28. Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
Had he just said what I thought he’d said?
I sat in my chair like an idiot and stared at him.
He looked down at me and smiled. “Don’t act so surprised, Wylie. Of course, I love you. How could I not?”
I almost fell over. Wasn’t it too soon?
He seemed to read my mind because he was already shaking his head. “It’s been in the works for 20 years, hasn’t it? We just took a little detour.”
I opened my mouth, unsure what I was going to say. Then I just knew. “I love you too,” I blurted and tried to get up out of my chair. Because I was me, I tripped and fell forward. Thankfully, he caught me. He was always catching me.
“Be careful,” he chided, but he was smiling as he brushed my hair out of my face. “It’s always been you. I just didn’t realize it.”
I was going to cry. There was no stopping me.
Except Eleanor wasn’t done.
“Wait … so you two are together?” Eleanor moved her finger between us, seemingly absorbing the fresh news.
“I don’t … I …” She moved her eyes to my mother, and instead of acceptance, there was something else reflected back.
It wasn’t a good something either. She was just ramping up. “Are you behind this?”
Mom threw her hands into the air. “Give me a break, Eleanor. I did not plot behind your back to get Wylie in the same place as Huxley. I had no idea they were even together until we got down here yesterday. We found them making out on the sidewalk in front of Wylie’s building.”
“Oh, right.” Eleanor rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle she didn’t topple over. “I don’t believe you. You arranged all of this to take my son away from me.”
Huxley pressed me against his chest and kissed the top of my head. His heart was only beating a little bit fast. Otherwise, it was strong and true. “Get over yourself, Mom,” he chided. “Not everything is about you.”
Her eyes went wide, and I thought she was going to start speaking Klingon … or maybe whatever language Satan spoke. That’s how evil she looked. She caught herself before she lost it, however. She went ramrod straight as she visibly shook off her irritation. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
She turned on her heel and stalked toward the elevator. Rather than follow her, Huxley sank into his chair. He seemed resigned to losing her.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, staring at him in abject disbelief. “She’s your mother. You have to go after her.”
“No, I don’t,” he fired back. “She’s lied to me for years. She keeps playing the victim. I’m not going after her. For once, she has to come to grips with me and what I want.”
That was all well and good in a fairytale world, but it wasn’t going to happen today. No, today Eleanor needed somebody to listen to her. Apparently, that was going to be me. “I’ll get her.”
“No!” Huxley made a grab for my wrist but missed. I left him to stew — he was Eleanor Ambrose’s son, so he knew how to do it — and followed her to the elevator.
She looked over her shoulder, clearly checking for her son, and scowled when she saw me. “Don’t follow me, Wylie,” she ordered. “I don’t have anything I want to say to you right now.”
I believed her, but I got on the elevator with her anyway when the door opened.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her eyes flashing with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify. “I’m done here.”
“No, you’re not.” I was still on the elevator when the doors closed, and we rode it to the ground level in silence.
Once we were off the elevator, I grabbed her wrist and dragged her to the right, to where a small square — they were all over the place in Savannah — was situated.
I didn’t release my grip, and she didn’t fight me as hard as she could have.
Once we reached a bench, I motioned for her to sit.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she said, raising her chin.
“Stop,” I pleaded, shaking my head. “Just … stop. He’s your son. You love him.”
“He doesn’t love me, though.”
“Please, he loves you so much he can’t see straight sometimes. You just frustrate him.”
“Have you ever considered that he frustrates me?”
“Yup.” I smiled because I couldn’t help myself. “I get it. He’s stubborn and set in his ways. He doesn’t see things that are right in front of him until years down the line. I mean … he swears he didn’t know I had a crush on him.”
That had her making a face. “He knew. I told him.”
“He didn’t believe you.”
“I always knew you had a crush on him,” she complained. “I always knew he had a crush on you, too. He was so blind to it.”
I debated what I wanted to say. “In some ways, I wish he had figured it out back then. We would have had more time together. In other ways, though, I’m glad that it took him so long to figure it out. We probably wouldn’t have survived if we got together as teenagers.”
“Probably not,” she agreed, crossing her arms over her chest. She wanted me to know that she wasn’t comfortable with this setup. I didn’t blame her.
“We didn’t mean for it to happen,” I said. “In fact, the first night we saw each other again, it didn’t go well.”
