by Portia Moore
“You are gorgeous!”
“Thank you so much.” I smile, not sure how to follow that up.
“I’ve been taking care of this little prince since before his first tooth fell out. I was his nanny and now the housekeeper, and hopefully one day I’ll be changing his little one’s diapers.” She laughs, nudging him.
“Ellie,” he says in a playful warning tone.
“Everyone is in the back. Katie and Joshua are already here.”
I breathe a sigh of relief that Blue’s in attendance.
“Do you want a quick tour or to be led out to the slaughter?” he says playfully, and my face goes pale.
“Oh honey, don’t let him scare you. No slaughter, just brunch!” she says warmly.
“I’m sort of hungry now,” I say as easily as I can.
Blue.
Orange.
Grey.
The yard is sprawling and decked with white lawn furniture. There’s a buffet table of food already laid out. At a large table already sits an older couple across from Katie and Blue.
“Cinderella’s finally made it to the party,” Katie enthuses. My nerves flinch until I realize she’s talking to Kam.
“What can I say? The pumpkin broke down,” he counters. The couple turns towards us and if I didn’t know they were Kam’s parents before, I do when I see them. They’re beautifully elegant, mid-fifties, casually relaxed, and wearing welcoming smiles. They stand to greet us followed by Katie and Blue. I notice he’s dressed, understandably a little more conservatively, in a white polo and khakis draped over his tall lean frame. But he’s still unapologetically edgy with the mohawk still there and the tats…of course, still the star of his own show.
“We have been dying to meet you!” his mom says as she reaches out to hug me, an authentic smile on her face. It’s warm and genuinely welcoming.
“Mom and Dad, this is Megan. Megan, this is my mother Carolyn and my dad Richard,” Kam says proudly.
“Its so great to meet you,” his dad says, giving me a hug as well. It can’t be this easy. The smiles and warm gestures are all directed at me. No condescending tones or scrutinizing glares? They greet Kam with hugs and smiles just as they do me, like they haven’t seen their son in years. Kam and I sit in the two seats between the two couples. Ellie is beside us in a flash pouring us glasses of what looks like iced tea. Kam’s mom tells her not to fuss and join us, which she does. I take in the large landscape. To call it a yard would be an understatement. Kam takes my hand in his and I can’t help but beam at him. I’m here. A huge step made and I don’t feel like it will end in disaster.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Carolyn says warmly, and I see where Kam got his eyes from. She’s all elegance and warmth, long dark brown hair the same color as Kam’s, and soft features.
“You have a beautiful home.”
“Thank you dear. You are just stunning!” she says in response, and my cheeks heat up.
“You’re embarrassing the girl, sweetheart.” Richard joins in and I’m looking at the image of what Kam will look like in twenty years. The same strong jaw, thick brows, great smile. The only difference is that he shares Katie’s light blonde hair.
“Thank you. I see where Kam got his good looks from,” I tell them both and they laugh graciously.
“So you’re graduating in Katie’s class Megan?” Carolyn asks.
“Yes, a year behind Kam.”
“What are your plans after graduation?” Richard asks.
“I’d like to get a job with a not-for-profit, hopefully establish my own someday and work with children in foster care.”
“That’s wonderful and something we’d love to expand our foundation to be involved in,” Richard says, genuinely interested. My eyes widen.
“Foundation?” I ask.
“It’s nothing large-scale, of course, but something we established a few years back. Right now it’s mainly focused on children of parents who’ve lost their lives serving, but we’d love to expand.”
I glance at Kam, who’s smiling at me expectantly. I can’t believe he never said anything but Kam’s not a gloater and I don’t know how he could have brought up his parents’ foundation humbly.
“I’d absolutely love to be a part of that,” I say, trying to contain my excitement. The rest of brunch goes smoother than I ever could have imagined. The food is fresh and delicious. I don’t have to say much because Katie and Carolyn are both natural conversationalists, easily guiding the conversation from stories of Katie and Kameron’s childhood to catching up on mutual acquaintances, making sure to include Blue and me in various anecdotes. I’ve seen the phrase lovely in books before and never really understood it, but having met Kam’s parents they truly are lovely.
