Things Remembered (Accidentally On Purpose Companion Novel #3) (9 page)

“He said that Mayson was a butterfly. He said that even though drugs were doing ugly things to her, that she was beautiful and didn’t know it yet. He said that she was in her ugly caterpillar stage, but when she was ready, she would begin to transition and emerge from her chrysalis a beautiful and brilliant butterfly.”

“And then I said that most butterflies die after a few weeks, which is a total waste,” I said loudly, putting an end to their fairytale crap. “It’s just lunch. There are no butterflies. Just lunch.”

“We should let you go,” Emmy said, and I could hear the grin she wore. “You need to get all sexy for your sexy man.”

“He’s not my man.”

“What does he look like?” Donya asked curiously.

“Hmm,” Tabitha sounded thoughtful.

“A hot,
hot
cup of chocolate,” Emmy purred.

“He looks like that British actor,” Tabitha said, and I could hear her snapping her fingers. “I don’t remember his name.”

“Black guy?” Donya questioned.

“Yeah,” Tabby said. “You know the one, right?”

“Ohhhh,” Donya said breathlessly. “Yeah, I do. I forget his name, but Mayson, if this Grant looks anything like that guy…wow…”

“It doesn’t matter what he looks like,” I snapped. “Because we’re just having lunch! It’s just lunch!”

“For now,” Emmy said slyly.

“So, you’re Shari’s big brother from Texas,” I had said to Grant Alexander the very first time I’d met him.

It was the beginning of the summer, about nine or ten months after I’d first met Sharice. I’d snuck out of the house early that morning, the moment my mother left to run errands.

She’d become stricter than ever, but it only pushed me that much more into rebellion. That day, however, my dad would be coming home for a few weeks. I’d wanted to get back home soon so that I could go with my mom to the airport to pick him up.

While Sharice got dressed, I sat at the kitchen table interrogating her brother.

“Yeah,” Grant had said as he moved about the kitchen preparing breakfast. “Who are you? Are you one of the kids Shar babysits?”

I’d straightened my shoulders and raised my chin. “I’m twelve years old. I don’t need a babysitter. Shari is my best friend.”

His mouth pulled up on one side in a small amused smile, but he’d made no comment.

“Why don’t you have an accent?” I’d asked.

“Not everyone in Texas has a southern accent,” he’d said in a way that made me think he had said it a million times before. “Besides, I have only been living there for four years.”

“My Aunt Sam has been living up here for twenty years, and she still sounds like she’s just stepped out of the swamps of Louisiana.”

He’d laughed and gazed at me with wonder.

“You’re a strange kid.”

“I have been homeschooled my whole life and haven’t learned proper socialization.”

“I’ve known a few homeschooled kids, and none of them act like you.”

“Well, they don’t have
my
mother. How old are you?”

“Seventeen. You want some breakfast?” He’d gestured at the pan of eggs he had just taken off the stove.

I’d declined with a quick shake of my head and continued with my interrogation.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

He’d given me another funny look. “Not at the moment, no.”

“Are you a virgin?”

The question had taken him so off guard that he’d began to choke on the orange juice he had just sipped. It had taken him almost a full minute to stop coughing.

“That’s a very personal question, and you’re
twelve
. You’re not even considered a teenager yet.”

“Twelve-year-olds have sex,” I’d said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Twelve-year-olds have babies.”

“Well, that’s disturbing,” he’d muttered before taking a forkful of eggs. While he chewed, he’d studied me studiously. “Why is a twelve-year-old hanging out with a fifteen-year-old?”

“I think the better question would be, why is a fifteen-year-old hanging out with a twelve-year-old? It’s obvious why I am hanging out with Sharice. She’s older and more experienced and it would make me look totally cool and amazing to my other friends—if I
had
other friends.”

“Why don’t you have friends?”

“Hello! I just told you a few minutes ago that I was homeschooled and have no social skills. My whole life is dance, piano, and beauty pageants. My other ‘friends’ are my enemies. Any one of those stuck up bitches would sabotage me while smiling in my face. When my ‘friends’ say break a leg”—I leaned forward and lowered my voice—“they really mean it.”

He’d stared at me as he’d absently ate his rubbery-looking eggs and sipped his orange juice. I’d stared back, unabashed.

After another minute, he’d tilted his head to one side, and asked, “Are you sure you’re only twelve?”

I’d sighed with resignation. “I am only twelve.”

After a moment, he’d shrugged and grinned at me. “No wonder Sharice hangs out with you. You have to be the coolest twelve-year-old kid ever.”

Jokingly, I’d sat back in my chair and batted my eyes dramatically. “You’re so going to fall in love with me, Grant Alexander.”

He’d snorted. “Don’t count on it, short stuff. I am way too old for you.”

“You’re way too old for me
now
, but when I’m eighteen, you’ll only be twenty-three.”

