Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Oliver
After we spend another twenty minutes collecting ourselves, it is time to bail because looking at her new family is more heartbreaking than I thought it would be.
“I need to get going. I brought someone with me, and we should get back before it’s late. Her sisters will probably chew my head off.” Sally said she told her siblings where we were, but Ella would probably rather my nuts roast on a fire than trust me around her sister again, but here we are.
“You brought a girl here?” Mom wipes away a tear, her eyes still red. “Where is she?”
“Just in town.” I need to get out of here.
I get up from the couch.
“She must be important if you brought her here.” There’s a sudden gleam in her eyes.
“Honey,” her new husband warns before placing a hand on her lower back.
“George, my son has a girlfriend. Let me have this,” Mom chides. “We still have at least five years until Marc brings a girl home to meet us if the kids even do that nowadays.”
My eyes shoot wide at the mention of Sally as my girlfriend. The thought flashes through my head, and I must have some expression on my face because Mom smiles even wider.
“Please stay the night and have dinner with us. I can make up the guest bed and everything.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
Suddenly, my brother—Marc—is standing next to me with a football in his hand.
“We could play catch. Dad kind of sucks at it.” He gleams up at me, and my heart warms.
“Hey, I’ll remember that, squirt,” his dad teases before looking me up and down just like everyone else. “You know, son, I think it might be easier to say yes. When they get an idea in their head, it’s game over.”
My face goes white when he says son. My stomach starts to spiral. Why did he have to say it with such kindness?
I’m a stranger, his wife’s kid from a failed relationship, yet he looks at me like I could be part of all of this when that’s not reality.
I swallow the rock in my throat and hope the splash doesn’t cause me to burn from the acid. “Okay.”
The only problem is, I don’t have a girlfriend, and Sally wants nothing to do with me.
Lord, give me strength.
This city is beautiful, but everything feels like a blur as I drive down the streets, looking for the French-inspired cafe Sally is at. I’m not even sure how to pronounce it, but she sent the location when I texted her.
I look down at her text again when I hit a red light.
Sally
Are you okay?
Today has been lapse of judgment after lapse of judgment. First, thinking it was okay to ask Sally to come here, then left her to fend for herself for the past two hours, and now I’m off to ask her to come back to Mom’s for dinner and spend the night.
Why?
Because I have no self-control when it comes to the women in my life.
I walk into the French cafe. Each doorway looks like an arch with different murals connecting each room. This is where Sally said she’d be, and I need to find her in order to ask for the biggest favor.
I order a coffee and find Sally sitting in a green chair, playing with what looks like a weird antique lamp made from pipes.
The light flashes on as I take my seat.
“Ahh!” she yelps from surprise as her hand nearly knocks her drink off the table, but I’m quicker than that.
“How are you, princess?” I ask on instinct, and Sally narrows her eyes.
She doesn’t correct me, though, so I consider that a step in the right direction.
“This place is pretty cool.” I motion to the scenery.
“You never answered my text.”
I play it cool. “What text?”
She rolls her eyes, takes the coffee from my hand and takes a sip. “I saw you read it, Oliver. Read receipts are a thing.”
“So that’s why every girl knows when I don’t reply. I better fix that.” Her grip tightens on her cup, and I see heat flare in her eyes.
“You seem better.”
Do I really?
She eyes me for another second. “You still haven’t told me if you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” I reassure her. “Sally—”
“Sal, is this dude bothering you?” a voice catches both of our attention.
Glaring down at me is a tall man with a trimmed beard and a fade haircut that leads into thick, curly black hair. In his arms wiggles probably the most adorable girl to ever exist.
“Sissy Sally.” The girl lets out an excited giggle as she reaches for Sally.
“Stand down, Richie. This is Oliver.” Sally pats his arm and takes the girl into her arms.
Richie nods like he already has the rundown of who I am before he sits down with his own latte. “You better treat my sister like a princess.”
A blush coats Sally’s cheeks, but I keep my focus on her brother. In a serious tone, I say, “I would never treat her any other way.”
“Good shit.” Richie grins as he takes a sip of his drink. He looks at his watch and then curses.
“Bad words!” the little girl in Sally’s arms yells, and Richie looks at both of us sheepishly.
“Laura is going to skin me alive if she starts saying that at home.” Richie takes the girl out of Sally’s arms as he stands up.
“Duty calls?” she asks before getting up and giving her brother a hug.
“It’s a busy time of year, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t text me about the house. I can see if I know a repair guy nearby.”
I furrow my brow at Sally as she sits back down. I can tell she’s trying not to look at me now.
“What’s up with the house?”
“Nothing, just some stuff is broken, and we need to do repairs,” she says nonchalantly. “I did kind of almost fall through the roof.”
“Are you okay?” I shoot out. “Did someone take you to the clinic in town?”
“Oliver, I’m fine. I didn’t actually fall through. It was just my foot.”
“I’ll come over when we get back and patch it for you.”
She stiffens at my words. “That’s asking too much.”
It’s not enough, especially after what I’m going to ask her to do for me.
“We should get going.”
No, we can’t leave. Not yet.
“Do you have to be back early? We could explore a little more. I’ve never been to Lansing before.” Sally looks like she’s about to say no, but I reach out and place my hands on hers to stop her from leaving.
Sally thinks for a second and then gives a sigh, indicating she’s giving in.
