“Please know I am sorry for everything. I can’t change the past but there’s one thing I can change & that’s your mother’s mind. You & Nick will be together. I’ve made sure of it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It sounds like she convinced her to go along with us being together, except I’m certain that’s not possible. She wouldn’t have voluntarily consented to us being together. There is something else going on here.”
“Does it matter what it means as long as we get to be together?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter what the catch is, but do you see that she didn’t just do this for me? She did this for you, too. She loves you and wants you to be happy.”
He put his fork down on his plate. “I need you to understand something, Payton. I have nothing for her, but I’m choosing to be nice where she is concerned because you love her and I don’t want to upset you. I honestly couldn’t care less about her.”
“I know and I don’t blame you. I get it and I don’t take your feelings lightly.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
After we finished dinner. We went back to the room to hit the resume button. We were both sleep deprived after the previous night, but neither of us wanted to sleep because we were afraid of missing one minute together.
The light of the morning sun was threatening to stream through the crack in the curtains when we both fell asleep from utter exhaustion and it was almost time to leave when we woke again, leaving us little time to be together before we’d have to check out.
I opened my eyes and he was looking at me. “After I met you, you became my reason to wake up every morning, but today you're my reason to stay in bed.”
“Oh, how I wish we could.”
I stretched and a seductive moan escaped my lips. “Oops, that was my inner p**n star sound accidentally coming out.”
“Yeah, I recognize it from last night.”
Sometimes he could be as witty as me. “Nice one.”
I lazily sat up in the bed and brought the bed sheet with me tucked under my arms. He mimicked me minus the sheet and scooted over behind me to massage my back and shoulders. “Are you sore?”
I was, but it was a good kind of sore. “A little bit, but it’s mostly when I move.”
He put his arms around me and stroked my stomach. “Then I guess you’ll think of me every time you move today.”
“I have no doubt I’ll think of you whether I move or not.”
He groaned as he kissed my shoulder. “I don’t want to leave this bed, but I guess we can’t stay here forever.”
I looked at the clock and saw that our stolen time together was over. “We’ve gotta leave before they kick us out.”
“Just give me five more minutes of this.” He moved his mouth from my shoulder down my back and I gave him the five minutes he asked for plus another ten.
After the hands of time forced us out of bed and scurried us toward the door, we stopped for one last kiss before entering the hallway of the real world.
“Call me as soon as you know what’s going on.”
“You’ll be the first.”
He pulled me in for one last hug and huskily whispered in my ear. “I already have been.”
≈ ≈ ≈
As I got closer to Franklin, I knew there was a stop I had to make before I walked in to have it out with my mother again. I needed to see Claire.
But, I wasn’t making the same mistake twice. I rang the doorbell and waited for her to come to the door because I didn’t need another peep show of her and Jessie in bed together.
She opened the door and looked at me like I was nuts. “Since when do you ring the doorbell?”
“Since I got an eyeful of you and Kimosabe playing doctor under the covers. Thanks a lot ‘cause I’m scarred for life now. I’ll never want to see a doctor again.”
“Shut up and get in here. I need an update on you and The Nickster.”
I followed her to her living room and fell into her dad’s recliner. “A lot of crazy stuff has gone down, Claire. Being with Nick is like riding a bipolar coaster. One minute everything is awesome and I’m happy and then the next the shit has hit the ceiling.”
She gave me an all knowing look. “Umm, tell me something I don’t know. Jessie and I built and manage the bipolar coaster.”
She was right. What was I thinking? Nick and I weren’t the only ones with problems. “Do you remember me telling you about the banquet to honor Nick’s dad?”
“Yeah, how did that go?”
I recalled how things played out and I wanted to go back in time and erase seeing my mom and David together. “Things started out great. After the awards ceremony, we were dancing and Nick surprised me with a keycard to a room in the hotel where the banquet was.”
She reached for a pillow on the couch and threw it at me. “I’m already jealous and you haven’t told me any details yet.”
“Well, don’t worry. You won’t be too jealous when I tell you the rest. Nick and I ran into my mom with David. They were in the hotel together.”
“You mean your dad’s partner? That David?”
I still wanted to cringe remembering the guilty looks on their faces. “Yeah, can you believe that? My mom is having an affair with him. Well, needless to say that put the brakes on me and Nick using the hotel room for whatever we were going to do.”
“Double shiz. So, what happened when you got home?”
Did she really even have to ask? She knew how psycho my mom could be. “Vivian went bat shit on me. She turned everything into why I was in a hotel with a boy. She told me I couldn’t see Nick anymore. So, I went to Tillie’s and that’s where things got even crazier. I still can’t believe it, but Tillie is Nick’s mom.”
When I finished explaining the whole mama drama situation, Claire was astounded. “Is this gonna cause problems between you and Nick? I mean, his mom that left him has been more of a mother to you than her own children. That can’t sit well with him.”
Nope. No apparent problems in that department. “I don’t think it’s going to cause too much of a problem for him since we just spent the last 24 hours in a hotel room together.”
She let out a big squeal. “Shut the front door! Did you practice making babies with him?”
“More than a few times.”
She found another pillow on the couch and threw it at me. “I’m so jealous.”