Page 22 of Obsessed Daddy
“Oh, I’m never sleeping again anyway. You can call me anytime. Your life is way more interesting than mine these days.”
“That trip to Vegas still stands,” I say, turning the corner toward the old road that leads to my mom’s farmhouse. We don’t own a farm, but we have the land and the house for it.
“Yeah? Maybe I’ll go total cliché and do the runaway bride thing. Maybe there’s a craps table that needs a drunken slut to throw herself at anyone willing to show her some attention.” She can’t help but laugh at her own joke.
It’s nice to hear. It’s been a while.
“Honestly, though, I bet I’d gamble my savings away, be kicked out for vomiting all the free drinks, and spend the rest of the night handing out flyers for some alien based peepshow before anyone even realizes I’m gone.” Her voice perks as she says, “That sounds fun, right?”
“I’m here if you need to talk,” I say, squeezing my cell between my shoulder and the lobe of my ear as I pedal and squint into the dark night.
“Same. Love you!”
“Love you too,” I echo, tucking the phone back into my purse, my bike wobbling as I try to maintain control.
I feel so bad for Pepper. I need to make time to get over there and talk some sense into her sooner rather than later. I can’t imagine how clouded her head must be. She and Nathan have always had a rough relationship, but they always made up, so I assumed they were having growing pains like a lot of couples do. I had no idea it had gottenthisbad.
Right now, though, I have to deal with my own problems, and given the fact that it’s nearly one in the morning and my sister’s car is still parked in my mother’s driveway, I think the problems are about to get bigger.
For some reason, the women in my family don’t believe in privacy. To them, my business is their business. The sad thing is that I know it doesn’t work in reverse. I’ve tried a time or two before, and it’s clear that I’m on a need-to-know level of clearance.
They’re both sitting at the dining room table when I step into the old farmhouse my mom inherited from my grandma. If my upbringing weren’t so tarnished with defining events, I may have wanted a house just like it. The sun-washed siding. The tall, narrow windows. The wrap-around porch that creaks under your foot.
The place is imperfectly perfect and sitting out on ten open acres. I could have twelve gardens out here, each of them themed to a season. My little fall garden for gourds and carrots. Winter for rosemary and garlic. Summer for tomatoes and basil. Oh, and I could even do a spring garden with yarrow and snap peas. Maybe Clint and I will have space like this someday and our kids will be able to help with the harvesting.
God, I’m really getting ahead of myself.
I need to focus on what’s happening in the next ten minutes, not what’s happening in fantasyland. The second I walk in that door, I’m about to get an earful.
Inside Mom’s old farmhouse, the space is equally nostalgic. Heck, it’s my grandma’s dining room table still sat in the center of the kitchen, her glass-shaded pendant hanging low over the table. The green has faded, and the edges rubbed to bare steel, but it only adds to the charm of the place… or the dread, given the situation.
“Oh my God!” my mother exclaims from the end of the table. “We thought you were dead!”
“Dead? Why would I be dead?” I’m not sure why, but it’s a relief that they thought I was dead. I’d have figured news would’ve gotten back to my sister by now about what happened at the bar earlier, and I don’t know what lies I could’ve conjured to make sense of that one.
My stomach churns. I need to repent my sins. It’s that or I need to stay absolutely quiet forever and never tell a single soul. Clint and I would need to leave town, start over where no one knows us. If we go far enough and never tell anyone, we can totally live off whatever the garden grows for the foreseeable future and live completely carefree.
It may be naïve, but I have to believe that’s a possibility, right? I mean, what’s left for me here? I can’t spend the rest ofmy life catering to my less than grateful family, every waking moment longing for one more day with the man of my dreams.
I take in a deep breath and let it out quickly. It’s heavier than I expected and June feels it.
“Where were you?” Her tone is flat, and her arms are crossed over her chest.
Maybe she does know. Maybe she’s playing stupid.
She could be giving me the opportunity to be a good person, to confess before she blows me to smithereens and tells the whole town that their preschool teacher is a sick, little slut who calls her sister’s ex Daddy.
My stomach tightens. “Sorry. I, ugh—”
“You turned off your location,” my sister presses. “Does that mean you and Dillon had fun together?”
“No, we didn’t. He’s, ugh, not really the guy for me, but—”
“Then why’d you turn your location off? It’s Saturday night, and you’re a single woman. You shouldn’t be turning off your location. Anything could happen. We need to know where you are. Dillon is a nice guy at work, but he could be a crazy psycho after sunset.”
“Yeah, my phone must be messed up or something. I didn’t intentionally turn it off.” I wonder how many teenagers told this lie tonight. Did they all say it with the same stupid tone in their voice, because I’m embarrassed for all of us if they did.
I really need to get a handle on myself. I don’t owe anyone an answer. I’m a grown woman. If I want to be out with a grown man, that’s my choice. My life is my own and these two are going to have to accept that sooner or later.
