11. Good Memories
GOOD MEMORIES
“ D o you want me to light the grill now or just talk first?” he asked once he’d gotten Daphne a drink and he snagged a beer. “I can eat whenever.”
“How about we talk first,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not in a hurry either.”
“Works for me,” he said. “I’m a flexible type of guy.”
“Good to know,” she said. “I’ve not been around many like that. Not that I date much either.”
“Why don’t we start with how you know my cousin Easton and Laurel, then we can move on to how you ended up in this area from Texas.”
“They kind of go together,” she said. “You don’t even know my last name.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. Are you going to share it?”
“It’s Allen. Daphne Allen. My brother is Aster Allen. He works for Blossoms and with Laurel.”
“Ahhhh,” he said. “That makes more sense. I’ve never met your brother but have heard a bit about him. He is dating Raine Scarsdale I believe. I went to school with River.”
“They got engaged over the weekend.”
“Good for them,” he said. “The Scarsdales, Bloom sisters, and Easton and I. We were looked down on in school.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Well, I’m sure you know about the history of Blossoms, right?”
He wasn’t going to tell it and sound like a chick. Not that he even knew much more than those girls had a hard life and turned nothing into everything.
“Most of it,” she said. “I also know about Raine. How her parents were working poor, I guess. I don’t know.
I don’t think like that. They had all the right things in life by the sounds of it.
All those kids turned out well. Brooks is an investigator with the state police, River is a doctor and Raine is a teacher.
Aster and me, we didn’t even go to college. ”
“Neither did I,” he said. “My parents raised Easton. He didn’t have the greatest life and it’s not my story to tell.
But he was out to prove he could do what he wanted and distance himself from what people said.
Me, it wasn’t a money thing as much as what my father did for a living.
I always knew I was taking it over. But there are small narrow minds at times and my father’s business started out mowing lawns and caring for properties. ”
“So that is not what it’s like today?” she asked.
“Not even close. Not back then. My father was building it before he passed suddenly. But I kept expanding. It’s a risk and worry, but I know I’ll regret if I can’t make it into everything my father dreamed it could be.”
And maybe he was out to prove to the Ellas of the world that you didn’t have to sit at a desk to be successful in life.
“Good for you,” she said.
“Thanks for that,” he said. “Tell me more about you now. Aster works here, so you came to be close to him? I do know he was in the service with Zane and that he got shot saving a girl from an abduction.”
He’d heard those things from Laurel in passing.
“Yes. Our family life wasn’t that wonderful.
My father works for an oil company. He does maintenance on the grounds and machinery.
My mother does some type of customer service job in an office.
Not really sure. She doesn’t talk much about it.
We were middle class, but my parents are. ..selfish is the best word I can use.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“No reason for you to be sorry. They weren’t around much. They’ve got friends they’d rather spend time with drinking and smoking weed, going to parties, and on vacations. I was left with Aster more times than not.”
“Can’t say that I know what that is like,” he said. “My father wasn’t much of a person to go and do anything. By the end of the day he was exhausted.”
His father was one of the hardest working men he knew. His mother right there with him.
“I bet you were close with your parents,” she said.
“Very. I still have moments when I think of my father. I’m not sure time lessens it. There are touches of him all over my business and when I see someone who knew him or we did work for years ago, they always bring my father up.”
In the beginning, it was a hard thing to deal with, but he started to look at it as good memories rather than ones to drag him into the abyss of sadness.
That was the last thing his father would ever want him to do.
“That’s sweet,” she said. “I bet he was well respected in the community. Trust me, no one brings up my parents’ names in a good light. Not unless it’s one of their partying friends.”
He wasn’t sure how to reply to that.
“So you wanted to move away? What did you do before you came here?”
“Since you’ve already seen all the goods I guess I can give you some history on me.”
He laughed over that statement.
At least she was being a better sport about it all.
“We can look at it that way. Tell me what you’d like.”
“I’m a loser who lived at home until I moved here. Aster went into the service to get away.”
“Leaving you by yourself and I bet he felt guilty about that,” he said.
