Chapter Twenty-One #2
Oh, crap. Not now. This is a really bad time, Mom. Can I call you in a couple hours? I promise I’m not dodging you.
Where are you, Brady?
At a bar.
What’s the name of the bar? Why the hell does my mom need to know the name of the bar I’m in?
Finnegan’s , I text. We’ll talk soon.
You better believe it.
I turn my ball cap backward and rest my forehead on my fist. This is drama overload for me.
Angela decides to show up fifteen minutes late, undoubtedly to make me sweat. It works. I nurse my beer and decide I wouldn’t be all that upset if the earth just swallowed me whole. But finally, she strolls through the door and sits down in front of me, not saying a word.
“Thanks for coming,” I say, like this is a funeral or a board meeting or something.
“Mm-hm.”
“Do you want something?”
“No.” She checks her phone.
“How’s it going?”
“What do you want, Brady?”
“I just want to talk.” I haven’t thought this through. Absolutely nothing has changed since I was home. I still used her, I still can’t tell her, I still can’t be with her. I still feel like shit all the time with her gone.
“You seemed like you needed a little bit of space before I left,” I say. I mean, she did tell me I shouldn’t have anything to do with her.
“You must be joking.”
Okay, yeah, bad start. Terrible, terrible start. Try again, idiot. “I have some stuff going on—”
“You had a party the night you got back from New York,” she interrupts me. “I wasn’t invited.”
“Yeah, that was…wrong,” I say.
“Look, Brady. You don’t owe me any apologies or explanations. We were never together together, so…”
“There’s some stuff going on with my family,” I blurt. “I’ve been having a hard time dealing with it.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to ghost me? I somehow strike you as a teenager who can’t handle an adult discussion and just needs to be dropped? That’s great. Thanks, Brady. Good talk.” She drops her phone in her bag and starts to slide out of the booth.
“Can you please let me try to tell you what’s going on?”
She’s perched on the edge of the booth, looking wary and annoyed. “I’m listening.”
Well, this is it. I can’t tell her specifics, but I can give her enough to explain my behavior. “So, there’s this thing going on with my dad—”
The bar door slams open, letting in sunlight and a red-haloed vision of fury that makes me choke on my words and stare in horror. The vision approaches and points a finger at me.
“Brady Patrick McDaniels!”
This is not happening. I feel like that Ron kid from Harry Potter when his mother sent him an exploding letter that screamed at him in the dining hall. Except mine is here in the flesh. “Ma! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Oh, I think I should be asking that of you, son, wouldn’t you say?
” She lifts her chin at Cliff, who’s watching this unfold with interest. “A Guinness and a plate of wings, please.” She turns back to me.
“So, is this her?” She jerks her head at Angela, who’s staring between both of us, looking completely bewildered.
“Uh, Mom, this is Angela,” I say. “Angela, my mom, Deirdre.”
“Oh, um, nice to meet you?” says Angela, extending her hand uncertainly.
My mom ignores it and glares at me. “You’re having drinks with her ? What’s going on here, Brady? And what on God’s green earth made you think it would be okay to do this behind my back?”
“Mom, this is not the time or the place,” I say, my heart racing like crazy. “I’ll explain everything. Just sit down and relax for a minute. Look, here comes Cliff with your beer.”
“You know what, I’m going to go…” Angela looks pale and not a little bit pissed.
“Good idea,” snaps my mom. “Stay away from my son.”
“Mom!”
“Oh, don’t worry,” says Angela, already out of the booth and glaring at me. “I’ll be staying far away from your son.”
“Angela, wait!” No, on second thought, that wouldn’t be good. “I mean, I’ll call you.”
“Don’t bother. I’m blocking your number.” And with that, she stalks out of the bar. Shit.
My mom sits down in the spot vacated by Angela and takes a long drink of the beer that Cliff placed in front of her. “Explain yourself, Brady. Now.”
“Does Dad know you’re here?”
“Not yet.”
“Ma! That’s nuts! He’s probably worried sick.” I pull out my phone and text my dad.
“Enough stalling, Brady,” says my mom once I’ve put my phone down.
“I want to know, first, why you gave up Columbia Law School and moved across the country; second, why you kept all of this from me; and third, why the hell you’re apparently involved with the girl who got us into this mess in the first place. Begin.”
I sigh. “I didn’t give up Columbia. I just deferred.
As I’ve been saying the whole time, I’ll be there for the spring semester, and I’ll stay in New York permanently.
I kept it from you because I didn’t want to freak you out or piss you off, but I obviously now realize that completely backfired.
And I’m not involved with her. What you just witnessed was her telling me in no uncertain terms that I’m not involved with her. ”
“This is completely insane, Brady,” she says, her eyes filling. Oh no.
“Ma, please don’t cry,” I beg her.
“This was a huge betrayal of my trust,” she says. “I can’t believe you would do this…”
“Ma, please.” Jesus, this is a mess. Fortunately, Cliff brings the wings over at that moment, giving her a chance to recover.
“Look, Ma,” I say. “The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. Dad was trying to help those families and then somehow Angela got involved. She doesn’t know, Ma.
She doesn’t know who I am or that Dad is my dad. ”
“What?” she whispers. Her phone starts ringing, and she tears her gaze away to glance down.
She answers it. “I’m fine, Con. I’m with Brady.
Let’s talk about it later, okay? I’ll be home tomorrow.
” She listens to whatever my dad is saying, then says goodbye and ends the call.
“So, Angela doesn’t know anything? I almost, like, gave it away? ”
I shrug. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Oh my.” Then her eyes flare again. “All the more reason for you and your dad not to have left me out, Brady. Of all the ridiculous, hare-brained, obnoxious things to do…”
“I know, I know,” I admit. “But now you know.”
“And she doesn’t.”
“No.” I look down and grab a chicken wing, start to eat it just for something to do.
“You actually like this girl. She’s the one you told Siobhan about.” She grabs the chicken wing out of my hand. “Does Dad know about that, too?” she asks with a hurt-filled glare.
“No! I mean, he does now, but I talked to him after you went to Aunt Marianne’s.”
She hands the wing back to me, looking less hurt. “What I want to know is why your father even agreed to help this girl, knowing who she was and what she wanted. How he could put himself and all of us in danger like that.”
I finish the wing and bite into another. “Maybe you should have asked him instead of getting on a plane,” I say, leveling a look at her. “I mean really, Ma, fly off the handle much?”
She shrugs. I know my mom. Now that she’s cooling off, she’s starting to see the extent of her overreaction. “I told you to answer your phone,” she says half-heartedly. “So, what’s the deal with the girl?”
“No deal,” I say. “Fortunately, you didn’t give anything away, and I sure as hell can’t tell her what’s going on.
I did as much as I could to help Dad. Now it’s over.
I’m going to finish out the semester, register for classes at Columbia, and move back home.
I’ll be back in New York before Christmas. ”
My mom looks warily relieved. “So it didn’t get serious with her?”
“How could it?” I ask. “I’ve been keeping a pretty big secret from her, and vice versa. She’s never even told me her real name.”
And yet when she said she was blocking my number, I felt like she’d ripped out my heart.
“I’m sorry about that, Brady. I know you don’t usually get attached to girls. You seem pretty bummed out about this one.” She sips her beer, picks at her food. “She’s definitely tall. Does she play basketball or something?”
“I don’t know.” It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I know very little about Angela Pines. This time, though, I realize with a painful stab of regret that I never will.