“Was he mean to you?”
“He brought up the Klingon.”
She smirked. “The Klingon really did get him going.”
“Yeah. I know.” I couldn’t help but smile at the memory.
“How did the two of you get together?”
Was she warming up? It certainly felt like it. Maybe I was just being overly hopeful. “One night, at one of our events, a guy was paying me too much attention,” I started.
“He got jealous?”
“He got worried. The guy kept insisting that he was going to walk me home, even though I didn’t want that. Huxley intervened and said he was going to walk me home.”
“He’s always been chivalrous without even realizing it.” She didn’t smile, but there was affection in her voice.
“We had shrimp and fries on the river that night … and some ice cream.” There was no containing my smile.
“And we talked. We agreed — at that time at least — that we could keep the same friend group and it wouldn’t be a big deal.
We would be friendly acquaintances and nothing more.
We didn’t start dating right away. I want you to know that. He was loyal to you.”
Eleanor made a disgruntled sound. “I don’t want to keep him from you. I just hate your mother. After what she did to me —”
“I’m pretty sure you guys did things to each other,” I countered pointedly.
“She didn’t want Mick.”
“Did you ever really want him, or did you just want Mom not to have him?”
That question seemed to stymie her. “I … cared about Mick a great deal.”
I didn’t say anything and waited her out.
“I thought I loved him,” she said finally. “I really did.”
“And when you realized you didn’t love him, it was too late,” I assumed.
“If I had told him that, if I’d admitted it, I would have had to admit the rest of it,” she said. “I just couldn’t do that.”
“I’m guessing that it was the guilt you felt over keeping him and Mom apart for so long that fueled your meltdown in Austin.”
“Oh, I was owed that meltdown. My husband had just left me for my best friend.”
“After you cheated on him.”
She frowned. “I guess he really did tell you everything.” Frustrated, she got to her feet. She didn’t take off, and I was grateful for it. She paced instead. “My problem is that I’ve always wanted to be loved. It’s never enough, though. Nobody ever loves me the way I want to be loved.”
“Have you considered that’s because you don’t love yourself?”
“No. I happen to think I’m the best person in the world.
” She said it in such a way that I could do nothing but grin.
“I get it, though,” she added after a beat.
“I’m the problem here. The reason I keep getting married and divorced — and married and divorced and married and divorced — is because I’m not happy with myself. ”
“They have therapy for things like that,” I offered. “Mom went to therapy after the thing in Austin. She said it really helped.”
“Your mother went to therapy?” She looked appalled. “Are you kidding me? She told you that?”
“She told me if I was ever feeling unhappy with myself to go to therapy. She’s a big proponent of it.”
“Wow,” was all she said.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“I guess she’s done some growing. Which means that I’m the only one who hasn’t done any growing.” She looked disturbed at the realization. “You and Huxley have grown enough to get past all your issues and fall in love.”
“I didn’t realize we were in love,” I admitted. “I mean, I knew I was in love with him. I figured it was too soon to say it, though, and I didn’t want to scare him off.”
That made her smile. “You and Huxley were tailor-made for each other.” She sat on the bench again, and it was as if all the fight had gone out of her.
“You two balance each other really well. One of my greatest regrets was that I ripped you two away from one another when you were just getting to an age when you might have figured out that you were gone for each other.”
“I always knew I was gone for him,” I admitted. “I just never thought it was possible he would ever be gone for me.”
She waved her hand as if I was spouting nonsense. “You always had poor self-esteem. You couldn’t see your own worth. Your mother was worried about you when you were a teenager.” She gave me an appraising look. “Apparently, all of that worrying was for nothing.”
“I don’t know about that.” I barked out a hollow laugh. “It took me a long time to figure myself out.”
“No, you always knew who you were, Wylie. What took you a long time to figure out was that what other people thought about you didn’t matter.”
She was right, of course. That had been my biggest problem. “Huxley likes that I’m a geek now. He bought me a Star Trek shirt for our first date. He even wore one too.”
“Really?” She leaned back and studied me with the trained eye of a mother who adores her son, even if she’s really and truly mad at him. “I guess he has come around.”
“He’s a great man.”
“I know.”
“He’s a great man partly because of you.”
“He was always going to be a great man. I don’t deserve any of the credit.”
“Of course you do. You’re his mom.”