Chapter 30
Jack takes my hand and presses it to his lips as the car crunches its way up Mom’s shell-paved driveway late the next morning—after a very scenic tour around the hotel room. There is a child shouting and adult laughter emanating from the backyard.
I walk to the gate and shake my head.
Classic Mom. I should’ve anticipated the buffer. She’s invited her friend Monica and Monica’s daughter Sarah, my old high school acquaintance. And Sarah brought her very loud toddler. I remove my hand from Jack’s arm, forcing myself to stop touching him, and lift the gate latch.
No way.
It’s not just Monica and Sarah. There are tables with tablecloths. A spread of food big enough to feed, if not an army, then a modest battalion. A fucking balloon arch. It’s a baby shower. Katie Singer’s baby shower.
And there are a shit ton of other people here.
My fury builds. I told her I didn’t want to come, and she forced me anyway. I tamp down my rage as I greet Katie, congratulating her, introducing Jack, and moving on to nod absently at other familiar faces.
Mom doesn’t look especially thrilled to see Jack. Although between his eye patch and the tabloid stories…
“Oh. My. Stars. Penny!” Sarah rushes over.
She was always petite, but time and childbearing have given her luscious curves.
Her dark-brown hair is pulled back into a neat braid, and all I can think of when I look at her is Mom calling her husband “homely.” I return her hug.
Unlike her mother—or mine, actually—Sarah was always sweet.
“Our little Penny! You’re famous these days!
” Monica’s nasal voice rings out. She’s holding her squirming grandson on her knee.
He pushes off her and screams about sitting on the chair by himself, pulling one of her graying corkscrew curls.
“Daniel, let go! Fine. Go sit,” she admonishes as the child scrambles into one of the deck chairs at the umbrella-ed table.
“Hi, Monica.” I resist the urge to confront her about the text that scared me half to death. There’s nothing to gain from that quarter. She, like my mom, is never wrong. “Sarah, Monica, this is Jack.”
“Oh! The magazines didn’t have a picture of you, but I had Sarah get on the Google and do a little searching. We weren’t sure it was you, though, in the picture.”
“Well, I hope I stack up well against the picture from the Google.” Jack smiles and nods at them both.
Sarah flushes and gives me a miserable look, whispering, “They wouldn’t stop until I did it. Your mom accidentally posted Jack’s name four times as her Facebook status.”
Sarah’s son Daniel refuses to budge from his seat, scribbling on paper after paper with the assortment of crayons on the table.
Both Monica and Sarah are oblivious to my need for space, so I gesture for Jack to sit in the only available chair and drag the box that usually houses my mom’s outdoor cushions over to the table.
“Are you a pirate?” Daniel asks Jack.
Jack grins and leans close to him. “Yep. A pirate duke.” He waggles his eyebrows at me.
I roll my eyes but feel a thrill entirely incompatible with a backyard gathering blaze through me.
Mom looks hale and hearty, fully recovered from yesterday’s health drama and pleased as punch with herself. I sigh inwardly, quailing at the thought of telling her that luring me down here was not okay. Maybe it’s just better if Jack and I get going—
“This is you.” Daniel shoves a drawing at me. There’s a gigantic circle for a head, random splotches inside it that are clearly meant to be eyes, and assorted sticks poking out from the circle that I suppose are…limbs?
“The head is…to scale, I think,” Jack murmurs.
“Dick,” I mutter. “Mom, Jack and I can’t really stay—”
“Oh, good! Brian!” my mother shouts, waving to someone by the gate.
I can’t believe her.
“Brian, so glad you could come by. You’re too sweet,” my mom coos.
“Yeah, no worries, Mrs. H. My mom said you needed this for the party…” Brian holds out a foil-covered tray. He notices me, his eyes widening with delight.
“Perfect. You should stay! You and Penelope had to cut your coffee date short.”
So fucking disrespectful. She knows Jack is right here. I give Brian a tight smile in greeting and say, “Nice to see you, Brian. This is Jack.” My tone, an almost-purr when I say Jack’s name, practically shouts, I’ve been touching his winky all morning.
Jack stands and shakes Brian’s hand, and Brian’s quick darting glance between Jack and me tells me the message has been received.
I feel crappy. I don’t like causing people—especially nice-enough semi-strangers from the past—discomfort or disappointment.
A possessive hand lands on my shoulders, tempering the shitty feeling.
