Chapter 16 Needs and Wants Are Different Things
Needs and Wants Are Different Things
The doorbell rang at what seemed like stupid o’clock on Sunday morning. Whoever it was had to be leaning on the button.
Morgan groaned and snuggled down farther under her quilt. She’d been awake for nearly three hours during the night, and it seemed she’d only been asleep for five minutes.
“I’m coming. You can stop pressing the bell anytime you want, Lula.”
The door opened, and a loud American voice said, “Well, fuck me, girlfriend, this is a schmancy neighborhood.”
Heidi’s laughter echoed up the stairs. “It’s good, yeah. Come on in.”
“Thanks for this,” Lula said. “No one’s ever cooked me breakfast before who wasn’t my mom.”
“What, no one-night stand?”
“Who wants awkward conversation over oatmeal? I leave after coffee. If I’ve even stayed that long.”
Their voices quieted down. They had to be in the kitchen. Morgan rolled over and jammed the pillow onto her head and tried to go back to sleep.
Almost an hour later, she gave up on that idea. It was nearly ten, she needed to pee, she needed coffee, and the smell of bacon wafting through the house made her mouth water. Why should she hide in her room? It was her house.
She rose and dressed, then went downstairs.
Heidi and her friend were still in the kitchen. Heidi turned bacon and tomatoes in a pan.
“Hey, Morgan. This is my mate, Lula.”
Morgan nodded in her direction. “Hi, Lula.” Heidi’s friend was small and curvy. A crucifix shone gold against the dark skin of her throat.
“Great place you’ve got.” Lula flashed her a smile. “Heidi’s lucky.”
“My charming personality got me the room. Maybe you need to work on yours, Lula.” Heidi shot a wink at Morgan.
Heidi’s cream-colored shirt was pushed up nearly to her elbows as she turned the food in the pan. Morgan focused on her white teeth and the way they looked against Heidi’s plump lower lip. Heidi’s confidence was attractive. She’d never really noticed that before.
The bacon crackled, and grease splattered the stove top. Heidi picked off the cooked pieces, putting them on a plate, which she slid into the warm oven. “Want some brekkie, Morgan?”
“If you’re sure you have enough.”
“I do.” Heidi laid more strips on the hot pan.
“Can I do anything?” Morgan asked.
“Set the table. Hot sauce, BBQ sauce, and mustard, if you have it.”
A few minutes later, they sat down with plates piled with bacon, hash browns, fried eggs, tomatoes, and beans.
Lula picked up her fork. “This is amazing. Fuel for the day—I’m not sure I’ve ever had baked beans for breakfast before. Better than a bowl of Cheerios, which is my normal breakfast.”
“This is only because you’re here. Usually it’s oatmeal, right, Morgan?”
“Or fruit and yogurt.”
“I feel shamed.” Lula waved her fork, and a blob of sauce from the beans flew off and landed on the white tablecloth.
Morgan flinched. Hopefully, the tablecloth would wash.
“After serving fried food at work, I don’t want to cook when I get home,” Lula continued. “Luckily, we live a couple of hundred yards from a great Mexican place. You totally can have burritos for lunch and dinner seven days a week. Especially if they’re under five bucks.”
“You’ll get scurvy,” Heidi said.
“I have an apple most days. Don’t knock my diet. I’m saving money. Haven’t I already bought a car?”
“You have. Whether it starts every morning is another thing.”
“Cleaning the snow off it is another thing,” Lula said. “Do you have a two-car garage here, Morgan?”
She nodded.
“When you get a car, Heidi, you won’t have to scrape snow. I’d totally move for that,” Lula said.
“We haven’t discussed shoveling the path yet,” Heidi said. “So far, it’s always melted.”
“You get first turn,” Morgan said. “Maybe second too.”
“Is that how you’ve got your toned guns? Shoveling snow as well as lifting those weights in the basement? Hell, pass me the snow shovel if so. Your arms are magnificent.” A blush stole out of the neck of Heidi’s shirt. “Uh, not that I’ve been looking.”
“You’ve totally been looking.” Lula pointed her fork at Heidi.
“Well, I can’t not look. It can be minus degrees outside, but it’s always T-shirt weather in here.”
Morgan flexed a biceps. “Look all you want. But it’s mostly from the basement gym.” So Heidi had been checking her out. How long had it been since someone had? She honestly couldn’t remember. It felt…good. She tracked Heidi’s gaze, and why, yes, she was looking.
Heidi’s eyes lifted and connected with hers. Heidi’s color increased from rose pink to fiery red, and she looked away, wiped a finger through the leftover sauce, and sucked on it.
