And too much time spent living in the past.
I used to tell her if she took better care of herself, she might attract a new man.
I was a teenager. I didn’t know that was the wrong thing to say, for so many reasons.
I didn’t say shit like that anymore.
“Oh, I’m good,” she told me as she put the kettle on to boil. “Do you still like chamomile tea?”
I’d never really liked chamomile tea. Tasted like soap to me. For some reason, she could never remember that.
“Sure,” I said.
“Your father prefers Earl Grey,” she said. Because that, she remembered perfectly.
It made my skin fucking crawl the way she said prefers. In the present tense. Like he came over for tea every Sunday or something, when in truth, he hadn’t spoken to her in years. I didn’t even want to look in the cupboard when she pulled out the tea, afraid she might have Earl Grey stocked up for him, just in case.
Who was I kidding? Of course she did.
“Have you been getting out?” I asked her, gently. She never got out as much as I wanted her to, but I always hoped. Then maybe she’d make a new friend at the park, or join a yoga class, or something. Take up knitting. Bake something for a community bake sale. Whatever it took to get her more of a life.
But I wasn’t going to push. Ever since Ashley had told me I should go see her, try to make amends with her, salvage whatever relationship we might still have, it had been weighing heavily on me.
I did not want to wake up one day, days or years from now, to find out I’d missed my chance. That she was gone, and I’d never tried.
“I’ve been doing walks, every Saturday,” she informed me, sounding proud of herself. “I drive up to Queen Elizabeth Park and walk all the way around.”
“That’s great, Mom.” It was great. However, a walk once a week was hardly enough. “How’s work?”
“I’m still doing three shifts a week at the greenhouse,” she said. “It keeps me busy.”
Right. Busy.
We both knew she spent many more hours a week obsessing over her lost love than anything else.
“Could you pick up a few more shifts? They seem to like you there.”
“Oh, they do. They always ask. But three is enough for me.”
I left it at that.
“Enough about me,” she said. “Tell me about your trip.” She poured the boiling water into the pot and set the tea to steep, and joined me at the table. “Did you have a good time?”
“Yes. Brazil was amazing. I got a ton of photos. I don’t even know what I’ll do with them all. You know, I always shoot way too much, but it was so gorgeous. And so moving… I think I’ll have to go back one day. I still haven’t fully processed it all. But I managed to sell some images, and even picked up a few assignments along the away.”
“That’s wonderful, Amber.” My mom’s hazel eyes softened as she gazed at me, and she laid her hand on mine, giving it a squeeze. Her hand was soft and doughy, and she had long, beautiful fingernails that she’d painted a meticulous pink. That had never changed.
She’d always been proud of me; that had never changed, either.
“And where are you off to next?”
“Thailand, I think. I’ve been wanting to go back there for a while and stay longer than the first time. I have some friends there now, a couple I met while I was in France. I can stay with them a while, and travel around, too.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“Yeah. Will you worry about me this time?” The last time I went to Thailand, she’d read some news article about a tourist being kidnapped there, and worried about me. She told me I was crazy for going there. But that was a long time ago, one of my first trips to a foreign country.
“Amber, dear.” She squeezed my hand again. “I’d worry about you if you stopped doing these crazy things.”
That made me smile. Because sometimes my mom just understood me, even when I couldn’t understand her.
“I met someone,” I told her, before I could second-guess it.
“Oh?”
It was always dicey to bring up the subject of men with my mom. But I decided to take the risk, given that I was here to try to foster more of a bond with her. Couldn’t exactly do that if I locked her out of my personal life, right?
I decided not to mention that I’d met two someones, though.
“I’ve been thinking, about what it would be like to be with someone longterm. Be in love. Maybe get married someday.” She was the only person I’d said that to, and somehow, I felt safe saying it here, to her. “I haven’t thought about that a lot since, you know, Johnny. But… I think maybe it’s important to me. To get married one day. Have a husband. Be a wife.” She listened as she poured us both a tea, a slightly dreamy look on her face. “I don’t think I really knew it was so important to me until I started feeling something for someone again. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe even have kids someday… Does that surprise you?”
“Amber,” she said, her gentle gaze holding mine. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the most important thing.”
Wow.
I’d never talked about this with my mom. I’d never talked about wanting to get married or have kids. I’d only ever talked to her about my travel plans and my photography dreams. I’d always been scared to talk about marriage with her.
But she was taking it better than I’d expected.
“It was the most important thing to me,” she added. “The day I married your father was the happiest day of my life…”
And then off she went.
She started spouting off the same old crap about my dad that she’d been saying for the past twenty years. About their life together. About their undying love. Talking about him like they were still together, when he’d left her two decades ago and never looked back.
He’d remarried, for Christ’s sake. Fourteen years ago.
It was so fucking sad. Listening to her go on and on…
And it made me angry.
I barely got another word in, but what would I say? Reminding her he was gone never helped. Telling her he wasn’t coming back could only do damage, sending her into one of her downward tailspins, where she stopped answering her phone and lost her job and gained more weight.
