I pushed open the door to the building, holding it open for and as she ducked past me, I smirked. “I’m a sweet guy.”
A blush that had nothing to do with the chilling wind crept to her cheeks and she dipped her head, hurrying to the truck.
“Man. I might need to go get a warmer coat,” she said, scrubbing her arms while I unlocked the doors. “Funny how it can go from fall to feeling like winter so quick. It’s like I forget, every year.”
After I followed her into the truck, and we were buckled, I threw my arm over her headrest so I could check for traffic before pulling out onto the street. “So, any chance you’d want to go to dinner and tell me all about your day?”
She rubbed her hands down her thighs. Sometimes she did this from nerves being in the car. Tonight I suspected it had more to do with the weather.
“Oh.” She tucked hair behind her ear and cringed. “I, well… I have a meeting tonight, but sure. I can do something before then, but I’d have to have something fast, so I have time to change and get to the church. And I need to look into the bus schedule.”
The church. Of course. I’d forgotten about her meetings.
“How about I let you change and have a few minutes to relax. Then we’ll do dinner and I’ll take you?”
“I feel like you have an issue with me taking public transportation.”
Based on the gleam in her eye, she was teasing me. She was also right. It wasn’t the public transportation, it was what happened the last night she came home after dark. My building was safe. The area was nicer than her last one. That didn’t mean bad things didn’t happen to good people once the sun set.
It did.
“If I’m already driving us to dinner, it’s no problem to take you to the church. It’s only a few minutes away.”
“Thank you. I’d like that, then.”
“Oh my gosh. This is delicious.”
She groaned around a fork filled with spicy noodles, hissing in a breath between every bite. Apparently spicy noodles at The Walking Wok was synonymous with set your mouth on fire with every bite. And she’d requested a mild version.
Still, Lilly praised the food with every top of the mouth searing bite, all while using chopsticks like she’d been born with them.
“God, I missed this. And sushi.” She closed her eyes and hummed. “I used to love sushi. My friend Kendra and I, we would always go to a sushi place on Fridays before the school’s football games.” She had a far-off look in her eyes, the same one I knew I got when I remembered something sweet and equally painful.
She shook her head and took a sip of her water.
I was struck mute. I wasn’t used to her offering up personal pieces of her life when she was younger.
“Anyway, this was a great idea tonight. I haven’t been able to eat out often, and I really missed this.”
“You’re welcome.” I cleared my throat and shoved a bite of chicken into my mouth before I said something ridiculously stupid and scary. Something like, I’d do anything for you.
I tried to fight this. I tried to fight my visceral reaction to her since Dad started showing me photos of her. I started falling in love with a woman when I only knew her story and her two-dimensional smile.
It sounded impossible.
My feelings for her weren’t. Having us end up together was a different story.
“What about Kendra? Have you had any contact with her?”
“No.” She shook her head again and looked down at her plate. “I don’t blame her though. We were so young and our parents were friends. I wrote to her a couple of times but I never heard back.”
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t imagine anything my friends would have done that would turn me against them. What happened that night was an accident, what happened afterward abusive.
“I don’t hold it against her, but I do wish I could see her again. Explain.”
“Explain what?”
Like she hadn’t known what she’d just said, Lilly glanced at me. “What?”
“You said you wanted to explain to Kendra. What do you have to explain?”
She blinked several times. “Nothing. I just… I miss her sometimes. This night is just reminding me of her, I guess.” She gestured to my meal with her chopsticks. “How’s your chicken pho?”
Lilly gave me a pleading look, one begging me to drop the subject. I did. This wasn’t the time or the place. And who knew if she’d ever become comfortable enough with me to share, although I hoped that would change.
“It’s delicious. Walking Wok hasn’t disappointed me yet with anything I’ve tried.”
I was most especially thankful for the early dinner we were having with none of the tables around us taken. The atmosphere was always quiet but tonight it was nice to feel like we were alone, even if we were in public.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked after several minutes of us enjoying our meals.
“Hit me.”
“It’s about Brandon. About his mom.”
“Okay.” She’d already told me she knew his mom. I wasn’t surprised, but it saddened me all the same. And pissed me off a woman who had treated Brandon so horribly from the time he was born was still alive. “What is it?”
“I was wondering if you told him. That I knew her.”
I set down my silverware and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table. Her eyes were so wide, so curious and slowly, as we spent more time together all the roughened edges she’d carried herself with were beginning to soften. “No. I didn’t. I’m not saying you can’t. That’s your decision, but Brandon said goodbye to his mom and let her go a long time ago. I don’t know if drudging up his past with him would do anyone any good.”
“Right.” She licked her lips and picked at her food. “I get that. Do you know how he did it?”
“Did what?”
“Let his mom go. How did he just say goodbye and live his life without her?”
That familiar burning rage hit my chest and seared straight to my heart as she asked, so timidly, so quietly. Like she was afraid of even voicing the question.
It was arguable which one of them had the worst parents. Brandon’s mom had been abusive and neglectful, higher more minutes of the day than not for as long as Brandon could remember.
On the flip side, Lilly’s dad was abusive, physically and emotionally. And he sent his daughter to prison.
So yeah, it was a pretty shitty toss-up on the crappy parenting scale.
“I don’t know, Lilly, but if you’re talking about your parents and not Brandon’s, I think you just have to realize you were always more than who they said you were, and you start living like it. One day at a time, until you realize you don’t really need their approval or their presence in your life if they’re not willing to support you. You don’t need decent parents who love you to make something of yourself. You have to do that for you.”
She blew out a breath and ran a hand through her hair. “It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”
“It’s not, and I don’t want to be flippant about the road ahead of you at all. I do know, from years of watching kids and teens come into our house, and watching Mom and Dad break their backs to give them something good, the drive to be successful can only come from inside. It’s just easier to find it when you have outside support. But I think if you look around you, at the people in your life now, not back then, you’ll find you have that.”