Chapter 10 Carissa
Chapter ten
Carissa
My mom has seen and heard a lot of shit. She’s a therapist, and she’s had some tough cases.
I’m still not sure if anything prepared her to find a discarded disguise, our pile of (somewhat) soiled clothes shed in the kitchen, and me tangled up and naked in a deconstructed shower with Jackson Wilder.
My ex-boss. The love of my life. Uber-rich world-famous celebrity, golden boy, star in the dreams and fantasies of millions worldwide, the face on posters in more houses than I could ever count, and the voice played on the radio and every other space that exists for music.
Fuck, she knows who he is.
She just doesn’t know how this came about.
At least she had the grace to tell us she was sorry for walking in on us, which she naturally did because when she called my name, we both froze up.
She assumed something terrible or bizarre or maybe both had happened or was currently happening, so she rushed in.
When she found us completely naked in the tub in a rather compromising position, but thankfully somewhat covered by the fallen shower curtain, she simply took in my horrified face and Wilder’s garbled apology, turned around, and shut the door behind her.
She was kind enough to finish making dinner and stick Wilder’s clothes outside the bathroom door.
I left him to get dressed in the bathroom while I dashed to my room to find a pair of jeans and a lightweight, oversized crewneck sweater with a faded-out, peeling logo of a bear and a barnacle dancing on the front.
The name, Barnacle Bears, is missing a few letters because they’ve worn away, but you can pretty much guess what it says just by looking at the picture.
Although do most people know what a barnacle is?
A short while later, we’re seated at our table in the kitchen, and that’s what I’m thinking about to avoid thinking about the obvious.
Wilder’s seated to my right, and Mom sits across from me and Wilder.
I don’t know if any of the furniture really matches, but this table stands out. Mom went through an obsession with live edge, so the table looks like it was freshly cut out of a forest. Instead of chairs, there are two live-edge benches with square metal legs.
Despite our lack of… erm, care, the roast is juicy and tender. The baked potatoes are near perfect too, and Mom did a great job with the lemon pepper carrots and the gravy.
There was no question that Wilder was going to stay for dinner.
There was no way he was going to be forced to do a walk of shame out of the house after what happened.
He asked me if it would be okay if he stayed, mostly so he could apologize to my mom and try to explain.
I could have bawled as I was so thankful he wasn’t going to bail without a backward glance.
Not that I think Wilder is the kind of man to do something like that.
If I gave myself a big heaping pile of honesty, it would be better if he did leave. He doesn’t need to apologize. This isn’t his fault, and there’s nothing to say sorry over. We both understand this can’t be a thing.
So why am I sitting here, so freaking happy that he’s sharing this bench with me, happy beyond belief that he’s here, practically glowing from the best sex of my life, and it wasn’t even penis in vagina sex?
There’s still a lethal dose of guilt and embarrassment lingering over the glow and happiness and the whole deal of my mom sitting across from me and witnessing it all after err… witnessing it all.
Wilder is back in his shirt and those tight red pants.
He left the plaid blazer off. I’m trying to formulate words to offer some kind of explanation for the fuck fest fiasco that went down, but all my brain wants to do is focus on popping another lady boner because I can literally see the outline of Wilder’s thick erection in those freaking pants whenever I look down.
Also?
He smells good.
A little bit like my shampoo. It mixes well with the cologne lingering on his shirt and his own natural scent.
How can I not be distracted when I know what it feels like to have his tongue touch my asshole?
Fuck, fuck, fuckkkkkk.
I stuff a piece of roast in my mouth and glance up at my mom. It’s an eye glance only because I keep my head bent over my plate.
She’s all grace. Serene. She has long, dark hair with subtle highlights down and curling around her shoulders, and she’s wearing a black blouse tucked into gray slacks.
She’s professional without being in your face about it.
She doesn’t wear things like pearls or expensive jewelry, and her footwear is always practical. Flats, never heels.
She’s good at hiding what she thinks—it’s part of her job—but I know her tells. Neither of her eyes is twitching, and there’s no subtle flaring of her nostrils. She doesn’t look tired, which strangely happens when she’s the most peeved.
