Chapter 15 #2
He smiles, “Yeah, she’s here. Come on, you can meet her.”
I suddenly don’t think I can move, my body feeling heavy.
What if she doesn’t like me?
Drayton opens my door, and the horror on my face must be obvious.
“Lainey, it’s fine. I promise. She won’t grill you about your life. She’s not like that,” he grabs my hand. “We aren’t like that.”
I shake my head in agreement, walking up the sidewalk to his house. Honestly, I pictured a place a lot like Nash’s, since his dad is married to Drayton’s mom, but it’s not at all like that. It’s small, cozy even. A quiet one-level rancher with a picket fence.
Dray pushes the front door open, and an aroma of sweetness fills the air. Brownies, if I had to guess.
“Mom, you here?” he yells, dragging me in by the hand.
“Yeah, I’m in here!”
He rolls his eyes, leaning down to whisper, “She thinks she can cook. Whatever it is, just say it’s good.”
I smile. It’s sweet that he wants to make his mom happy.
We round the corner and I quickly tear my eyes away from the purple burn scars on her arms, not wanting to be rude.
She’s beautiful, short dark hair that grazes the top of her shoulders and flawless makeup.
It makes me wonder, what happened to her?
“Dray, who’s this?” she chirps, pulling the brownie pan from the oven.
“This is Lainey.”
“Oh wow, Dray, she’s way prettier than you described. It’s nice to meet you, sweetheart.”
“You’ve been talking about me?” I tease.
“Yeah, I told her about how you’ve been sneaking into the Valley parties, so I had to scoop you up before my teammates.”
I push his arm a little, his mom chiming in, “Lainey, don’t let him lie to you. He never goes to those parties, and he saw you the first time he went and made sure he was there at the next one to talk to you.”
“Mom!” Dray whines, “Could you not.”
I laugh, “Is that so?”
“Maybe,” he agrees. “We’re gonna go to my room and watch the Discovery channel.”
His mom laughs, “Is that what they call it these days?”
Dray pulls me by the hand down the hall. “Yeah! Knock first,” he teases.
His mom yells something I can’t quite understand, but it’s followed by Drayton’s laughter.
I like their relationship.
I wish I had that with my mom. Instead, we just exist together.
He opens his bedroom door, and I follow him in. It’s weird seeing someone’s room for the first time. It’s like getting a glimpse into their life. I take it all in, my eyes bouncing off the furniture, the pictures, the trophies.
Baseball.
“I forget that you are a baseball star, but seeing the shrine, I remember that I’m in the presence of greatness.”
He rolls his eyes, “I’m not that good.”
I snatch an MVP plaque off his dresser, “Yeah, they just hand these to everyone.”
My heart starts to race as he closes in on me. He takes the plaque and sits it back down, “It’s just baseball.”
“Isn’t that like a religion around here?”
He brushes his fingertips down the back of my arm, “Not for me. For me, it’s just a game.”
“Why play then?” I question, taking him in. His jeans, his t-shirt hugging his muscular arms, the way his hair peeks out of the hole of his backward hat.
“The girls dig it,” he grins.
I step back, pretending to be shocked.
“Joke,” he confirms. “My dad liked it.”
His mom opens the door, setting a plate of brownies on the nightstand for us, patting Dray on his chest before walking back out the door.
“You can ask me,” he states, pulling a brownie off the plate and handing it to me.
“Ask you what?” I play dumb.
“Don’t do that,” he demands. “Not with me, not ever. You can ask me about the burns.”
“What happened?”
His face turns sad, “House fire.”
I feel the sudden fall of my stomach, “Oh God, that’s awful. Was it… was it here?”
Dray shakes his head, “No.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”
He pulls me into his lap on his bed, “It was just a stupid Wednesday night in January. The snow had been falling for two days, the roads were slick as hell, no one had any power. I was staying at a friend’s house when I got the call.
By the time I got there, the house was nearly leveled, all six thousand square feet.
My mom had lit candles all over the house because my sister, Dottie, was afraid of the dark.
They think it started on the top floor. My dad was upstairs in his office and got trapped. He didn’t make it out.”
I snuggle into his shoulder. “Dray,” I whisper at a loss for words.
“My mom said she started choking on the smoke. That’s what woke her up.
She ran from her room and panicked when the flames were blocking the way to Dottie’s bedroom.
She grabbed a small fire extinguisher that we kept under the sink in the kitchen and tried to get through the flames, but they had already gotten to Dottie before mom.
She used her body to try and put it out.
The fire spread up her arms when she grabbed Dottie out of bed.
She dragged her out into the front yard and into the snow.
She said at the time, she didn’t even feel her burns.
It took us both a long time before we could feel anything at all. ”
I sit in silence, unsure of what to say. Is that why she moved into this smaller house where everything is accessible? Because she couldn’t save her baby? Geez, I can’t imagine.
“Sorry, I’ve never really talked about that before. I don’t know why I just brought you straight up here and said that.”
My heart flutters a little in my chest at the fact that he trusts me enough to let me in.
“You and your mom are great, Dray.”
“She’s amazing. The best mom ever. She won’t admit it, but she’s still hurting. I still hear her crying at night sometimes. Dottie was little and well… I just wish it would’ve been me.”
I can feel his sadness as if it were my own, and suddenly my family drama and the betrayal that I’ve felt from my dad feels small.
“Dray... Please don’t say that.” I whisper, kissing him. I want to be as close to him as possible. If I could, I would crawl inside of him. I’ve never felt this way before, and I’ve never had anyone open up to me and want me to know them like this.
“Lainey?” He whispers, pulling away from my lips but staying against my mouth.
“What?”
“I like it when you call me Dray. Only my mom is allowed to call me that.”
“And now me?” I whisper, settling further down on his lap. Straddling him, his hands weaving into my hair as I pull his hat off.
“As far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever you want.”
I giggle, running my hand back through his sandy blond hair, “What are we going to do about Nash? He’s not going to let this happen, you know that, right?”
Drayton smiles, “You know what else I learned during shark week?”
I sit back against his thighs, “What?”
“Sometimes whales kill sharks.”
I laugh, pulling him back against my lips.
Nash Langdon doesn’t stand a chance in ruining this for me.