“Without calling first? I raised you better than that.”
“She said she hadn’t seen or heard from you in days. I was worried you were unconscious or something.”
“Kyle, that woman is a nosy old bat. I’ve been avoiding her for months.”
“Ever since you took up with him?” he asked accusingly.
“I will admit that Brian might have been part of the motivation to finally do it. But I’d been meaning to do it for years.”
“You could have mentioned that. You know, on those once-a-week phone calls we have. You could have mentioned you were trying to avoid her. Oh, and that you have a gentleman friend,” Kyle said, not trying to hide the snark in his voice.
If his nerves hadn’t already been shot from being fired, fighting with Drea, and leaving St. Thomas so abruptly, walking in on his mother in flagrante with her new boyfriend on the couch would have certainly done it. The house had been quiet and dark when his Lyft had pulled up, causing Kyle to dig out his keys to let himself in. He had called out her name, but apparently not loud enough to pierce whatever bubble the two of them had been in. Flipping on the switch to turn on the living room light, he promptly turned it off again as soon as he registered what he was seeing—his mom, straddling a man on the couch, much like Drea had straddled him just a week ago. Her shirt was crumpled on the floor and from what Kyle could tell, her bra was damn close to joining it.
“I had every intention of telling you about Brian. I promise. But it was also nice to have a little secret as well,” she said, with a mischievous little smile.
“Who was I going to tell, Mom? I was over a thousand miles away!”
“I know, baby. But I know you, and you would have found something to worry about. When you told me you and Andrea were starting something, I wanted you to be able to focus on that, not on me.”
Kyle sighed. Focus on Drea, that was what got him into this trouble in the first place. Had he been better about his priorities, maybe he’d be twirling her around the dance floor, listening to her giggle right now, rather than sitting at the kitchen table with his mom.
“What’s going on, Kyle? You said that you came to check on me. Okay, you checked. You can see I’m just fine. Why haven’t you gone back to the island?”
He sucked in a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any to come clean with her. “I got fired from the Indigo Royal.”
“What? What happened?”
“Wednesday morning at breakfast, Drea found out she was an equal partner with her uncles in the resort.”
“How exciting for her!”
“Yes, very exciting for Drea. Well, in that moment of excitement, I kissed her.”
“So? Isn’t that what a good boyfriend does?”
“In front of her uncles.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah...and it was not well received. Well, Miller and Grayson didn’t care. Vaughn, however, lost his mind and fired me. Said that I was taking advantage of her, was only interested in her because of her money, and that I’d been leading her on for years.”
“Oh my goodness. Does Drea believe any of that?”
“No, thankfully. But, we had a fight after. She told her uncles to buy her out and we would go into business together, and I told her no, that I couldn’t ask her to do that, because I know the Indigo Royal is her life. It’s where she belongs.”
“But you didn’t ask her, she offered.”
“Now you sound like she does,” Kyle said, laughing at the irony.
“Lady logic is a little bit different than man logic,” his mother told him. “So, where does all this leave you two?”
“We’re over. I came back here. I can’t get another job on the island after being fired from there and I don’t have enough money to do my own thing yet. So, I kinda told her to have a good life, and I left.”
“Kyle Joseph Egan! You did not tell that sweet young lady to have a good life!”
“I did,” he admitted, hanging his head.
“Oh Kyle. Every man has jackass moments, but that...that is a serious asshole move, kiddo.”