How can you be part of a charity when you’re a little charity case?
“George, you’re here!” Carolyn exclaims. I turn to see a tall large man approach. He has Carolyn’s features but is tall like Richard.
“You couldn’t keep me from Elie’s brunch,” his voice booms. We all stand.
“Megan, this is my Uncle George,” Kam confirms with a tight smile, and I wonder why it doesn’t reach his eyes. I glance over to Blue and notice his face has become rigid, and think back to his earlier words. Kam’s parents are wonderful, but the rest of them…
“Why, aren’t you striking!” he says, his eyes surveying me as he takes his hand in mine.
“Where’s Aunt Marilyn?” Katie interjects.
“Some charity thing,” he says, almost dismissively. His gaze is still on me and it makes me uncomfortable. Kam wraps a protective arm around my waist.
“Yes, our Kam certainly has excellent taste,” he continues. I give an awkward smile. George has changed the energy in the room. The conversation went from easy to more formal; luckily, he takes up the majority of the conversation talking about business. He and Kam’s dad both work in the financial industry and while Richard is humble like his son, George relishes in his success, boasting of their accomplishments they’ve made this year—which according to George is in the seven-figure range. Blue and I exchange unspoken words. This is what we think when it comes to the rich, proud, pompous, and so entitled it’s almost suffocating. There’s a break in the conversation and I begin to excuse myself to the bathroom.
“Megan, I have to say you look familiar. Maybe I’ve worked with your parents?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in on me. I swallow down my anxiety. The last thing I’d want to talk about with this man is where I’ve come from.
“I don’t think so George,” Richard interjects for me.
“You know I have an excellent memory, Richard. And with a face like Megan’s, she wouldn’t be one I’d forget.” There’s almost an innuendo behind his words.
“You’re mistaken Uncle George. Megan’s family isn’t in finance,” Kam answers, his voice stern.
“You’re a full-time student? Have you done work in the city before?” George asks, studying me.
“No, she hasn’t,” Kameron answers, his tone harder and his glare on his uncle almost menacing.
“Have you given Megan a tour yet Kameron?” Carolyn’s tone breaks the tense energy in the room.
“No, I think I’ll do that now,” he says, back to being my sweet Prince Charming.
“We’ll join you!” Blue adds, standing. Katie excuses all of us and we head into the house. I can’t help but glance back and see George’s eyes still on me.
“You have to excuse my uncle, he’s a bit of a prick sometimes,” Katie says once we’re in the kitchen.
“Sometimes? I thought he was meeting us tomorrow,” Kam adds rigidly.
“I thought it’d be easier to talk to him about the bar today,” Katie admits apologetically.
“But we’re not going to let him ruin our day,” Katie perks up, and leads the tour of the house. It takes a full thirty minutes due to its size. It’s magnificent and large, but full of character. I’m glad Kameron grew up here, that his childhood was wonderful. Seei
ng all this and meeting his parents helps me understand how he’s turned into the wonderful man he is today. After using a bathroom that’s twice the size of my bedroom, I exit to see Blue waiting for me.
“They went to talk to Uncle George,” Blue exaggerates, and I smile.
“Hey, you know I’ve been thinking. We’ve never really talked about it but, have you ever thought of finding your parents?” he asks almost reluctantly. My heart flutters in my chest.
“Every day.” The words spill out. He nods, his brows furrowing together.
“I can maybe help with that,” he says and my eyes widen, his tone so confident and assured.
“My records are sealed.”
He gives a shrug and a half nod.
“I have ways,” he says, our eyes locking. My heart is teetering, almost breathless. Is it possible? Could he? I’ve given up on the possibility of learning about my parents years ago, resigning to the fact that there are things I’ll just never know. But in this one minute it changed, a flicker of hope that has long been put out starts to burn.
