Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Your mother will be fine.”

  Dawson turned away, stepping over to the bag he brought in with him last night. He tugged out a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt as he replied, “I hope so. She’s had bouts like this before, and her doctor tells us we should expect it.”

  When he turned back, I could see the uncertainty in his eyes, and I wanted to hug him and tell him it would be okay, but I didn’t. Instead, with uncertainty hanging in the air between us, I turned and poured him a cup of coffee.

  My heart felt funny, and my throat felt tight. I was in love with Dawson Marsh, and I needed to figure out what to do about it.

  When I turned back, my breath was knocked clean from my lungs. Dawson with damp hair from a shower and a pair of jeans without a shirt on was a sight almost too yummy. Although we’d been doing this dance for over a month now, I had yet to get accustomed to seeing him. He was so delicious, need shot through me just looking at him.

  Willfully pushing those feelings away, I reached for the travel mug. “To-go cup,” I said, holding it out. “You’ll text me when you get there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you’ll let me know how she is?”

  Stepping close, I placed my palm on his chest over his heart, feeling it thud against his ribs and my own lunging in response.

  “Of course, I will.”

  “If you need me, just say so.”

  Dawson took another step, taking the coffee from me and brushing my hair back from my forehead. A little shiver chased in the wake of his touch where his fingers brushed along the side of my neck as he tucked my hair behind my ear. “You’re too good to me, Evie.”

  He punctuated his words with kisses. One on my temple and another on my cheek as he captured my chin in his hand lightly. His kiss was gentle, just a brush of his lips across mine, yet when he lifted his head, I was on fire, and my heart was pounding so hard it wouldn’t have surprised me if he heard it.

  “I hope I’ll be back in a few days. I’ll text you as soon as I get there.”

  With that, he was gone, the chilly morning air gusting through the door as he stepped through. Without thinking, I followed him, standing on the porch and watching as he walked into the darkness. It wasn’t even dawn yet.

  18

  Evie

  Dawson: I’m here. My mom’s going to be OK.

  I stared at Dawson’s text, smiling slowly. He wasn’t too wordy when he texted. Funny as he was, his humor didn’t usually come across via text. He was typically straight and to the point.

  Me: I’m so glad. Give her my best. When will she be out of the hospital?

  Dawson: Probably tomorrow morning. Just a scare. They want to keep her for the night to monitor her and make sure she’s stable. Her doctor made some adjustments to her medications.

  I wanted to ask how long he planned to stay, but that felt selfish. I opted for two emoticons—a smile and a thankful symbol.

  Dawson: I should be back the day after tomorrow. My brother’s got something going on with the house sale. Might as well stay so I can sign whatever he needs me to.

  As if he’d intuited my question, he answered it. Knowing Dawson’s reaction when his brother brought up the house sale before, I worried about how he was doing. But I wasn’t going to try to have a conversation like that via text.

  Me: OK. I hope it goes smoothly.

  Dawson: Oh, it will. If we don’t close on the sale, I’ll use that opportunity to sign my portion over to my brother.

  I smiled a little. Dawson wasn’t a greedy person. The more I learned about him, the deeper I fell. He’d let it casually slip once that he used every extra bit of money he had to cover his mother’s long-term care insurance. He was a good man and a loving son.

  I wasn’t thinking too hard when I replied.

  Me: I’ll miss you until you get back. Text me tomorrow to let me know how things are going?

  Dawson: You got it. Miss you.

  I didn’t realize that I’d practically been leaning forward inside, hoping he would tell me he missed me.

  “What’s that smile for?” Grace asked as she leaned against the shelves beside me in the pantry.

  I’d gotten marooned in here just coming to get a few things. “Oh, Dawson texted me and said he missed me,” I replied.

  I didn’t even care to try to play it cool. I practically wanted to do cartwheels and shout it to the world.

