23. Pretty Powerful Words
23
PRETTY POWERFUL WORDS
G reat way to stop her thoughts in mid-rant.
Would she be a wuss if she went and hugged him right now?
She wanted to go with her gut and that was what she did.
She got off the stool and moved toward him.
“Are you going to hit me?” he asked. He was smirking. She loved it when he did that and wondered how weak she really was.
“No,” she said. “I’m not a violent person.”
“I was a little scared there for a second.”
“You’re the one that has the temper,” she said. “I guess I didn’t believe it, but you did shout at me.”
“Sorry,” he said and pulled her into his arms.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad we were able to talk this out. I wasn’t sure. For someone who doesn’t like to talk you said some pretty powerful words to me.”
“It’s about the right words,” he said. “Not a lot of them.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m still embarrassed over this.”
“It will make a funny story to retell in the future,” he said.
Which was something no other guy she had dated in her adult life had said to her.
Made a comment about something in the future.
She couldn’t stay mad at Foster when everything he’d told her made complete sense.
“You know,” she said. “That is the sweetest thing. I like that we just fought and at the same time can be nice and respectful to each other.”
“My mother raised me to not be disrespectful to women.”
“But you can be to men?” she asked, grinning and moving out of his arms.
“I have been and I most likely will be in the future too. Some have it coming to them, but I try not to be too much of a dick. When I was a kid, I had a short fuse. My brothers and I would be wrestling and I’d get an elbow in the groin by mistake and I’d just punch them.”
“Yikes,” she said.
“We were kids,” he said. “I did it twice, got my ass grounded and learned my lesson. Sometimes you have to fight back for people to know they can’t walk all over you. It’s as simple as that.”
She smiled. “That is kind of like what Amanda said to me earlier.”
“You’ll have to explain that,” he said. “And I’m hungry. Did you eat?”
“No,” she said. “I was too wound up.”
“I’ve got sandwich meats and chips,” he said. “It’s quick.”
“That sounds perfect to me,” she said, moving over to stand next to him and make a sandwich. “Amanda told me to stand my ground with you. That how you fight the first time will lay the groundwork for the future. I didn’t realize how true that was until it hit me and had Landon coming back again and again. I always said I was going to leave and didn’t. We’d fight and then when he didn’t apologize, I just ended up moving on like normal. But I realize you don’t move on, you just move through it. That’s what I did. I got sick of moving through things. With you, it was important to not start out in a position where I could be walked over.”
“You scared me when you ran in front of my car,” he said.
She laughed. “Because you thought I had a problem you had to solve. I don’t need people to fix my problems.”
“I’d like to think I’m helping you fix them yourself,” he said.
They put their sandwiches together side by side. “I like that too,” she said. “For a shitty day, between Landon stopping over and then finding out who you were, to this. It feels like a win.”
“What?!” he shouted. “Landon was at your house today?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I handled it. I handled it well too. I didn’t hide in the house. I went on the porch to confront him.”
Foster walked away from her, went to get a beer, popped the top and then sat down. “Talk,” he said. “I need to process this.”
“Is this your form of safe space or are you going to get all macho and hunt him down?”
“Don’t tempt me,” he said. “I’ll reserve judgment on my actions depending on what you have to say.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You will do nothing of the sort. This is my life and I’ll deal with it.”
He growled at her and took a sip of his beer. Then a second. “Talk and I’ll listen.”
Charlotte weighed what she was going to say but decided to be honest. There was no reason not to.
“He showed up to ask me back again. I met him on the front porch so he couldn’t get near the house. He wanted to know what happened to me.”
He looked her over. She was wearing the same clothes as she had earlier. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It was the way I looked.”
“You look good to me.”
She moved over and put a big smacking kiss on his lips. “Thank you. He was appalled. He said I let myself go while I was grieving him.”
“Fucker,” he said.
She giggled. “Yes, he is. But moving on. He was a jerk like he always was. He said he recognized you when you stopped to talk to him a few weeks ago. It took him a few days to figure out from where. My guess is it was a picture because, once I knew your last name, I did a search and found some pictures of you with West. The most recent was in a magazine for West’s engagement.”
“I hated that being posted,” he said. “It wasn’t my choice, and as private as West is, he wanted to get out in front of things. They didn’t release wedding photos of the whole family. Just the one of them that West and Abby chose that wouldn’t show any indication on where the wedding even took place.”
“It showed family support for Abby,” she said.
She’d looked the picture over. Noticed Braylon’s girlfriend was in the picture too. His fiancée now. Then she saw Laken had just gotten engaged to a celebrity athlete about two months ago.
There was no hiding in this family.
Which had to be hard for someone who wanted to be left to his own devices.
“It did,” he said. “Which is all that mattered. My family comes first and always will.”
Which warmed her heart that though she felt he might be hiding things, he’d told his family about her without her knowing.
Was she nervous about meeting them?
Heck yeah!
But she wasn’t going to dwell on it now.
“I never had that. You know. But I’ve got it with Amanda and that is why I called her.”
“How did Landon know we were dating?” he asked. “Did you tell him?”
“Oh,” she said. “No. I didn’t. He was insulting me and then he insinuated that if I didn’t clean up or something, I’d be attracting you. Or maybe that is what I wanted all along. He threw it in my face that I go for guys with money. I really don’t.”
Not every man she dated was wealthy. Some wanted her to believe they were, but they weren’t.
Her last two serious boyfriends were older and had money, but they were the only ones that fell into both of those categories.
“I believe it.”
“Even though my sister married Drew? You might think we both are like that.”
“No,” he said. “What you told me about your sister, tells me that I’m happy she found someone.”
“I saw what money did to Amanda. How more people use it for bad than good. They use it to control people. You don’t.” She started to laugh and looked at the sandwich she’d put together. “You know, this fancy meal and all.”
He spit the beer out of his mouth that he’d been drinking. “I’m not a fancy person,” he said.
“And at the heart of it,” she said, “neither am I.”
“Not from what I can see,” he said. “But I did look for pictures of you too. I like you better this way.”
She laughed. “Me too!”