There is something more than a little hot about Jack looking at me with the word “mine” shining through his eyes.
“Penny, where’s your restroom?” Jack’s voice rumbles in my ear.
“I’m going in—I can show you,” my mom says.
“No, no.” I have no idea what Mom might say to him if she gets him alone. I don’t trust her not to manipulate him. “I’ll show him.”
I lead Jack into the house. “Would’ve thought there’d be more plants in here, given your place looks like the party room at a Rainforest Café,” he says.
“Dad had the green thumb, not Mom. I—” I hesitate, unsure I want to add more weight to this moment.
It’s only a second before I settle into the truth, wanting to give Jack another piece of me no one else has ever held.
“After he left, it felt good to grow things in a house where we’d been so”—I shrug helplessly—“cut back to the roots.” I point out the bathroom door.
“There’s one upstairs, too, if you want more privacy. ”
He crowds me against the wall. “I want more privacy.” His gives me a sweet kiss, and then his hot mouth is on my neck.
I angle my head back, giving him better access. “Oh. Don’t give me another hickey, though.”
He pulls away, his eyes gleaming. “That hickey was from me?”
“Of course it was. Who else would it have been from?”
He smiles, and my blood feels carbonated. I take his hand, leading him to the second-floor bathroom, and he pulls me in after him, immediately unbuttoning my shorts and tugging them down.
“I need you. I’m obsessed with the taste of you.”
“Oh God.” I close my eyes as he runs a finger over my most sensitive spot.
Breathless, I gasp out, “You’re just jealous because you met my boyfriend Bri— Ohhh.
” His mouth is on me, licking, sucking, before he pulls one of my thighs over his shoulder.
I lean back against the sink, grasping for the porcelain or his shoulders or any purchase at all as utter ecstasy washes over me again and again.
When it’s over, I look down at him, stunned. He licks his lips, his eyes warm and triumphant, and I pull him up, kissing him deeply and reaching for his pants. I pull my mouth away from his with an effort. “Your turn,” I whisper, relishing his shiver.
When we rejoin the party a bit later, my mom is in the kitchen with a few other women.
“Yes, Penny’s moving back eventually. Getting New York out of her system,” she says.
Jack understands the look in my eye, and the sated look in his own is replaced with concern. But, to his credit, he doesn’t try to white-knight things. He nods, heading outside with only a small backward glance.
“Mom, can I speak to you in private, please?” If looks could kill, her health crisis from yesterday would be very real right now.
“Oh, sure. Give me a bit, I’m just—” She catches my expression. “Sure. Excuse me, everyone. Let me know if there’s anything I can bring outside for you.”
I tap my nails against the counter while I wait for my mother to stop playing waitress. I stop myself when I realize I’m tapping out S-O-S. What I’m about to do goes against the grain. The opposite of keeping the peace.
“Penny, couldn’t it wait until after—” Mom closes the door behind the departing crowd.
“No. It couldn’t. You lured me here under false pretenses.”
“I told you I wasn’t feeling well!”
“And you were cured by a cheeseburger deluxe. Yes, you mentioned that.”
“And ‘lured.’ ‘Lured’ to visit your own mother. Sad state of affairs, that is.”
I don’t push back on Mom like this. Never have.
This hurts, but I need to say it. “I told you I couldn’t come to this party.
” My voice cracks. “And you brought Brian here to set me up, despite knowing that I’m not interested.
Knowing I have Jack with me. Knowing that he and I are…
together.” I blush at that, still unable to believe it, even when my sore muscles are screaming that it’s oh so true.
“That won’t last. He isn’t for you.”
“You don’t know him. You don’t even know me.”
She opens her mouth to counter, and I raise a hand. My chest is tight, and my vision blurs. I have boundaries now, but they’re easier to keep up when the battering ram isn’t standing a foot away. “No. No more of that. I need you to listen to me.”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep the anger out of my tone.
She immediately dismisses anything I say the second I sound at all emotional.
Say it before you lose your nerve. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I’m a separate person from you.
With different things I want out of life.
I don’t need you lying to manipulate me into doing the things you want me to do. You have to stop trying to control me.”
“Well, if you stopped making a hash of your life, maybe I would. Moving to New York by yourself. Living in a shoebox. Whatever it is you’re doing for a living…”
“You make it sound like I deal in black-market babies, Mom. I’m in marketing.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell people when they ask. Brian is a realtor. That Jack you brought with you is a lawyer. That’s easy.”