  Grace smiled. “You’ve got it bad, girl. I’d be worried about you if it wasn’t so obvious Dawson’s got it bad too.”

  “Didn’t you come back here to get some things for the line cooks?” she asked with a giggle.

  “Oh, right, I did.” Slipping my phone back in my purse hanging on a hook on the wall, I quickly scanned the shelves. “I might need some man advice.”

  Grace’s gaze slid to mine as she helped me pull jars of olives and red peppers off the shelf and stack them on a tray. “What man advice do you need?”

  “Man advice?” Dani’s voice carried through the pantry door.

  We turned back in unison. “My fault I’m behind. I got hung up,” I offered.

  “How about you two finish this shift, and we’ll schedule man advice after that? You’re both done in an hour, same as me. Let’s have a bottle of wine, and I am all over the man advice. But right now, we just had four new tables come in.”

  Hours later, after the restaurant was closed for the night, I sat on a stool by the large stainless-steel table in the private portion of the kitchen where Dani often worked on special projects and cooked for the staff.

  “Red or white?” Grace called from where she stood in front of the wine rack.

  “Red,” I called in return.

  “White,” Dani replied at the same time.

  Dani was jotting something in a notepad and glanced up with a smile. “There’re four of us. We can finish two bottles. If not, we’ll save the rest for later this week.”

  Dani had the foresight to toss a pizza in the oven while the dinner shift wound down. Seeing as I had forgotten to eat, I was relieved. Of course, when Dani threw together some pizza, it was flat-out gourmet. Her homemade crust and sauce were divine. This one was half pepperoni with red sauce and half with a buttered crust and fresh basil, garlic, olives, and feta.

  I slid another pepperoni piece off the plate in the center of the table and took a bite. After I finished chewing, I sighed. “Oh my God. This is so good.”

  Valentina came in from the back hallway, sitting down across from me and smiling as she reached up to tighten her ponytail. “I’m so freaking hungry,” she said as she reached over and helped herself to two slices.

  Dani flashed a small smile as she helped herself to a slice of the basil and garlic. “Most of us forgot to eat tonight.”

  Grace slipped her hips onto the stool beside Dani, handing her the bottle of white wine. “Already opened them,” she said, gesturing to the wineglasses on the table.

  Within a few minutes, we had all had a piece of pizza and were sipping on our choice of wine.

  “Okay, who needed man advice?” Dani asked.

  Grace pointed at me as she finished chewing a bite of pizza.

  “Oh, that’s right. You and Dawson. How are things?” Valentina said with a grin.

  “Dawson told Evie he misses her,” Grace offered before taking a sip of her wine.

  I felt my cheeks heat and ignored it. “That’s what he texted.”

  “Well, do you miss him?” Valentina asked.

  “Yes. He went to see his mother. It sounds like she’s going to be okay, but I wish I’d gone with him.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Dani asked as she reached for another slice of pizza, pausing to snag a napkin from the stack in the center of the table.

  “I thought about offering to go, but I didn’t feel right about leaving you in the lurch for shifts.”

  Dani took a bite, shaking her head as she did. After she finished chewing, she canted he
r head to the side. “I appreciate your responsibility, but you could’ve asked. I mean, if it’s for love, we could’ve figured something out,” she said with a grin.

  “I’d offered to cover, but I was already on duty this weekend, so it wouldn’t help,” Grace commented.

  “I know you would,” I said, flashing her a smile.

  “So what man advice do you need?” Valentina asked.

  Valentina exuded a strange combination of innocent and wise. Although Lucas was her first everything, and their relationship was still fresh, she had a much better grasp on relationships than most of us. I suppose it was because she didn’t hide what she felt. It also helped that Lucas was utterly and totally in love with her.

  “I don’t know. This thing with Dawson, well, it kind of came out of nowhere.”

  “Nowhere?” Dani asked, her brows hitching up so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. “You two have been dancing around each other ever since he started working here.”