“I need some time but let me see what I can do,” he says, and before I can mutter a “thank you” Katie and Kam come rounding the corner.
“All clear,” she announces happily. Blue approaches her, throwing his arm around her and leading her down the hall. Kam looks at me with a easy smile. I approach him and kiss him softly on the lips.
“Want to see my old room?” he says suggestively and my entire body tingles.
“Absolutely.”
Ian
She’s so freakin beautiful. Last night she became mine, at least physically, but it’s her mind that I want, her thoughts. I’ve never cared about that stuff before but it’s important to me now. I half expected to wake up and she’d be gone, but she’s still here—naked and beautiful like an angel. But she’s more than that. She’s not perfect, even though she looks like it, and I want to know every imperfection she has. This mystery woman. She stirs and I shift my gaze to the ceiling.
“I already caught you staring.” Her voice is lower than usual and husky, and I immediately want to hear it again.
“Can you blame me?” I ask her teasingly. She smiles widely and pretends to think. “I guess I can’t blame you for that,” she says, the lightness in her voice returning.
“How you feeling?” I ask, trying to hide the awkwardness in my voice.
“I haven’t melted and turned into a witch if that’s what you’re implying,” she says with a playful role of her eyes, sitting up in bed. I chuckle. She’s kind of funny.
“I meant about last night…I was wondering…” She gives me a warning glare.
She sits up in bed and her eyes scan the room; she’s looking for her clothes. “Well this was fun,” she says matter-of-factly, and I look at her like she’s crazy.
“Are you brushing me off?” I laugh, confused
“Let’s not prolong this. You did me a favor. It was good for you, right?” she replies coldly, getting out of bed. Her clothes are on before I even have a chance to protest.
“Wait, hold on! Chill!” I leap out of bed, still naked, and slide between the door and her stiffened body. “What’s wrong?” I try to touch her, but she shrugs me off.
“Get out of my way, Ian,” she mutters, barely audible.
“I have to go,” she whispers. I look at her, confused. “Move!”
She pushes past me and is almost out the front door when I yell out. I’m not letting her get away again. It might actually kill me this time.
“Why are you always running? What are you afraid of?” I shout.
She stops dead in her tracks. I can almost hear her brain ticking, the cogs whizzing round in dizzying circles, trying to figure out what to say next.
When she doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, I tentatively walk over to her so I can smell the intoxicating smell of her skin, the memories of last night hanging in the air, her perfume mingled with my cologne, our skin, our sweat.
“What are you afraid of?” I say again, softer this time. I move a lock of her hair behind her ear. She lets me and I know she’s tired of fighting, at least for now.
She looks up at me with those haunting grey eyes, still hardened, but a little emotion swimming through them now.
“Myself,” she says.
We stare down each other, neither of us bending only the sounds of the mid-morning Chicago traffic humming in the streets below, the cries of service workers and distant screams of sirens echoing under the train lines.
“Let me feed you,” I relent.
She let’s out a strained sigh.
“Just breakfast and after that you can make your dramatic-ass exit. If you still want to.”
This gets a smile out of her. “Fine,” she relents.
Judy’s has seen it all and then some; crying into coffee, raging over pancakes, screaming through scrambled eggs. If the walls of that place could talk, they would tell you more about the “real” city of Chicago than any pumped-up tour guide could. Whatever Alana’s problem is, Judy’s is the answer.
A lardy waitress, with severe eczema across her chest and a bad eighties haircut, shows us to our table. A powder blue booth in the corner, away from the other customers. Private, just how I like it.
She slaps two laminated menus on the table.
“Coffee?” she barks aggressively. We both nod. She grunts and drags her intimidating figure away, wheezing heavily as she goes.
My gaze goes over to Alana. Her newfound vulnerability is incredibly sexy. The way she bites her bottom lip when she’s thinking. The flick of her middle finger, as she wraps a long, wavy strand of hair around it, batting her eyelashes slowly, giving everything and nothing away with that silver gaze.
