Chapter 11 #2
We stood there in the dark, the noise of the party dulled by the wall between us and the yard, close enough to feel each other’s body heat in the heavy summer air. I said something smart-assed. He laughed. Then he looked at me.
Really looked at me.
Not like I was just there. Not like I was some kid underfoot. Not like I belonged to the general, harmless category he’d kept me in for years.
Just looked.
And then his hand was on my waist and his mouth was on mine.
I blink hard and force myself back into the kitchen before I lose entire minutes to that memory standing upright next to the silverware drawer.
Mom notices anyway.
When Aunt Lucy finally carries the last dry bowl into the pantry and leaves us alone, Mom turns off the faucet, dries her hands, and leans against the opposite counter facing me. “What happened?” she asks.
I take a sip of water I don’t need. “Nothing happened.”
Her mouth twitches. “You came in looking like you wanted to either punch someone or cry, and I know you well enough to know if you were going to cry, it would’ve happened in the car before you got here.”
That’s annoyingly accurate.
“I’m fine.”
Mom gives me a look. Not harsh. Not impatient. Just deeply unconvinced. “Baby.”
That one word almost undoes me worse than if she came at me hard.
I set the water bottle down. “It’s nothing.”
“Okay.”
I wait for the push.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, Mom just stays there, quiet and steady, like she knows if she leaves enough space, I’ll eventually step into it.
Which is rude, honestly.
Because she’s right.
I stare at the kitchen floor for a second, then shake my head and try for casual. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.”
I smile faintly. “Dangerous thing to say.”
“That has never stopped me before.”
Fair.
I pull out one of the stools from the island and sit because if I keep standing, this is going to feel like an interrogation, and I’m not in the mood to be cross-examined in the clubhouse kitchen. Mom sits across from me, elbows on the counter, hands folded loosely.
For one beat, neither of us says anything.
Then I pick at the label on my water bottle and say, “What do you do if there’s a guy…”
Mom’s expression doesn’t change, but something in her eyes definitely does.
Interesting.
I narrow my own slightly. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That face.”
“I’m not making a face.”
“You absolutely are.”
Her mouth twitches. “Go on, Allie.”
I exhale slowly. “What do you do if there’s a guy you’ve…liked for a really long time, and every time you think maybe you should finally get over it, he does something that makes it feel impossible?”
Mom is quiet for just long enough to tell me she’s choosing her answer carefully. “Does he know?”
I let out a short laugh. “I honestly don’t know anymore.”
That’s not entirely true.
Jimmy knows something.
He has to.
Nobody can spend this many years orbiting each other with this much tension under the surface and come out of it truly oblivious. But knowing there’s something there and being willing to do anything about it are not the same thing.
Mom tips her head. “And what exactly does he do that makes it impossible?”
I look down at my hands because I’m not stupid enough to meet my mother’s eyes while talking around Jimmy Baker in a clubhouse he’s likely to walk into at any second. “He gets…weird.”
“Define weird.”
I huff out a laugh. “That’s helpful.”
“I’m trying.”
I think about Ambrosia. About Jimmy stepping in too fast, too hard, too obviously.
About the way his jaw went tight before he even got to me, like seeing some random idiot talk to me was enough to set him off.
About him grabbing my wrist and then looking at me like the answer to my question was sitting right there between us, obvious to everybody but him.
“He acts like he doesn’t care,” I say quietly. “Until he does.”
Mom says nothing.
So I keep going. “He ignores me half the time. Or acts normal. Like I’m just…” I shrug, unable to keep the bitterness completely out of my voice. “Like I’m just always there.”
Her gaze sharpens, soft but knowing.
“But then if another guy notices me, suddenly he’s all over it. Protective. Territorial. Like he gets to decide who talks to me or who doesn’t.”
“That sounds annoying.”
“It is annoying.”
“It also doesn’t sound like he doesn’t care.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “That would be a lot more comforting if he wasn’t still acting like I’m the one making this weird.”
Mom rests her chin against her hand and studies me with the same expression she used to get when I was little and trying to insist I hadn’t been the one to sneak frosting off the cake before dinner. “Does this mystery man happen to be someone I know?”
I look up so fast I nearly give myself away on reflex alone.
Mom’s face stays perfectly composed. Too composed.