  I waved a hand dismissively. “Dawson is a flirt. That’s just how he is.”

  “Oh, we know that,” Grace piped up, “but the way he flirts with you has always been different from the way he flirts in general. You’re special.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Valentina brushed one of her red curls out of her eyes and smiled at me. “Just that. It’s always been obvious that he likes you. He teases most guys as much as women. With you, it’s a thing.”

  “Okay, fine. So the general consensus is this thing with Dawson didn’t come out of nowhere. But I don’t know what we are.”

  “What do you mean?” Grace countered, pausing to finish her slice of pizza as she waited for me to answer.

  “I don’t know how to define us. Are we like dating-dating? I mean, he says he misses me, and I’ll admit that’s kind of awesome, but I can’t let myself read too much into this.”

  “What do you want?” Valentina asked, getting right to the point as she was wont to do.

  My stomach felt funny, and my heart started thudding hard in my chest as clarity slammed into me. I’d gone and fallen in love—totally and completely. The more I got to know Dawson, the harder it was to keep my feelings at bay.

  Taking a breath, I masked my sudden emotional distress with a few sips of wine. As if my friends could sense what was up, they all stayed quiet. No one pushed me. They just let me sit with whatever I was muddling through.

  “I guess I want something serious,” I finally said.

  “That’s what I thought.” Valentina’s gaze held mine, clear blue with soft understanding and empathy shining back at me. “I recognize the signs,” she said with a small smile.

  “Oh, God, what am I going to do?” I wailed, putting my face in my hands. “I have no idea what he wants.”

  “Okay, let’s rewind,” Dani interjected, all business as usual. Dani was a problem solver if there ever was one. “So you guys have hot sex because you can’t help it. Have you ever talked about what’s happening? Or is it just happening?”

  “Not much,” I said, finally lifting my head and brushing my hair away from my face. “When it all started, I told Dawson I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea, and he said that we should take it one step at a time. I’m just worried. I don’t have a lot of experience with serious relationships, like hardly any, and as far as I can tell, he has none, like zero.”

  “Maybe you should start by telling him how you feel,” Valentina offered.

  I looked over at her and sighed. “Easy for you to say. Lucas is so in love with you, it’s amazing he doesn’t trip and fall every time he sees you.”

  Valentina’s cheeks pinkened, and she rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t always obvious. I’m just saying the only way to get clarity is to try to talk about it. That’s all.”

  Grace caught my eyes and wrinkled her nose. “It’s true. I’ve only had one serious relationship—which totally blew up in my face—but you have to try to talk when you’re not sure.”

  “They say most communication is nonverbal, so let’s look at what Dawson’s nonverbal communication tells us,” Dani interjected.

  “Well, as far as I can tell, the sex is awesome,” Grace offered. “I mean, if we’re going on how he gives you those hot looks all the time.”

  “Oh yeah, we’ve all seen how he looks at you,” Valentina interjected with an arch of her brow.

  I burst out laughing. “But what about the baggage? There’s always baggage. I mean, I have baggage. I can’t believe a man who looks like Dawson wants me. You know what high school was like for me,” I said, looking at Grace. Because we’d known each other for so long and were the same age, Grace knew how brutal high school had been for me.

  “Of course we all have baggage, but you are totally hot. No matter what you think in your head, Dawson likes you. Whether it has anything to do with your looks isn’t really the point,” Valentina offered. “He’s got plenty of beautiful women to pick from if that’s all it’s about.”

  19

  Dawson

  Curling my hands around the wheelchair handles, I rolled my mother through the door into the assisted living home.

  “You didn’t have to come,” she said, glancing up to look at me over her shoulder.

  “Mom, when you end up at the hospital, you can expect me to show up. No need to argue about it after the fact.”

  The receptionist waved to us, and my mother threw a smile her way as I turned down the hallway that led to my mother’s room. A few minutes later, she was situated in her favorite chair by the windows with the new e-book reader I’d gotten for her a few months ago, along with her favorite lemon and honey tea.

