I fight back the burn of tears that threaten.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she says, grabbing my hand. “Of course, you’re not ready, but I’m here for you. Okay?”
“Thank you, Dee,” I sniff. “I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through this past month without you.”
“You would’ve leaned on, Brett,” she waves me off, never one to take a compliment.
I wince at her words. I love Brett. I’m notin lovewith Brett, and the guilt of that is starting to weigh. Like I need more to feel guilty over. More weight to bear. I’m already about to break.
“What was that?” she waves a finger around me.
“What?” I play dumb as we start our journey into the city. Hopefully, traffic will be forgiving. I lived there for almost two years, but driving wasn’t exactly a requirement there so my skills navigating the chaos are subpar.
“Stop playing dumb, Ven,” she tells me with a snort. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I made a mistake doing this with Brett,” I confess.
“I told you that before it got started,” she scoffs. “That boy has loved you since we were kids. We all thought you two would end up together.”
My eyes practically bug out of my head. How did I not know this? “Seriously? Everyone?”
“Come on, Heaven. Don’t be dense. Youwouldbe with him by now if someone hadn’t run off to New York and fell for a rock star. No, make that two rock stars,” she laughs at me with a shake of her head.
“I didn’t fall for two rock stars,” I groan.
“Fall? Fuck? Same difference, right? Leave it to you to get your cherry popped in a threesome.” Her smirk grows.
“Dear God, Dee.” I throw my hands in the air with exasperation. “We’ve got to buy you a new filter. But, no. That’s not what happened, and you know it. It wasn’t like that at all. And it is not the same thing – or difference. You know that saying doesn’t even make sense, right?”
“Girl, it should have happened just like that. How the hell do you eat just one when you had the whole damn bag available. Speaking of, did you watch the Grammys last night? They swept the show again.”
Pride and sadness fill me all at once. “You know I didn’t. I haven’t even listened to a song since all of Tyler’s questions last year.” I have done everything I can to tamp down my son’s curiosity. Not that he doesn’t know who his father is, but I’m not looking forward to the day I have to tell him his dad never wanted him.
“They looked good,” she tells me with a dreamy look in her eye. “God, those are some fine men.”
“Can we not talk about them?” I snap. “I left all that behind a long time ago.”
“You know how I feel about that,” she gives me a side-long glance. “What you did was wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong, Dee. It’s what he wanted, so it’s what he got. Now, let’s drop it. No point in rehashing the past. Or thinking about something that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know about Tyler, and he never will.”
“One day, Heaven, all of it will come back to bite you in the ass,” she warns me like she has so many times before.
“It won’t. The universe has to have more sympathy for me than that,” I tell her as I will it to be true.
I walk out of the elevators,still in utter and complete shock. Any second, the tears will start. It’s inevitable as the weight in my chest and on my shoulders continues to bear down on me.
I should’ve done this weeks ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to come meet with their attorney regarding their estate. I was putting off the inevitable, but I wasn’t ready to let them go. This made it all too real. But I’d finally brought myself here, back into the city I ran from years ago, to handle their final affairs.
I knew my parents had struggled financially for a few years, especially since Dad’s heart attackfour years ago. He lost his job with Hatfield Construction. Mom had to stop teaching so that she could take care of him. Their sole source of income became the diner.
I had no idea the amount of medical debt in which they were drowning. I didn’t know they had taken a mortgage against the diner or that the house wasn’t paid for. I was especially not ready to find out they had let all their life insurance policies lapse.
Today, I found out they were behind on the diner’s mortgage and facing foreclosure. The house has an annual balloon payment that was coming due. I had no idea where I was going to get the money for any of this. We were going to lose our family home and business. The same business where I worked to pay the bills I had before.
I walk blindly through the lobby of the huge building, tears already falling down my face. I’m not watching where I’m going. I barely register that there are other people around me. Until I bump into something solid and hard enough to knock me on my butt.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble through my tears. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
