Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Finn
Brushing the dust off my hands I exit the garage and step inside my parents’ place. It’s quiet as I walk through and find Dad laying in bed.
“Hey, Pop,” I say not too loud in case he is sleeping.
He rolls toward me. “Hey, son.” Stretching out his arms he yawns.
“I replaced the handle on the walkout door in the garage for you.”
“I thought I heard someone moving around. Figure your ma was back too soon.”
“Back? Where’d she go?” I ask and rush forward to help him up as he starts to climb out of bed.
“She’s at lunch with Sophie,” he says in a rush as I pull him up and he stumbles a little. “Thanks.” He releases my hold and starts to make his way to the door. That’s when his reply hits me.
“Wait, what?” I say, shaking my head. He had to have said Marnie or someone else.
I follow him into the kitchen and he makes his way to the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of water before sitting down in one of the chairs. It’s then I decide to ask again, knowing he was probably too focused on his movements to hear my question earlier.
“Who’d you say Ma went to lunch with?”
“Sophie,” he says after taking a drink of his water. “A young lady that’s been stopping by to do her nails and crafts a couple times a week. I think she met her when she had that ladies’ day with Anita and Marnie.”
“Sophie?” I repeat, my heart racing in my chest. “Sophie Powell?”
“Yeah.” He nods as he mulls over the name. “I’m pretty sure that’s it. Your mother lights up whenever she’s here. Haven’t seen her smile like that in months.”
I sit there feeling my chest grow tight and my thoughts run around in my mind. “Mom’s with her now?” I say more to myself than him, but he answers me anyway.
“Yes, they went to the cafe in town. She left about an hour ago.”
All I can do is nod, because I’m not quite sure how to respond.
“While you’re here,” my father pulls me from my thoughts and stands once more. “You think you can fix this cabinet that’s dropping every time we open it? I’d do it, but your ma doesn’t want me climbing up on the stool.”
“Yeah.” I nod, pushing all the questions I now have from my mind. “Let me grab my tool bag from the garage.”
After an hour of lingering around their place, I am just about to leave when I hear tires on the gravel drive.
Peeking out through the front window I see Sophie’s car as it slows to a stop in the driveway.
I watch as she climbs out and then glances over to see my Tahoe.
She instantly glances toward the house and I recognize the way she nervously fiddles with her hands.
“I’m gonna step outside and see if Ma needs any help carrying anything in,” I tell my father before opening the side door and walking out.
My mother looks up as she walks toward me and smiles.
“Hey, handsome,” she says with a laugh. Yes, a laugh, and her smile is bright.
“Can you grab the last couple bags for me? Sophie, I don’t know if you know her, but she is a doll.
An angel really, but she’s got them in her backseat. ”
She doesn’t wait for me to reply before she slips inside and the screen door makes a clicking sound as it closes behind me.
Glancing up I notice Sophie waiting near the side of her car with the passenger rear door open. I start to move toward her and she worries her lip.
“To say I was surprised to learn that my mother was having lunch with you is an understatement,” I say, pausing only a few feet away. “Apparently you’ve been here a few times over the last several weeks.”
“Your mom liked my nails, that day we all hung out. So I decided to do hers for her.” She shrugs.
“And the fact that you’ve been hanging out with my mother never came up?” I ask, holding her stare but she says nothing. It shouldn’t bother me but it does. Whatever the hell game her and I are playing, my mother and father are not a part of it.
“This thing we got going on, it doesn’t include my parents,” I say and notice the way she flinches. “You don’t have to do things for my mother, that wasn’t part of the deal.”
Sophie’s brows furrow and I see the flare of her nostrils before she lowers her hands and takes a step toward me.
“I never thought I had to. I don’t spend time with your mother because I think I have to.
I do it because I want to and because your mother deserves it.
I enjoy spending time with her, and not because I feel like I owe you some kind of gratitude for pretending to date me.
Lastly, I don’t need your permission either to visit your mother, so stop looking at me like I owe you some thanks or explanation.
Like you’ve offered me some service that now entitles you to know every move I make and why.
” Sophie says all this in a rush, her voice rising with each sentence she speaks.
“I come here because I think your mother deserves her own special moment a few times a week where she remembers that she deserves a little pampering and company too. So forgive me if I never mentioned I enjoy spending time with your mother. Because that, isn’t fake, this,” she waves her finger between the two of us, “is fake. Like I said a few nights ago, I think I’m over the game, I think the point has been made and there honestly isn’t any reason to carry it out any longer. ”
She reaches into the back of her car.
“Sophie,” I say as she stands up and holds out the two bags she’s removed from her backseat.
“Here.” She pushes them at me.
“Come inside,” I say, not taking the bags, suddenly feeling as if she is trying to break up with me when we aren’t even really a thing. I can’t explain it, how is it possible to feel like you are losing something you didn’t even really have.
“Take them,” she says and I feel like such an ass for the way I reacted. But my parents that is a fine line, especially now.
“Can we talk, please?”
She shoves the bags against my chest and I have no other choice but to grab them as she releases her hold on them. She quickly slams her door and starts to walk around to the other side.
“I’m sorry.” I chase after her. “I just thought, hell I don’t know what I thought.”
“You thought that I had somehow pulled your parents into this ridiculous arrangement. Like I was playing some role, meeting the parents of my fake boyfriend. But you were wrong.” She yanks open her door.
“What I will tell you is that no matter what you think or have to say about it, I will not stop spending time with Patty. I adore her and enjoy our time together. I don’t need your permission to be her friend.
But you and I, we can pretend what took place with us never even happened.
In fact, I prefer to forget the entire thing! ”
She climbs inside and slams her door, before shifting into reverse and starts backing down the driveway.
“What did you say to Sophie?”
I look back to find my mother on the steps right outside the house, with a displeased scowl on her face.
“I was an ass, Ma,” I tell her, not even trying to hide the truth. “A complete jerk.”
“Do you know Sophie?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest still giving me the stare down.
“I do,” I say, feeling sick to my stomach as I replay her words in my head. “We’ve been spending time together lately.”
“I had no idea,” she says. “Time together as in dating?”
“It’s new, Ma.” How do you tell your mother you were fake dating someone to get her ex to back off?
“And now?”
“Now I’m not sure,” I confess as I start walking in her direction holding her bags in my hands.
“Well, it seems to me that you need to figure that out,” she adds so matter-of-factly.
“Because what I do know is Sophie is a very sweet girl. The kind of girl that would come hang out with an old lady when she could be doing a million other things. The kind of girl that goes out of her way to make sure I feel like I matter when she never really had to.”
“She is a good person.” One that didn’t deserve the way I talked to her.
“Give me those bags.” She grabs them from me. “Now go.” She waves me on and I feel like a young boy all over again being punished by my mother.
“Go where?”
“Fix it,” she says firmly. “I didn’t raise you to be this version of yourself. We are all going through this with your father. But that doesn’t excuse rudeness.” She’s not wrong and lately I’ve been hearing it from both my parents.
“So you’re kicking me out?” I say with a smile and notice how she is fighting her own grin.
“Yes.” She nods. “Yes, I am.” She squares her shoulders and this time I chuckle. “Go be the man I know you are.”
With that she turns around and goes back inside, locking the door behind her. Problem is I have a key and she knows that. But instead I head home, unsure of what to do or say to make any of this right.