“What?” She glanced down. “Oh, yeah, it was fine. Looks like shit but whatever. My stripper days are over anyway.”
I actually laughed. “Well, there you go, Mom, always looking on the bright side.”
She grinned, and I saw she had lost a tooth slightly to the right of her front teeth. “I missed you, Phoenix,” she said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I did.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“You serious about this girl?” she asked, taking a drag. “What’s she look like?”
I lifted my shirt to show her my tattoo. “Like this.”
She gave a low whistle. “Damn, I guess you are serious. She’s pretty.”
“I know. But we may have broken up.”
“What? Why?”
“She got super drunk and I got super pissed.”
I expected her to tell me I was stupid and what was the harm with a little drinking, but she didn’t. She just nodded. “You know I have to tell you something.”
Oh, God. I braced myself for something horrible. “Do I want to know this?”
“Sure. It’s nothing bad. I just wanted to tell you that I lied to you about your father. He wasn’t just some guy I went out with a few times. I was in love with him. The only man I’ve ever loved.”
“Really?” She had always told me that my dad was a loser but he’d been awesome in bed. Which is, of course, what every guy wants to hear his mother say. Not.
“Really.” She picked at a scab on her knee, her fingernail polish chipped, a shocking pink color. “But he couldn’t deal with me drinking and using. He turned his back on me when I needed him the most. Not that I’m saying he could have stopped me from doing what I was doing, but I needed to know he believed in me, you know?”
There was a lump in my throat that threatened to cut off my airway. She was trying to tell me that I needed to be supportive of Robin. My first instinct was to feel defensive and to resent that she would have the nerve to offer me advice. But I knew for her to be serious about something instead of joking around or being bitchy, she must really think it was important. And I knew, deep down, that she was right. Robin’s problems were mine, too, no matter how much I wanted to walk away, because I loved her. And I should try to help her, not run scared. Was I perfect? Obviously not. So I damn well couldn’t expect her to be.
“I don’t blame him for leaving. He had to do what was right for him, but I can’t say that I’ve ever really gotten over it. I fucked up by picking the drugs over him, but he just walked away and damn, that was painful, sending me straight for more drugs. So I always just chose shitty guys because I know they’re shitty. No chance for me to be hurt when they leave.”
I nodded. “You do choose shitty men.”
She laughed and nudged with me her knee. “Shut up. But maybe that’s why I wasn’t the best mother either. I didn’t want to love you too much. But I couldn’t help myself. I did anyways. You came out of the happiest time in my life.”
Now I really didn’t know what to say. “I love you, too.” I did. How could I not? She was my mother.
“You were a cute baby, you know. Born with all that dark hair. Big old eyes. You’d be so quiet and calm and then bam! You’d just start screaming.”
Apparently not much had changed.
“So you ever talk to my father after he left?” There was something nice to be said about knowing they had cared about each other, that I wasn’t just the result of a blind grope in a dark room.
“No. I saw him once at a biker bar. He was always into bikes. But I freaked out and ran away before he saw me.” She shrugged. “It sucks to spend your life loving someone and not being with them. Don’t do that. If you love her, fight for it, you know?”
“Yeah.” I did. She was right. It wouldn’t be easy, but what was? I loved Robin.
“Now stop making me all sentimental,” she said. “Say something dickish so I feel normal again.”
I reached out and flicked her cigarette with my finger and thumb, sending it sailing into the yard. “Quit smoking.” I grinned as she sputtered. “How was that?”
“Turd.”
But when I wrapped my arm around her in a semi-hug, she actually leaned into my touch.
And for the first time in a decade, I felt like she was a mom, not just the woman who had given birth to me.
Bonus.
Chapter Eighteen
Robin
I stood in the shower as long as I could stand, the water pouring over my face in a hot stream, washing away my tears and the tangy ripe odor of sweat and liquor and vomit. If only I could wash away my guilt and my confusion.
It seemed no matter what I did, I felt guilty. I worried about hurting everyone, my friends, my parents. Phoenix.
And invariably, what I did was hurt all of them, and me too.
Phoenix’s face had been terrible. I knew then, right when he said that I couldn’t hurt him, that I had. That I had hurt him like his mother had, that she was the inspiration behind his bleeding tattoo, and now I had added to that pain.
But I couldn’t deal with my own pain and guilt, and I definitely couldn’t deal with his anger. Not right now.
Leaning against the shower wall for support, my legs still rubbery, I dozed in and out of sleep, dreaming, or maybe daydreaming, I wasn’t entirely sure.
But in my head, I climbed aboard the rowboat I had painted, and rowed myself to the empty lighthouse in the midst of the stormy sea, and I stood on the rocks, waves crashing into me. It was cold and damp and lonely on my perch, the lights of land across the water winking at me in welcome. But I couldn’t cross back. I didn’t have the strength to row back from where I had come. So it was just me.
The knock on the bathroom door startled me, and I jerked awake, alert. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” my mother called.
No. “Yes.”
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“In a sec.” Turning off the water, I shivered, goose bumps rising on my flesh. My mother had brought me an old terry cloth robe to wear, and after a cursory drying off, I wrapped myself in it. “Okay.”
She opened the door and gave me a smile. “I bet that wore you out.”
“It did.” Our house had been built in the seventies, and the hall bathroom had never been remodeled. It was still full of dark wood and lots of gold accents, and there was a little cutout for a vanity chair, which had been the same brass stool my entire life. I sank down onto it now, my lungs straining, the air too humid to breathe properly, hands still trembling. I was starting to worry that was a permanent thing, that weird little jitter to my fingers.
My mother came behind me and took the towel off the floor and dried my hair for me, her touch gentle. It felt so good to have her take care of me, like I was a little girl again, comforting me after my brothers had picked on me mercilessly. She picked up a brush and started to go through my hair, detangling the snarls that had been made as I had done who knew what in my incoherent state.
Suddenly, watching her in the mirror in front of me, the full impact of what had happened hit me and I started crying again. I could have died. Never, ever, in any way, had I ever been suicidal. I didn’t want to die. At all. Ever, frankly. I sure in the hell didn’t want to die now. But I could have, and it would have been my fault, and I would have caused my parents massive pain.
Phoenix had every right to be angry with me.
I was angry with myself.
“Robin. What’s going on?” my mother asked quietly. “Does this have anything to do with Phoenix? I have to admit, he wasn’t what I was expecting. He’s not the usual type of boy you date.”