I managed to excuse myself about half an hour later, leaving her house just in time for the hot tears to spill down my face. Tears of anger and frustration and disillusionment.
I just did not know how to have a relationship with my mom when it was so tainted with her fucking delusions.
I walked up the road and sat on the curb. I texted Ashley that I was ready to leave. It was earlier than he probably expected. I didn’t know how long he’d be, so I just sat here. At least I stopped crying as the anger overtook the sadness. And then the surrender kicked in. I gave in.
I gave up.
I tried to feel sympathy for my mom, but I just couldn’t. Not really. Not a lot. Maybe I’d burned it all out in the first ten years or so after Dad left, as I grew up.
We’d taken her to the doctors again and again, and they’d all said the same thing. She wasn’t medically depressed. She didn’t actually believe Dad was still married to her, or that he’d just gone out for groceries or something and was coming right back. She wanted to live in her memories. She chose to shut us out, to shut everything out, when she heard what she didn’t want to hear. She still ate, still bathed, still went about the motions of a normal-ish life.
She’d been through counseling, but without any diagnosis of depression or anything else, she refused to take any kind of medication, and I wouldn’t exactly want her to.
When I’d suggested pot, to maybe mellow her out and possibly open her mind to see things differently, she’d flatly refused.
Your father never smoked pot. Why would I start now?
As a grown woman, it became harder and harder for me to feel for her. To feel anything but resentment for the situation she just kept crea
ting for herself, for Liv and me.
Our mom, the nutcase.
A woman who couldn’t see that her divorce was the best thing that ever could’ve happened for her children.
I knew she’d loved my dad something fierce. I knew she was wildly attracted to him. I would hear their loud crazy arguments, their loud crazy makeup sex. I’d see them grab and shove each other, and apologize, and act like they’d die without each other. And as a kid all I could do was sit there and watch. I couldn’t make them stop.
They were infatuated with each other. They tore each other apart.
My sister would blaze right into the middle of it and raise hell, screaming at them both.
Not me. It scared me, that kind of love. That kind of passion.
It scared me more when Dad left her; when he left us all and broke our hearts.
I didn’t want any part of that.
It was better to be free. I wanted my freedom. I needed it. I never wanted to depend on anyone or anything.
I was a free agent, right?
Fuck me.
This was always how I felt after I left my mom’s place.
Fucking terrible.
Years ago, it had sent me running. Running all over the fucking globe trying to get away from it.
And my mom? She never seemed to have a clue how much it hurt us all when she carried on like this.
The worst part, for me, was that I knew I’d always been kind of like her.
Liv was more like Dad. I was like Mom. Overly-sensitive inside and prone to shutting people out. But unlike my mom, I was kind of a smartass on the outside. It was a defense mechanism, and I knew that. Just like her, I sometimes lacked a filter and said stupid shit. The difference was I regretted that shit, while my mom seemed utterly unaware.
I was stronger than her, maybe. And at least slightly more self-aware. But ultimately, I was scared. I was afraid of ending up like her. Broken and alone, waiting for someone who was never coming back. Someone who didn’t love me enough to stay.
I craved my independence. I always had, maybe because of how I’d grown up.
But the truth was, I craved other things more.
I looked down at the scripted initials, tattooed inside my left wrist. MCOA. I pressed my right thumb over them and held on tight. Sometimes, like right now, it was hard to even look at those letters. To remember what they represented to me.
Marriage. Family. Children. All those things I secretly craved most. All those things my upbringing had given me an aversion to.
I totally fucking craved belonging and affection.
I craved love.
For all her faults and weaknesses, Mom was right; deep down, it really was the most important thing.
When Ashley picked me up in his truck, I went silent. After a few abrupt and very forced responses of, “It was okay,” and “Everything’s fine,” to answer his questions, I went dark.
As we headed back into the city from my mom’s place in New Westminster, my mind kept wandering away, down each side road we passed, until I finally blurted, “Pull over.”
Ashley pulled over. He pulled off the busy street and down a side road, then down another, quieter road off of that one, and parked. There was nothing around. We were in some suburb. Just some houses farther down the street, nothing close to us but trees.
Ashley took one glance at me and turned off the truck.
Then he waited.
Maybe he thought I was going to burst into tears. Maybe he thought I was going to start screaming and bitching, venting about my mom.
Instead, I unbuckled my seatbelt and threw myself on him.
The result of that was fast, hot, greedy, bitey, scratching, passionate comfort sex. Sex that I needed right now, so fucking bad, and he gave it to me.
He reclined his seat back as far as it would go and I rode him in a frenzy as all my emotions—fear, longing, anxiety, frustration, desire—crashed through me. And he drove up into me just as hard. Just as needy.
I didn’t even wait for him. The orgasm hit me frantic and fast, splitting me open. I whimpered and moaned, and he gripped my hips, holding me still as he pumped up into me and let go. He was breathing hard as he came, kissing and sucking on my throat, and I realized I hadn’t even kissed him.
