “Rush.”
I crawled back out. “What?”
A sinful little smile spread across her face. “Just didn’t want you to miss my walking back to the house. Considering your obsession with my ass lately.”
Before I could respond, she turned to walk away, revealing the backside of her bathing suit. Or more correctly, the lack of a backside to her bathing suit. Gia was wearing a thong bottom that revealed two perfectly round globes, and those babies were fucking taunting me as they jiggled their way up toward the house.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I grumbled to myself. I’d never given any thought to what the H stood for before, but at that point, with how he was testing my patience, I was pretty sure it was heartless.