Oh, she knows. Or she strongly suspects.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You know exactly what.”
She smiles then, small and wicked in a way that tells me I inherited more of my bullshit from her than I’d maybe like to admit. “I didn’t say a name, Allie.”
“No, but you definitely thought one.”
“Well,” she says lightly, “if the shoe fits.”
I narrow my eyes.
She waits.
I do not take the bait. “I’m not saying you’re right.”
Mom shrugs. “You don’t have to.”
The silence that follows is comfortable enough that it almost tricks me into forgetting what we’re talking about. Then she reaches across the island and taps one finger against the back of my hand. “Can I tell you what I think?”
I nod before I can stop myself. “I think,” she says, voice calm and matter-of-fact, “that you’re a strong, badass woman who has spent entirely too long letting one man’s indecision make you question your own worth.”
That hits harder than I expect.
Maybe because part of me has been doing exactly that for years without ever wanting to admit it.
Mom squeezes my hand once and continues. “If he can’t see what’s standing right in front of him, then he’s a dumbass.”
I laugh before I can help it.
Mom’s mouth curves. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“You are beautiful. You are smart. You are loyal to a fault, and any man with half a brain should be thanking God for the chance to have you in his life.”
The ache in my chest shifts, not gone exactly but gentled around the edges. “Mom—”
“No, listen to me.” Her voice softens, but the steel stays in it.
“You don’t need to beg somebody to see you.
You don’t need to shrink yourself into something easier or quieter or safer just because he’s more comfortable pretending not to look too hard.
If he’s too stubborn or too scared or too stupid to be honest about what he wants, that’s on him. Not you.”
I swallow around the sudden tightness in my throat.
There’s a part of me that wants to argue. To say it isn’t that simple. To defend him, because humiliatingly enough, even now, even angry and hurt and exhausted by all of this, some part of me still wants to.
Mom doesn’t let me. Her eyes hold mine steadily. “Allie.” The nickname in her voice is softer than when the others use it. More rooted. More hers. “You are not the girl waiting on a porch anymore.”
That one almost takes me out at the knees. Because that is exactly how this feels sometimes.
Like I’m still there. Still sixteen. Still watching Jimmy from the clubhouse steps and hoping one look from him might finally mean everything I want it to mean.
I stare at her for a second, and maybe she sees too much in my face, because her expression shifts from gently teasing to full maternal understanding in a way that makes me wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
“He hurt you,” she says quietly.
It isn’t really a question.
I look away.
That’s answer enough.
Mom lets out a slow breath. “Allie, baby.”
I hate when she says it like that.
Not because I mind the softness. Because it makes it impossible to pretend I’m not still bleeding a little from a wound I should’ve stitched shut years ago.
“It was a long time ago,” I say.
Mom is smart enough not to point out that if it still hurts, then time didn’t do what it was supposed to. Instead she asks, “Do you want him?”
There it is. The real question under all the others.
Not does he want you. Not this is what you should do. Not can this be fixed.
Do you want him?
The truthful answer is humiliating.
Yes.
I want him. I have wanted him for so long the wanting has become part of the architecture of me.
It lives in old corners now, built into memories and reactions and expectations I never consciously chose.
It’s there when he walks into a room. When he says my name.
When he does one small, thoughtless kind thing and my whole body lights up like I’m still some teenager with no common sense and too much heart.
I want him.
And I’m tired.
Tired of carrying it. Tired of pretending it doesn’t matter. Tired of being brave and quiet and understanding while he gets to step in and out of this tension whenever it suits him.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
Mom looks at me for a long second. Then, because she loves me and because she’s merciful, she lets me keep that one. “All right,” she says.
I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
She slides off the stool and rounds the island, coming to stand beside me.
Her hand settles at the back of my neck the same way it did when I was little and feverish or heartbroken or both.
“You don’t have to keep waiting for somebody to get his act together,” she says softly.
“Not if it’s costing you pieces of yourself. ”
I close my eyes.
There’s the truth again. Clean and brutal. Because it is costing me. Not in some dramatic, life-ruining way.
But in small, humiliating cuts.
Every time I let one of his mixed signals mean something. Every time I tell myself his protectiveness counts for more than his silence. Every time I accept being almost seen instead of actually chosen.