“He did. But he had to do what he had to and I understood. After high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and my parents said they were going to start to charge me rent to stay in the house. I had to get a job to afford it.”
Talk about a shitty thing to be dumped on a kid that was just starting their life.
“I’m guessing you worked part-time prior, right? You seem the type.”
“I did. My parents are slobs, by the way. I know you probably were trying to figure out what I meant with my comment earlier. They are pack rats on top of it. Aster and I did most of the cleaning. Your place looks nice. I can tell the difference between someone picking up clutter and an atomic cleansing.”
He burst out laughing. “Atomic cleansing.”
“It’s a joke. Something I used to say. It’s what my parents are going to need at some point. Aster would come home on leave and have to clean. He just couldn’t stand it. It made him anxious and my parents almost looked forward to it.”
“They took advantage of it,” he said.
“They did. But they weren’t around much either.
Anyway, I got a job in a daycare center.
I liked kids and it was full time with benefits and I thought, okay, this will work.
But once I got a full-time job my parents decided that I could pay more rent.
I was paying half their mortgage for them.
I had my bedroom and that was it. I wasn’t even eating their food half the time because there wasn’t much in there. As kids, we had a ton of takeout.”
“My mother made Easton and I learn to cook. We each had to cook once a week. I thought it sucked as a kid, but I’m glad she did it.”
“I find that nice that she instilled that in you. Not that it looked like you did it much with the way you shopped today.”
He winked at her smirk. “I might get a bit lazy now and again, but I do know how. I’ll prove it to you too.”
“If you get in over your head, I know how to grill burgers and can lend a hand.”
“Then we can do it together,” he said.
“We can,” she agreed. “So moving on to my lovely life. I’m working full time at a daycare that pays minimum wage and can barely afford to pay my parents’ rent let alone everything else in life.
I’ve got Aster’s second-hand car that he left for me, but it needed work at times.
So I start to be a server part time a few nights a week.
I ended up making more doing that, but there are no benefits. ”
“Health insurance is a bitch, but you need it,” he said.
“I’m lucky enough to get it at this job and was stunned, but shouldn’t be,” she said.
“The Bloom sisters treat their employees well,” he said. “Go on.”
“Aster moves here, I’ve got my dismal life at home and feel like such a loser going nowhere and don’t even know how to move forward if I want. Can I tell you I feel even worse saying all of this? It’s just as embarrassing.”
He got up from the chair he was in. She’d been on the couch and he moved closer to her. She didn’t shift away and he reached for her hand.
“Don’t feel that way. We all have a history that embarrasses us. I think it just makes us humble and gives us the strength to take the next steps in our journey.”
“That’s it exactly,” she said. “It’s nice you understand.”
“More than you realize,” he said. She looked at him oddly. “Continue.”
“My parents decided they wanted to sell the house. They wanted something smaller, a townhouse they didn’t have to maintain. That meant I had to move out.”
“Did you want to move out?” he asked.
“I’d wanted to for years, but I couldn’t afford to live on my own, even though I’d been putting money away. And I didn’t want to get a roommate. I might as well stay living with my parents who were never home rather than some stranger.”
“Good point,” he said.
“But I didn’t have a choice. I was feeling sorry for myself.
Aster wanted me to move here. I came to visit and just check the area out.
His bosses wanted to meet me and I didn’t think anything of it.
The next thing I know the three of them are interviewing me for a nanny position.
I don’t even know how it happened, but before I left I was offered the job and a place to live on top of it.
It’s literally like a dream come true for me and many would scoff over it. ”
“Maybe that is why Poppy thought we’d get along so well,” he said. “You’re humble like me. I’m not out to show the world how wonderful I am. I’m just living my life the best way I can and doing it the way I know how.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand. “Seems to be working for you.”
“It does,” he said. “And maybe it’s working for you too.”
“I hope so,” she said. “If I can get over some of the decisions I’ve made.”
“Back to that again?” he asked. “I thought we were going to move past it.”
“I’ll try,” she said softly.