Chapter Six #3
rules and everyone abides by them. There is good and there is bad and everyone
understands which is which. There is dark and there is light and each person
understands which they carry inside them. But this isn’t a perfect world,
Rosalie, and it never will be. In every case, in every instance, in every nook
and cranny on this planet, the lines are blurred. Each person has to decide
their version of what is right and what is not. And so far, you haven’t
told me anything that, according to my version, isn’t right about Snapper
Kavanaugh or his Club.”
“I’m scared of losing him to this war,” I told her.
“And he’s deeply in love with you. How do you think he’s
felt all these months you’ve been a part of an outlaw motorcycle club you’ve
been informing on, Rosalie? How well do you think he’s slept knowing he
couldn’t protect you every second of every day? And now, when what happened to
you happened, living with how that might scar you and he’s powerless over that
too.”
Not exactly.
He was so far really good at handling that last part.
That said, I’d never considered how Snapper might have felt
about what danger I was putting myself in. I’d just pushed him away when worse
came to worse and he was blaming himself and hurting for me and wanting to step
up to take care of me.
Not wanting to do it.
Doing it.
God!
Now I not only had a messed-up head, I was a selfish bitch.
“Life is a risk, Rosalie,” she said impatiently, cutting
into my thoughts. “And I totally understand you being hesitant after that pack
of mongrels set themselves on you. But I hope I raised a daughter stronger than
that. A daughter who can get herself past that and recognize what’s good for
her, grab hold, and keep it close and safe for as long as God gives her the
privilege of having it.”
I looked away and sipped coffee, right then worried that I
wasn’t that daughter she’d hoped she’d raised.
The coffee was awesome, and as such fortifying, but nothing
could be fortifying enough to pull my stuff together on this.
Mom’s tone was a lot gentler when she noted, “You say you’re
in love with him.”
“I fell in love with him while I was with another man,” I
told the nicked coffee table covered in spent magazines and used books for sale
that had been taken from shelves, perused over coffee, and left for next time.
“Honeypot,” she called.
I looked to her.
“Do you feel guilt for not being loyal in your heart to
Beck?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered tightly. “And Mom,” I went on when her
face started to set hard, “it isn’t all about Beck, even if part of it is. It’s
about wondering what Snap will think that I could do that to Beck when he might
be up next.”
Understanding dawned on her. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Ah.”
“So, along with healing after being gang-beaten, moved into
a new space, worried what your ex’s club has planned for you, and concerned
about the activities of the man you’re currently in love with, you’re also
bearing the burden that if you try it with him, the way it started between you,
he’ll never truly trust you.”
There was absolutely all that.
There was also the scar thing, but Snapper took care of
that.
Gah!
“Yes,” I answered Mom.
“And what does Snapper say about all of this?”
“I think this is going to be our conversation tonight.”
All of a sudden, she leaned into me, latched her fingers
around my forearm and whispered fiercely, “Be the daughter I raised and
recognize what’s good for you, fucking grab hold, keep it close, and
keep it precious, Rosalie, for as long as God gives you the privilege
of having it.”
I stared at my mom with big eyes.
My father was a swearer. He could be working on something in
the garage that wasn’t going right and let out a string of swear words that
lasted five whole minutes that would make a sailor raise his brows.
My mother hardly ever swore.
So the f-word was huge.
But what she was urging me to do was even more huge.
“You like him,” I whispered.
She let me go, sat back, and said exasperatedly, “Oh for
goodness sakes, Rosalie. Obviously. I mean, what’s not to like?” Then
she sucked back an irate sip of her coffee, tasted it, and the irritation fled
as the miracle of a serial-killer-but-not-serial-killer-looking barista’s
artistry touched her taste buds.
“Mom?” I called.
She turned her eyes to me.
My eyes to me.
I loved my eyes. I loved my mother.
But I wished I got just a little piece of my dad.
“I miss Dad,” I admitted.
She leaned back toward me, her face melting into sheer
beauty.
“Of course you do, sweetie. He was the kind of man who was
always going to leave a huge hole in the world of those he loved when he left
them. The kind of hole, honeypot,” she leaned even closer, “that feels when
he’s gone like it’ll never get filled. Don’t try to fill it, Rosalie.