Mom presses a kiss to the top of my head, then pulls back enough to look at me again. “And if this mystery man is who I think he is,” she says carefully, “then he’s always had a little too much of his daddy’s stubbornness and not enough sense where his own feelings are concerned.”
A shocked laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Mom’s smile turns knowing. “You are not subtle, Allie.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m your mother.”
“Exactly.”
She laughs softly and brushes my hair back from my face. “Go sit with the girls. Stop spiraling. And if he keeps acting like a dumbass, maybe let him feel what that costs him.”
That lands too.
Because for years, the cost has mostly been mine. Mine to carry. Mine to swallow. Mine to dress up as patience and familiarity and harmless old history.
Maybe I’m done paying it alone.
By the time I make it back to the common room, Mac has fully abandoned her book and is now supervising while Dom and Logan continue butchering whatever baby swing they’re supposed to be assembling.
Kya is eating pretzels and issuing contradictory instructions.
Brooke’s laughing into a throw pillow because Carter just read an entire page of directions out loud and still put the same piece on backward.
Ana and Shaina are sprawled on the floor near the coffee table painting their nails and talking shit about somebody from town I barely know.
Normal. Warm. Loud. Mine.
Brooke looks up first when I come back in. “You okay?”
There’s genuine softness in it. Concern.
Mac doesn’t look up right away, but I can feel her attention anyway.
I think about lying. About brushing it off. About slipping back into the easy version of myself everyone knows, the one who laughs and helps and never admits how badly certain things still get to her.
Then I think about Mom standing in the kitchen telling me I’m not the girl waiting on the porch anymore.
Something in me shifts.Not all the way. Not enough to call it healed. But enough.
“Yeah,” I say, and this time it’s closer to true.
Brooke smiles.
Mac finally lifts her gaze to mine, expression unreadable for exactly two seconds before she gives the tiniest nod.
Like she sees the difference. Like she knows something settled.
Then, because she’s Mac and subtle kindness is apparently as much as she’s willing to expose in one evening, she points at the half-built swing and says, “Tell them they’re idiots.”
I laugh. “That obvious?”
“Painfully.”
Dom looks up from the floor. “In my defense, the instructions are stupid.”
Kya scoffs. “No, you’re stupid.”
Logan mutters something under his breath about missing a screw.
Ana glances up from her nails. “That sounds like a personal problem.”
Shaina grins. “Maybe Jimmy will know what to do when he gets back.”
The room doesn’t change. No one notices anything different.
But I do.
Because even hearing his name now doesn’t hit in the exact same way it did an hour ago. It still hurts. Still pulls. Still makes memory rise up mean and vivid and far too close to the surface.
But there’s something else under it now too.
Anger. Clarity. Maybe the first thin edge of self-respect sharpened into something useful.
I sink down onto the couch beside Brooke and let their chaos wash over me while my mind drifts one last time, against my will, toward that night.
The kiss.
It still feels impossible that something could have lasted this long when it only lasted seconds.
I remember his hand on my waist. His mouth warm and whiskey-sweet against mine. The exact way I thought, for one perfect second, that everything had changed.
And I remember the aftermath just as clearly.
The silence. The distance. The way he avoided me after like he could put the whole thing back in the box if he just ignored it hard enough.
I loved him before that kiss.
That’s the ugly truth.
But the kiss made it worse because it gave me proof. Proof that I hadn’t imagined all of it. Proof that somewhere under all his control and distance and off-limits lines, there had been something there.
Even if he ran from it the next morning. Even if he kept running for years.
I’m tired of letting that one moment own so much of me.
Tired of building meaning out of scraps. Tired of waiting for him to look at me and finally see what’s been standing in front of him all along.
Across the room, Kya throws a pretzel at Dom’s head because he used the wrong screw again. Brooke laughs so hard she snorts. Mac sighs like she’s surrounded by amateurs. Logan swears under his breath. Ana nearly spills nail polish on the rug. Shaina cackles like the little menace she is.
Life keeps moving.
Maybe it’s time I do too.
I sit there in the middle of all my people, with their laughter and bickering wrapping around me like something sturdy, and let the ache settle into something I can finally name without flinching.
I’m tired of waiting for Jimmy to see me.