“You know how gorgeous you are, right?” I grin, devilishly. She rolls her eyes.
“Get over yourself,”’ she says, glancing over the menu. She tosses it to the side as quickly as she picked it up.
A large trucker with greasy red hair belches loudly somewhere over her left shoulder, as a spider scuttles across the dirty window next to our booth. She breathes in sharply through her nose, and if I wasn’t so distracted by the way her nipples poke through her shirt, I probably would laugh at how disgusted she looks.
The waitress returns with the coffee.
“Thanks,” my eyes flick to her name tag, “Rhonda.” She looks at me like I’d just spat on her mother’s grave.
“I hope the food is better than the service,” Alana says, openly irritated.
“What’ll it be?” Rhonda says crossly.
“Sausage and eggs…with a side of bacon.” I wink across at the girl I still can’t believe I was inside of only a few hours ago. My dick twitches just thinking about it.
“And you?” she barks at Alana.
“As bad as it looks, the food better be awesome,” she warns me half playfully.
“Strawberry pancakes,” she sighs, handing the waitress the menu without looking at her. “God she’s a bitch,” she says before she walks away.
“If she spits in our shit, you’re paying for it,” I tell her. Her eyes study me for a minute as if she’s trying to figure me out. I thought it’d be obvious.
“You like me,” she smiles and the twinkle in her eye makes me blush.
“Not as much as I like this place,” I retort, settling back into the booth. “It’s got more…character.” She lets out a loud, sharp laugh.
“If you only knew,” she mutters.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you. Why don’t you tell me?” I ask, with a nonchalant shrug.
“Why Ian? Why do you care?” she asks, her walls back up the instant I saw her letting them down. She folds her arms across her chest defiantly. I roll my eyes and sigh, running my fingers through my hair.
“I wish I fucking knew!” She doesn’t reply, her face stony, her gaze like ice. “Jesus, you’re frustrating.”
The tiniest hint of a smile is on her face.
I
lower my tone a little, aware that a few diner patrons were glancing our way. Not that a domestic is an anomaly in this part of town.
“Look, I like you. I like you a lot. Don’t ask me why, or how, or what this means, because I’m gonna be real with you…I don’t really get what’s happening to me. This isn’t me. I’m not like this. But, to be completely honest, and not a fucking cliché…I’m totally crazy about you…”
She looks at me a little while longer. Her eyes searching mine for what I assume was any kind of sarcasm; any sign of my outburst being nothing but a big joke at her expense. I can’t be any more real right now.
“I don’t care if you’re crazy as hell,” I whisper, taking her hand from across the table. “I don’t care if you’ve got a fucked-up past, or a guilty conscience. I want to know it, everything about it.” A flush creeps back on her cheeks and she smiles almost shyly, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.
Rhonda returns with our food. All this caring shit has made me hungry. I rip into my toast and slather ketchup all over the grits. Even Alana seems to be coming around, spearing a tiny piece of pancake and sniffing it suspiciously.
“So,” I continue, with a mouth full of eggs. “Give it to me.”
She knitted her brows in confusion.
“Help me understand who you are.”
She sighs and pauses over a long stretch that feels like a century.
“I’m me. Unapologetically,” She taps her fork against the side of her plate.
“You daddies little girl?” I tell her with a grin.
She glances up and straight back down.
“He’s dead.”
I swallow hard.
“Or might as well be.” She gives a half shrug.
“It’s no big deal.”
“But it that is a big deal.” I say quietly.
“Look,” she let’s out a frustrated sigh. “You want my story. Here it is. I spent most of my life knocking around foster families, jumping from home to home, bad parent after bad parent…black eyes to busted lips to forty-year-old hands on my ass.”
“Jesus.” I run my hand through my hair again. “I’m so fucking sorry.” To my surprise, she laughs.