Morgan’s gaze locked on Heidi’s lips closing around her finger. A move that people did all the time, and she’d never not been able to look away. But now it seemed a sensual thing, maybe designed to tease.
Heidi finished, inspected her finger, and dropped her gaze to her plate.
So not a deliberate tease, then. A shaft of disappointment pierced Morgan’s belly. More likely Heidi was uncomfortable with the comment she’d made about Morgan’s arms.
She forked up the last of her beans, and her gaze collided with Lula’s.
Lula sat with a half smile on her face. A knowing half smile. As if she’d noted Morgan’s fixation on Heidi in that moment. Her attraction.
No, that wasn’t what it was. She normally didn’t find Heidi attractive. Her manner and dress were too casual, her accent too strange. She was altogether not the sort of person Morgan found appealing. Whenever she dated, they were professionals like herself, already established in their careers.
But for all that, here she was, attracted to Heidi. The jolt that ran through her turned into heat that scrambled up her chest to her neck.
She rose before Lula or Heidi noticed and picked up her plate. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll leave you to it—I need to call my parents. Nice meeting you, Lula.”
She put her plate in the dishwasher and fled upstairs.
It was only after the door had closed behind her that her heart rate slowed.
Why the hell had she fled like an awkward teenager?
So what if Lula had noticed her reaction to Heidi?
It didn’t change anything, and now that the moment had passed, she’d probably never notice Heidi again in that way.
The sensual way she licked her fingers. The sexual way.
To distract herself, she went and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was an uncharacteristically gray day, and the snowcapped mountains didn’t have their usual glow.
A burst of laughter drifted up from downstairs.
Was Lula even now telling Heidi that Morgan was attracted to her?
Was that what they were laughing at? Morgan wrapped her arms around her waist. No, they were probably laughing at something unrelated, some inside joke between friends.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that people always think others remember their mistakes or stupid things they’d done, but in reality, others don’t care?
It was like the Internet—shame had a short life.
She shouldn’t have left. She’d run like a scared rabbit to hide in her room. Her WhatsApp chimed. Of course it did. She answered the call. “Hi, Mom. Hey, Dad.”
Her mom smiled at her. Her dad was half cut-off the screen as usual. One eye, half a grin. “Hi, Morgan. It’s good to see you.”
“You see me every week like this. And in two weeks, I’ll be there for Thanksgiving. Have I told you my flight details yet?”
“We need to talk about that.” Her mom’s smile slipped, and she glanced away from the screen, blinking fiercely.
The room suddenly felt cold. “Mom? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
Her mom nodded and wiped her eyes.
“Dad? Are you really both okay?”
“We are, honey. It’s your Aunt Linda. She needs surgery. Breast cancer.”
The C-word. The room seemed to freeze. Her parents appeared immobile on the video link. The ticking clock was loud in her bedroom. “Is it—is it bad?”
“She’s stage 2. She’ll likely make a full recovery—if she has surgery.”
“When’s she having it done?”
“She’s not.” Her mom’s lips trembled. “She doesn’t have insurance. She can’t afford it.”
“I’ll pay.” The words fell out of her mouth. “It’s Aunt Linda. Of course I will. Tell me how much. Tell her I’ll pay.” Her words tumbled over themselves in her desperation to be heard. Her fingers shook, and she nearly dropped the phone.
“She knew you’d say that, and she doesn’t want you to. She doesn’t want the debt to transfer to her kids after she’s gone.”
“It won’t. I swear it. I have money in the bank.
She can have it.” She did, but that was what she was living on.
But this was Linda—steady, strong Aunt Linda.
The aunt who’d had the toughest life—losing her husband while in her twenties, raising two kids alone—yet who’d always had time for Morgan during her teenage angst, her realization about her sexuality, her coming out.
Linda’s support had smoothed the family path for Morgan.
“I told her you’d say that. I reminded her about your job, that you can afford it. She still said no. She’s going to have radiotherapy. She says that will be enough.”
“What do Nathan and Ellie think?” Surely her cousins would talk sense into their mom.
“They don’t know. She intends to tell them at Thanksgiving when they come home.”
“I’ll see her then too. Maybe I can persuade her to—”
“Honey, there’s no easy way to say this. Linda doesn’t want to see any of us at Thanksgiving. She wants the day to be just her and the kids. She hopes to see us sometime after. Maybe Christmas.”
Hurt pierced her like bone shards. Linda didn’t want to see her? Any of them? “Is she telling the truth? Is it worse than she’s saying?”
“I don’t think so,” her dad said. “She said she loves us all, but she just wants this time alone with her kids, and she hopes we understand.”
“I don’t right now, but I accept that.” Morgan pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Still, I get to see you both.”
Another long pause, and Morgan’s stomach clenched.