  I sank into the chair at an angle across from her, leaning back with a sigh. I hadn’t wanted to bother with a hotel room, so I had some semblance of sleep in the chairs at the hospital last night.

  My mother took a sip of her tea and cocked her head to the side. “So I liked meeting Evie,” she said, her tone casual as if she were discussing the weather.

  Nothing was ever casual with my mother, and I damn well knew it. I grinned. “I’m amazed it took you this long to mention her.”

  My mother rolled her eyes and laughed softly. “She means something to you. I can tell.”

  She didn’t even ask how I felt. My mother was like that. She didn’t tiptoe around issues. Maybe it was because she’d been through so much. Her willingness to tolerate any bullshit ended years ago, and she called things how she saw them.

  Sometimes that was comforting, and sometimes it was unsettling. Just now, I rolled my shoulders, wishing my feelings for Evie weren’t so blatantly obvious. Because hell if I knew how to navigate this.

  “She does,” I finally said.

  My mother was quiet for a minute, looking out the window beside her with the ocean in the distance through the trees. When she looked back toward me, her gaze was contemplative. “You know, I still worry about you.”

  “Because of Dad?”

  We’d had our conversations about him. Many times. This was a topic better left alone as far as I was concerned.

  “Not in the way you think,” she replied.

  “What do you mean then?”

  “None of this makes what your father did okay. He used alcohol, and then pills, and often violence to handle the way he felt inside. It was a terrible choice, one that hurt everyone who mattered to him. I won’t even bother to say he loved any of us. He was too far gone to register that level of emotion. My point is, though, when I first knew him, he wasn’t like that. When he was young, he struggled with depression sometimes like you do.”

  My gut churned, and I swallowed. I didn’t want to have this conversation. “Mom, don’t fucking tell me I’m like him,” I said, my voice holding a sharp edge.

  “Honey, you’re nothing like your father. You have a heart of gold, you protected me, and you protected your brother when you were way too young to have ever had to worry about that. I completely understand why you want nothing to do wit
h the house. I just figured you should be the one to get the money and not me. Because I don’t need it. I’m not going to live much longer.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but my mother held up her hand. “Honey, don’t. I’m sick. I’m doing okay, but I definitely won’t be here for much longer. For all you did to try to keep the rest of us safe, I figured you might as well get the money. If you choose to give it to your brother, fine. But I’d like it to be your decision, not mine. That’s not what I want to talk about. I just wanted to say that there is one thing you do share with your dad and with me. I know you get depressed sometimes. I saw it when you were a teenager. Back then, you had so much to do to take care of your brother and me. In a way, it was what held you together. That and your sense of humor.” She paused, smiling softly. “You are so funny, and you always were. You became such a tease and flirt when you got older. Over the past few years, I worried about that because that was how you kept everyone at a little bit of a distance. When I saw you with Evie, that was the first time in a long time I saw you just being you without the need for the rest.”

  I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “And what? What’s your point?”

  “I’m glad to see you’re letting yourself be who you are. Having watched your father run from his demons, I see what that can do to a person. Don’t think for a second, not even a millisecond, that I would ever worry you would make choices the way your father did. I just mean that it’s okay to let yourself sit with things. Trust me, I know what it’s like to want to escape. I wouldn’t want you to be alone. You always were a sweet boy, and I know you’ll make an amazing partner for someone.”

  It felt as if tiny balls were bouncing around in my mind, the sound a cacophony. A sense of panic was blasting me, but I didn’t want to face it. I heard everything my mother said, and I understood it logically and intellectually, but there was a good reason I never wanted anyone to matter too much to me. I truly didn’t worry about becoming like my father. Violence had never been an option for me, and it didn’t seem I was susceptible to his problems with substances. Oh sure, I drank, but it never got out of control. In a way, I almost had to push that envelope to test it.