Of all the people in the world, she’d be the last to be starstruck. She doesn’t even seem affected by the radiant presence Wilder seems to carry with him wherever he goes. She’s breathing just fine, even though he naturally sucks all the air out of a room whenever he enters it. In a good way.
Wilder is sex on legs, a walking mystery, and so damn intriguing. He’s his own personal orbit, but Mom seems as though she’s more interested in the roast than in roasting us, or at least grilling us about what the hell happened in there and what the absolute hell is going on in general.
I try to make my sigh of relief as subtle as possible.
I guess that’s her signal to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.
She sets her fork down and gives Wilder a pleasant enough smile, a real one, since she doesn’t do the fake shit. “I don’t like you for her,” she drops in a conversational tone. She might as well be discussing the merits of baked versus boiled potatoes.
Wilder doesn’t freak out. I think he saw that one coming. “I know.” He stops eating.
I reach under the table and curl my hand around his thigh. The leather is warm from his body heat, and it seeps into my palm, electrifying me.
“What can I do to change your mind?” Wilder asks. “Do you want me to change your mind?” He’s not looking at my mom. He’s studying me. His voice is all smoky tones with a hint of hope trembling around the edges.
I have trouble getting my heart to stop slamming in my chest. Words. Right. I could use some of those. They’re hard to push out, especially when I have no easy answer for that. In short? Yes. But it’s always more complicated than that in short. Always.
“You know I have a private studio at my house. I’d love it if you’d go there, whenever you’re ready.”
I grasp his leg a little harder, as though I can change the future and the facts and alleviate all my doubts with just that squeeze. “I’m not going to record anything.”
“I thought you might want to watch and listen to me do it. They’re your songs.”
Mom just takes it all in. Silently.
“I know I can’t change your mind overnight,” he continues. “There’s going to be some crazy emotions and a big storm coming when we let the world know the band is breaking up.”
I close my eyes against the heat surging straight to them. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it a while ago. But knowing it and hearing Wilder drop those words are two very different things.
It might not be my band, but I was tied to it for a good chunk of my life.
And far more than that, I know how this is hurting Wilder, even if he’s good at hiding it.
It’s there in the shadows in his eyes, in the way the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his mouth deepen, and in the too-rigid posture he suddenly adopts.
They’re his family. Wilder does let some of his pain through, the tiny ouches, but the stuff that guts him? He nurses the worst of it in private.
“Is it really?” I have to hear him say it for it to be real.
He nods. “Yeah, it’s happening. We’re going to tell the label this week. Well, I am. Going to tell them. They left it up to me.”
“Are you going to be—” Okay is such a shitty word, so I stop myself from saying it. “Are you… do you… what do you need? Space? Time? For me to be there for you? A hug?” My fingers curl into his thigh muscles.
He blinks the slow blink he does when he’s trying to contain his emotion.
He wants to keep it inside, especially with my mom sitting right there.
It might have been a long time coming, but it’s a fresh wound, gaping and bloody.
He doesn’t know how to treat it. I don’t either.
I just know it’s brutal, and I wish it weren’t.
“All of the above?”
As a friend or as more? It’s the question I can’t ask. I don’t know what he’ll say. I have no idea what I’ll say.
“I think time is a good thing,” Mom interjects softly.
She doesn’t judge us for what she walked into today. She doesn’t press on the obvious after she said she didn’t like Wilder for me. She doesn’t tell us that we’re being rude for getting lost in each other right now.
She just lets us be us.
That’s the thing about my mom. She’s never tried to control anyone.
As a therapist, she probably spends all day helping people come to terms with the fact that the one thing they’re never going to be able to control is other people.
It’s important to just let go and let it be, even when people are doing it wrong.
She’s going to let me make my choices, as she has ever since I legally became an adult, and even before then.
She’ll give me a gentle encouragement or a hard dose of reality in a loving way if that’s what I need, but she’ll wait for me to ask first and be ready to honestly receive an answer.
I shift my hand from Wilder’s leg over to find his hands when he drops them under the table and into his lap. I clench both his hands with mine. I stroke his long fingers, smoothing over the calluses on the tips.