"Sorry. Touchy subject."
"I understand," she said, and somehow, I knew she meant that.
"Anyway, um ... my mom's a nice person. She means well." Most of the time.
Audrey smiled as she smoothed her hair out. "Well, for what it's worth, I think we would make beautiful kids."
I snorted, taken aback by the blunt statement. "Oh, you think so, huh?"
"Oh, yeah," she insisted, pulling her hair back into a bouncy ponytail. "I mean, your coloring and my eyes? They'd have to be gorgeous."
I looked to her eyes at the mention and even though I wouldn't say it—I could never say it—I knew she was right.
***
"Blake, this place is a wreck," Mom assessed with her hands planted firmly to her hips. She surveyed the living room as I hurried around, picking up a glass here and a coaster there, trying to erase the night before in haste. “I should’ve brought over some Clorox and Swiffers.”
"It's not that bad." And it really wasn't. It might not have been the pristine standard she preferred but it could've easily been worse.
"What were you doing last night?" she pried, walking into the kitchen.
"Went to the club, came home, had a drink, went to bed." None of it was a lie, I told myself, and there was no need to divulge that I hadn’t been alone.
"Hm." It was a short sound, one tainted in skepticism, and I rolled my eyes as I bent over and swiped a pillow from the floor. As I tossed it back on the couch, I noticed something, a shimmer of light on the coffee table, and I eyed it closely.
Audrey's necklace. Her cross.
My heart escalated to a gallop as I wondered, when had she taken it off? I couldn't remember, and I thought I surely would've noticed, I'd stared at her so much the night before. But upon closer inspection, I noticed the chain, delicate and silver, hadn't been unclasped but was broken. It must've fallen from her neck and neither of us had noticed. My chest thrummed at a frightening speed at what this could've meant, if it could mean anything at all. I imagined her god, otherworldly and mighty, sitting upon his throne and punishing her for spending her night with a devil like me. Just a wave of his almighty hand, and there went the necklace, sent to the coffee table and left there to serve as a bad omen, a warning—a sign.
I swallowed as my blood chilled and rushed through my brittle heart. I didn't want to touch the damn thing, worried my flesh would burn and my bones would break. But, then there was my mother, and if she saw the fucking thing, the questions she would ask would break me more than some stupid piece of metal ever could.
I swiped it from the table and stuffed it into my pocket. My skin went unscathed and I was embarrassed by my own sigh of relief.
Jake walked into the room from the hallway, carrying his iPod in one hand and his enormous headphones in the other. He moved toward me with purpose and demanded, "Put on the One Foot Song."
"Oh, Jakey. Enough with that already. Please," Mom mumbled exhaustedly.
I took the iPod and glanced in her direction. "What?"
"That's all I've heard since yesterday. He wants me to put on the One Foot Song, and I have absolutely no idea what that even means. I never know what he’s talking about."
"It's Walk the Moon, Mom," I muttered, scrolling through his collection of songs and pressing play. I took the headphones and fitted them over his ears. "There you go, buddy."
With a satisfied grin and a shouted thanks, he headed back to his room, bopping his head all the way. Mom wasn't as pleased as she came back into the living room to stand beside me.
"I really don't understand how you do it."
"Do what?"
"Handle him like that. I can't get through to him the way you can and it frustrates the living hell out of me."
For one fraction of a second, I wondered if this was her reasoning behind putting him in a group home. To punish me by taking him away, by stripping me of the only purpose I had ever truly found in my life. But I shooed it away. She wouldn't do that to me. My mother didn't understand me much, but she wasn't cruel because of it.
I shrugged apologetically. "It's just the way it is."
“It’s the twin thing or whatever, I get it, but that doesn’t make it any less unfair. I’m his mother and I never know what the hell to do with him.”
"You could've called me," I reminded her, and she dismissed the thought with a flippant wave of her fingers.
“I already told you, I don’t want to depend on you. You need your own life.”
It was a funny thing. Not long ago, we'd had that conversation, about me living my life more for myself and less for Jake. At the time, I'd gotten defensive and pushed the very concept away. But now, I wondered about it, and whether it was at all possible to have a life outside of Jake. Hell, for all I knew, it could maybe include him, too. It only took a second to realize what had changed between then and now, as I felt the silver cross warming a spot on my leg from inside of my pocket.
It was Audrey. That's what had happened. And I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.
Chapter Sixteen
"YOU LOOK DIFFERENT today," Dr. Travetti commented, sitting down and adjusting her pant legs over the tops of her feet.
"Yeah, so do you," I commented, gesturing toward her. "Your hair’s down."
She laughed lightly and touched the ends of her shoulder-length brown hair. "Too cold today to wear it up."
"Hm," I grunted and nodded thoughtfully. "It's beautiful today."
Her gaze softened. "Beautiful, huh?"
"Hell yeah. It really feels like autumn today. Cool, crisp ..." I glanced toward the window with a nod of my chin. "Fucking beautiful."
Dr. Travetti situated her clipboard on her lap and began to scribble. I sat up straighter, craned my neck, and tried to catch a glimpse of what she was writing. When she caught me spying, she smiled fondly, shaking her head.
"Don't be so paranoid," she gently scolded.
"I'm not. Just curious."
"Mm-hmm," she chided. She jotted for a few more seconds before lowering the pen. "So, tell me how your weekend went. What’d you do?”
My jaw clenched as my options were laid out before me. I could keep myself clammed up and keep all the secrets from my weekend in a little box of selfishness. But somehow, I felt I owed it to the good doctor to tell her. After all, she was the one who had encouraged me. She was the one who had listened to my relentless mumbling and grumbling for the past couple of years.
"I went out with Audrey," I confessed, and the admission brought my gaze to my lap, to watch my fingers as they clenched and pulsed.
Dr. Travetti was plainly excited, expressed with a clap of her hands and a joyful squeal. "Blake! That's great!"
"Wow, don't get too excited," I laughed uncomfortably. "I didn't ask her to fucking marry me or some shit."
"No, but you went out with her. That's huge. I'm so proud of you."
Proud. Proud. I repeated the word on a loop in my brain. I tried to remember the last time someone had told me they were proud of me. I came up empty, while my heart now puffed with pleasantries and goodness.