Let it sit because it’s not empty. It’s filled to bursting with the love he had
for you and the memories he gave our family. It isn’t the same as having him.
It never will be. But it’s a treasure regardless. So learn to treasure it and
do what he’d want you to do. Find someone to love you, to make new treasured
memories with. And don’t let fears and loss hold you back. That isn’t the
daughter I raised. But more, that isn’t the daughter your father raised.”
I stared at her, muttering, “Oh no, I’m going to start
crying.”
“Okay, I have Kleenex,” she replied.
“Mom!” I exclaimed kinda loudly.
“I don’t want to start crying.”
She looked perplexed. “Why in the world not?”
“Because…because…because…” I didn’t know why. “Because I’m
seeing Snapper later. It’ll mess up my makeup and make my eyes all puffy.”
She waved her hand in front of her face, took another sip of
coffee, got a fleeting look reminiscent of what she looked like after Dad was
done with her, then said, “That’s why God made washcloths and Visine. Cold
compresses take the puffy away and Visine rids the red. Walgreens is just down
the street. If you don’t have Visine, we’ll get you some drops before you head
home. And some condoms. I’m sure with the man Snapper is, he’ll come prepared,
but just in case.”
I stopped wanting to cry and started smiling.
“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked.
She looked me right in the eye and answered, “Yes.”
Damn.
I felt like crying again.
Instead of crying, I jumped and looked up when the huge,
serial-killer-looking-not-a-serial-killer, wild-gray-and-blond-haired,
crazy-russet-bearded barista smashed two coffee mugs on the table before us and
boomed, “Jesus Jones! I don’t even know what you bitches are talking about and
you’re killin’ my mood. Suck more of that back and
get over this shit. I got a new litter of kitties that came in last night I get
to go home and play with. I don’t wanna be on a
downer when I got new kitties.”
Mom and I stared up at him, agog, and I was pretty sure both
of us didn’t know which part of his boom to be most agog about.
He retreated behind the coffee machine as the beautiful
redheaded lady who owned the place took up the space he’d exited.
“Sorry about Tex calling you bitches, bossing you around,
and freaking you out talking about kittens. He’s kind of a cat lover. And a
crazy guy. The, uh…coffees are on the house.” She then took off on a stomp and
did it shouting toward the coffee machine, “Tex, swear to God, the next
customers you—”
“Zip it, sister!” the crazy man called Tex interrupted her
on a bellow. “You’re not stealin’ my new kitty
thunder with your attitude either!”
“I’m not stealing your new kitty thunder!” she shouted back.
“I’m trying to retain customers so I can buy that new pair of cowboy boots Lee
says I can’t have because I already have fifteen pairs.”
“Like you’re hurtin’. This store
turns over a shitload and your husband’s rollin’ in
it,” Tex retorted.
“And like she cares Lee says she can’t have them,” Mom and I
heard whispered from our sides, this coming from a pretty blonde lady who had a
smile that made her a knockout. “She already bought those boots. She just wants
Tex to pipe down and not freak people out.”
Mom and I looked in unison to the silent standoff Tex and
the redhead were having with their eyes, but we looked back to the blonde when
she spoke again.
“And it isn’t about his mood,” she said. “He’s worried about
your bandage. It doesn’t look like it, but he’s a ladies’ man in the good kind
of way, really protective, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He doesn’t know
you but he does know people like his coffee, and since that’s all he can give,
he gave it. So really, he’s just a big, crazy, kinda
scary softie.”
She delivered that, then she swiped up a used mug that had
been there when we sat there and took off.
“Don’t ya just love this place?”
we heard from the table in the corner that was on the other side of us and our
heads swung that way. “These people are freakin’ loco,”
the woman there went on. “You never know the shenanigans they’ll get up to.
Honestly, and I know this’ll say it all, I don’t actually come here for the
coffee. That’s just the icing on the cake. I come here for the floorshow. It
never disappoints.”
She lifted her foamy-topped latte our way and turned back to
the book she was not-so-much reading.
I looked to Mom.
Her eyes drifted to me.
And then we burst out laughing.
In the midst of it, we heard boomed, “See! Look at those
bitches now, Indy Nightingale! My work is done!”
So of course we laughed harder.