I’d raked my fingernails through his hair and gripped his neck and pushed him down against the seat, but I hadn’t kissed him.
I kissed him now, shuddering and softening as I relaxed. I kissed him slowly, tasting him, breathing with him as he came down.
I looked into his blue, blue eyes, and he looked up at me.
And, okay.
Maybe it had taken me a while to admit the depth of my feelings for him, but I did care about Ashley. A lot.
And it bothered me.
Maybe because something else was bothering me, too.
It was the way I’d seen him look at Dylan; that exact same way he just looked at me when he came. Enraptured. Lost. Fucking helpless.
And the way Dylan pretended not to notice.
It was confusing and fascinating and painful to watch.
I was growing more certain by the second that whatever was going on between them was bound to self-destruct; like a powder keg, it would blow—and very possibly, take out everything around it.
How could it not?
I climbed off of Ashley and righted my clothes.
I’d entered into this whole thing terrified of getting myself hurt. But the fact was that as the days passed, I was getting more and more scared of one—or both—of them getting hurt, too. And the thought of either Dylan or Ashley getting hurt didn’t sit well with me. At all.
I glanced over at Ashley, and he shook his head at me a little as he zipped up his jeans. That look said, You’re fucking crazy, and I like it.
And I tried to smile. But it was getting hard to do when I just didn’t know how we were all getting out of this damage-free. It’s not like the three of us were gonna ride off into the sunset together in some kinky three-way marriage or something.
I knew that.
Someone was bound to get hurt here.
And whoever it was… I knew we were all going to suffer for it.
Because I cared about them both. They cared about each other. And by now, I knew they both cared about me, too.
Maybe… just maybe… we were even falling in love.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Amber
The next evening, we arrived in L.A. just in time for an Underlayer party that Dylan had to be at.
He’d decided he couldn’t go without us, so he flew us all down with him—me, Ashley and Con. I kinda got the feeling he also wanted to give me a little taste of travel, because maybe he worried that asking me to stay with him and Ashley was kinda clipping my wings. I didn’t mention it, but I appreciated the gesture and the impromptu mini-adventure.
The party was at a club in Hollywood, and we went straight there from the airport, not even swinging by Dylan’s house in Santa Monica first, though I would’ve liked to see it. We pulled up to the red carpet in a limo and as it turned out, the party was star-studded.
Honestly, I was kinda bummed I hadn’t brought my camera. Though when I’d started getting interested in photographing celebrities—photographing Dylan naked by his pool?—I wasn’t sure. But hey, a girl could evolve. Anyway, it wasn’t like I could just start snapping photos even if I had it with me. I wasn’t gonna be a tool about it when I was here with Dylan.
So I just tried to look pretty and composed on his arm, in the little yellow Betsey Johnson dress I’d borrowed from Katie—better than letting Dylan buy me another new, crazy-expensive one—then hung back with Ashley while he worked the room a bit.
I knew we should talk about the elephant in the room—about whatever wasn’t being said between Dylan and Ashley, despite Ashley assuring me that nothing was going on between them. Clear the air. Address the fact that maybe this arrangement of ours just wasn’t going to work for any length of time.
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Bail the hell out before we all went down with the ship?
But it was incredibly hard to do that when I just kept getting swept up in their world. When they were both so into me… and so good to me.
When Ashley held my hand the entire time we were at the Underlayer party, while Dylan did his thing, so I wouldn’t have to be alone.
And when Dylan got us out of there so damn fast, because clearly he’d rather spend the night with us than with a ton of other people fawning over him. Despite the fact that we’d flown here so he could make an appearance, he didn’t seem particularly interested in that party. Instead, he said he wanted to check in at the club.
“The club?” I asked.
“Dylan’s club,” Ashley said.
I looked up at Dylan. I was curled up between them, sipping champagne in the back of the limo. “You own a club?”
“Yup.”
“Let me guess,” I teased. “Strip club?”
“Nope.”
“It used to be a gay bar, actually,” Ashley told me. “Dance club. Then it was a rock bar for a while. Then Dylan took over. It’s a dance club again, most of the time. Pushers played there last year, though.”
“Cool. So… if you own the club, why do we need Con?” I grinned at Con, who was sitting across from us. “No offense, Con.”
“None taken.”
“We’ve been all over Vancouver without security,” I pointed out. “Why do you need it here?”
“Because this is L.A.,” Ashley answered for Dylan. “People don’t bother Dylan in Vancouver as much.”
Bother? Interesting word. Dylan never seemed bothered by much, so I was kinda curious to see how this night would play out.
When we rolled into Dylan’s club, they seemed to know he was coming. The staff were all over us, whisking us to a private area in the back corner, lavishing us with the VIP treatment. Drinks, and a lot of them, were immediately served up.
And if I thought Vancouver parties were intimidating, I was really thrown into the fire here.
As in, women were all over my men.
And yes, I’d definitely come to think of them as my men.
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