Chapter 2 #2
Lyle shakes his head, a soft, understanding expression on his face. “I’ll find you a buyer, but you can keep this big guy.” He smacks the side of the Suburban. “Until it goes through. How does that sound?”
I feel some of the anxiety that has been silently twisting around my gut slip away at his offer. “Yessir, that sounds perfect.” I reach out to shake his hand. “Thank you, sir.”
“Make me proud, Trevor.”
“I will, sir.”
We drove this Suburban to all of our appointments and through the end of our senior year of school.
We slept in it a while, too, after Paige started to show and my parents kicked me out.
When Jacob came early, I sold my soul to the devil.
I scrambled to get us a safe home, but our baby came home to a fully furnished apartment.
My wife had a bed, not a back seat. After the hardest summer of my life, I went to college and took out student loans—enough to buy her a brand new Subaru to save on gas money.
It’s also one of the safest vehicles on the road.
I continued to drive the Suburban.
Once my father offered me the job at the bank, he told me that it made the business look bad, having someone in the finance department driving something so old.
Paige and I shared the Subaru for a while, and it worked to keep him off my back, until it didn’t.
When I turned twenty-five, he gave me an ultimatum I couldn’t refuse. I bought the newest Chevrolet Camaro.
“The optics are better” was how my father approved of my choice and finally dropped the topic of my vehicle.
I pat the side of the Suburban and skip up the steps to my family. Inside, I drop my keys on the table and take off my suit jacket, hanging it by the door.
“Where’s my beautiful family?” I toe off my shoes and stride into the living room. The scent of some kind of tomato sauce and beef fills the home, making my stomach growl. Never got to that stupid fucking sandwich.
“In here, honey!” Sure enough, there’s Paige, delectable backside turned to me while she bends over the stove and stirs something. I prowl to her and wrap my arms around her stomach, pulling her snug against me and burying my nose in her clean hair.
“Smells good enough to eat.”
Paige pats my arm. “Good! It’s simple, though.” Her voice is music made just for comforting my soul. “It’ll be done pretty quickly.” My wife does a little happy shimmy when she’s talking about good food, and rubs her body against my own.
“I’m not talking about dinner.” I drop my voice and glide my nose along the small, exposed section of her neck.
She shivers, and I’m hooked on this woman.
Only the knowledge that my son is in the other room prevents me from devouring my wife.
I reluctantly release her. “Is there anything you need me to do to help?” Paige shakes her head and nods toward the living room.
“Go and rest. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I tease, then wander into the living room, where my boy is sitting on the couch.
“I said, ’Hello, family!” Jacob mumbles a response, but I plop onto the couch directly beside him. “Is this a two-person game?”
“Yeah. Let me get you a controller, Dad.”
Five minutes later, I’m getting my ass kicked in Mario Kart when the bell rings.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Paige speed away to get it, so I refocus on my player, who just got hit with a red shell.
My flesh and blood cackles at me while I cross the finish line dead last. Before we have a chance to start another game, my mother’s voice echoes through the house.
“Trevor, come here. I need to speak with you.” I made it maybe thirty, forty minutes at home before being interrupted by one form of familial duty or another. The fact that she deigned to actually arrive at our home tells me that she thinks it’s serious.
Perfect.
I lean over and ruffle my kid’s curls. “Sorry, kiddo. I gotta go get that.” I put the controller down and look at my boy. “You wanna come say hi to your grandmother?”
He starts to wrinkle his nose before thinking better of it. “I’m going to race against my own score to see if I can beat it.” His little face hides nothing, and I decide not to push it. Something has my mother here on a weekday, and I doubt she’d tolerate anything getting her off track.
Paige stands at the entrance, one hand on the door, not saying a word. When she sees me, she gives me a tight smile. “I’ll go tend to dinner,” she says before turning to my mother. “Goodbye, Mrs. Whitaker.”
I hide my flinch at her formal address. My wife and mother have never seen eye to eye, and I know my mother prefers that Paige refer to her exactly that way. She has tried a few different ways over the years, but this version leads to the fewest visible winces. My mother doesn’t even say goodbye.
“Monica told me that you left Krista at work alone for lunch today?” She says it like a question I should know the correct answer to the moment Paige walks out of sight.
“I met up with Paige and Jacob to have lunch. I got Krista something, too, and dropped it off to her before heading out to where Paige is working.” Kennedy Whitaker’s facial expression remains unchanged while I speak.
“Trevor, that is no way to treat old family friends. She’s working for you, doing all of these errands and filing for you. The least you can do is make sure she doesn’t spend lunch alone.”
I remember seeing the remnants of Krista’s sandwich at her desk and feel a burst of guilt. “Mom.” She shudders, and I fix my language, “Mother, I usually have working lunches where I barely have time to eat a few bites as is—”
“Well, she works too. Work lunch with your employee. I get that this job is hard for you—”
“That’s not what—”
“—but maybe if you spent more time focusing on what you need to get done, and less on constantly leaving the office early—”
“Early! I—”
“—you’d have a little more time for lunch, and wouldn’t be late to meetings and leaving your staff to fend for themselves.” She finishes without showing any indication of having heard me.
I swallow my sigh and change the topic. “Would you like to come in, Mother?”
“Oh, maybe some other time. I’m very busy.” We both know she doesn’t mean it.
We say our goodbyes as she climbs into her stupid-expensive car and drives away without a backward glance, a question about Paige or Jacob, or anything about my life. I turn around and return to my family, the sound of laughter and the smell of spaghetti filling the air.
The warmth Paige brings into my life is vital.