“There’s a pretty aquarium in town.”
The aquarium smells of salt water, which has a more distinct smell than the lake I swim in every morning. Seeing all the aquatic animals swim around with their schools almost feels nice.
The place is massive, with different training and event rooms. They even have a stingray feeding area.
Since it’s a weekday, the aquarium isn’t packed with people. In the distance, I hear a group of kids learning about the different fish in each habitat.
I casually look at the blue room filled with different little fish tanks and different critters, from seahorses and clownfish all the way to the stingrays that Sally is currently trying to feed.
The room has a feeding machine you can put money into and get little shrimp to feed the stingrays.
“Oh, my god!” Sally gasps for the third time as a ray glides through the water and munches on the dead crustaceans in her hand.
I smile and walk up beside her, putting my hand in the water, barely submerging it. The ray brushes against my hand, expecting food only to find none.
“Sorry, big guy.” I slip my hand over the top of the fish’s body as his slippery self swims away.
The next area we find ourselves in is a round glass hallway surrounded by water. All the fish swim around us as Sally all but presses herself into the glass, watching every single one pass by until a shark swims up to us, followed by a baby shark.
“Aww,” Sally coos, watching the baby swim around the hall. “It’s so cute—even if in, like, a few years, it could kill me.”
“Funny enough, baby sharks are called pups,” I add, standing next to her.
She looks up with a gleam in her eyes before looking at the baby shark again. “It’s as cute as a puppy, so it makes sense.”
I watch the awe in her eyes explode as we ascend some stairs into a wide-open, brightly lit space with a platform over an open tank of water.
Several schools of fish swarm the wide space, each group varying with different shapes, sizes, and colors.
I look at her lips, seeing a more vibrant pink than before. She must have retouched it when in the bathroom earlier.
“You know, most lipsticks actually contain fish scales.”
Her surprised eyes find mine, and she instinctively reaches for her lips, the pink smudging on her finger. She cringes slightly.
“You’ve been a well of knowledge this whole time, but I could do without knowing that I have been kissing fish since I was twelve.”
“Is that when you were adopted?” I ask casually, but Sally stills for a second. I quickly add, “You don’t have to tell me that.”
She weakly nods. “Yeah, but let’s not talk about it. How do you know so much about all the animals here?”
“I wouldn’t say I know that much.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve basically given a fun fact at each of the areas. Like that giant shrimp thing that punches really hard.”
She means a mantis shrimp and how she basically screamed bloody murder when she saw it swim to the minnow and started hitting it to death.
“Then the thing about the seahorses carrying the babies even though they are male.”
Her eyes gleamed when I told her that fact, something mysterious playing behind her hazel eyes.
“Maybe you should be a marine biologist. I mean, you love the water.” She looks over the railing as that shark pup glides along the water with its mother.
Something tugs at me, and I find myself speaking before thinking. “I used to hate the water.”
This catches her attention.
“You swim every day, though.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I’ve never really talked about this at length, not even with Jaxon. We’ve always kept our personal shit on a minimal level, knowing each other has a past we don’t want to talk about.
“I used to blame the water or at least Lake Michigan, for my dad leaving. I think I needed something to hate so I wouldn’t blame myself.”
His love of being out on the water caused him to prioritize it over his wife and son. I might still have my doubts about Mom, but I know he helped drive her away from me.
“Then, my friend helped me realize that if I was so mad at the lake, then I needed to defeat her, and the best way to do that was to learn about her and embrace her. Then, I figured out that the water is the only thing that has stayed the same in my life. She will always be there. That’s why I started surfing and learning these random facts.
The water stayed the same, and I needed that to drive me forward, especially when I felt alone. ”
Suddenly, a pair of arms wraps around me, pulling me out of my thoughts. The scent of flowers pushes into my nostrils. My arms wrap tightly around her, and breathe in everything. The water and flowers combine into an assortment I’ve grown to need.
“I meant what I said when we went to the pier. You deserve to be loved, Oliver,” she mumbles into my shoulder.
“Thank you for listening. Ella’s right. You are a good listener.” The pain from before subsides, but I don’t want to let go. “Sally, will you come to dinner with my mom and me? Also, we would need to spend the night.”
Sally’s body tenses. I want to hold on, but I let go, and she slowly backs away with red cheeks.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I know it’s a lot, but I told her I was here with someone, and she assumed you were my girlfriend, and I didn’t correct her.”
Her eyes widen, and I swear I see steam waft off her body as she turns back to the water.
I train my eyes on her as she takes a breath over the edge.
I ready myself to grab her if she really tried to throw herself into the water.
I don’t think she would actually do that, but some people do weird things when they feel cornered.
She suddenly stands up straight and turns toward me. Her breathing is calmer, but her cheeks are a scarlet red.
“Oliver—”
“Sally, please,” I beg before she can say no. “I know this is sudden, and honestly, I’m not even sure if anything will come out of this whole trip, but I need to see it through to the end. She’s my mom.” The last part comes out as a whisper.
Sally wrenches her brows and takes a deep breath. “If I get uncomfortable, can we leave?”
I’m not even sure if I heard her right. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s an agreement that if I want to leave, you’ll drive me back to Alliance.”
“Of course.”
This could be a mistake. Her pretending to be my girlfriend, when I know the minute we get back, I’ll be nothing again, is going to hurt.