He’d eyed me warily as if he expected me to leap over the table at any moment and attack him with kisses and words of love.

I’d dismissively waved a hand. “Don’t worry. I don’t have a crush on you or anything. I’m just telling you how it will be.”

He’d looked relieved at that and laughed. Sharice had entered the room just then, smelling a little bit like cigarettes.

“Mayson, I have to babysit today,” she’d said apologetically.

“It’s fine.” I stood up and pushed my chair in. “My dad is coming home today. I just wanted to get out of the house for a little bit.”

“I’ll walk you home on the way.” She’d picked up her keys off the counter. “See you later,
boy
,” Shari said to her brother with a teasing smile.

“See you later,
girl
,” he’d said back. “And Baby Girl,” he’d added with a wink at me.

I had been thankful to follow Shari out the door so that her brother wouldn’t have seen the color that had flooded into my cheeks.

Chapter Eight

As I stood before the mirror in my apartment, I ran my fingers over the top I had on. It was yellow and complimented my sun-bronzed skin, but I began to have second thoughts about it. I glanced at the mountainous pile of clothes on my bed. The yellow shirt was only one in a long line of second thoughts.

Exasperated, I pulled the top up over my head and tossed it onto the heap of discarded clothes. I’d never felt insecure about putting on clothes before. Before I went into recovery, I only cared that I was putting on clean underwear every day. Once I was clean, I had begun to take better care of my appearance. I fell in love with clothes, shoes, bags, and accessories. Grant didn’t know that version of me.

“Why does it even matter?” I asked Dusky, who was lounging on the floor at the foot of the bed. “It’s just lunch with Grant, and Grant has seen me at my absolute worst.” I pointed for effect. “In addition to seeing me under the influence of alcohol and various drugs
and
when I was having major mental breakdowns, the man saw me
dead
.” I raised an eyebrow at the dog. “You know what happens when a person dies, right?”

Dusky sighed and wagged his tail against the carpet.

I sighed. “Sometimes, you’re very hard to talk to.”

I turned back to the mirror. At least I was sure about my pants, a pair of medium wash, slim-fitting boyfriend jeans rolled half way up my calves. I had to choose a shirt once and for all because it was almost twelve-thirty. I plucked an orange one out of the closet, but before putting it on I took a good look at my body in the mirror.

Thirteen years ago my body had been wasting away from drug use and an eating disorder—an unfortunate result from a cruel boyfriend I’d had when I was younger. After getting treatment for both the drugs and the eating disorder, I began to put on a healthy dose of weight again, but once I started to really eat and enjoy food again, I couldn’t stop.

I love food. I love how flavors lay on my tongue and excite my taste buds. I love the way chocolate and ice-cream melt in my mouth, but have different tastes and textures and evoke different happy feelings. I love a juicy, tender, and well-marbled steak. I even love fresh vegetables, like corn on the cob when it’s in season, or fresh kale sautéed with garlic. Like I said, I love food, and it clearly showed in my waistline, thighs, and butt.

I’m not a cow, and I am very comfortable with my body, but I’m well aware that I am by no means thin. Grant didn’t seem to really mind, but those meetings had been so stressful and quick. What would he think after he got a really good look at me?

“It doesn’t really matter what he thinks of me,” I said to Dusky. “Because it’s just lunch and I’m not trying to impress him.”

If the dog were capable of rolling his eyes, he probably would have done it.

Of course, my intention
was
to impress Grant, and not in the way that pathetic women try to impress men so that they could win them over. I wanted him to see the person I had become. After all, he’d only ever known me as an unhealthy addict. I still had many faults and in some ways I was still that heroin addict I was back then, but I wanted him to see and to know that I hadn’t needed him. I had pulled my life together in spite of the fact that he had abandoned me.

“Then I can tell him that his leaving me was the best thing he’d ever done and tell him to go to hell,” I told Dusky.

I was positive he did roll his doggy eyes that time.

I finished getting dressed and put on a pair of wedged sandals. I had just adorned my wrists with a few silver bangle bracelets when the buzzer went off in the other room. Dusky was up like a bolt, racing toward the front door and almost knocked me over in the process. He barked up at the intercom as if to invite Grant up. That hadn’t been my plan, but it was going to be hard to get out the door with Dusky trying to get out with me. The poor big black lab was probably starved for another human contact after being stuck with his gloomy, crazy master.

I pushed the button on the wall.

“Hello?” I called over Dusky’s barking.

“I’m on time.”

I tapped another button that would unlock the downstairs door. Although Grant knew where I lived, I wasn’t sure if he knew which apartment was mine. I grabbed Dusky around the collar and opened my door, just in case.

“Is he going to lick me or eat me?” he asked as he walked down the hallway.

“He’ll probably lick you first, then eat you. At least, I hope that he will eat you.”

Fearless, he knelt in front of my dog, put his hands under his jowls, and vigorously and affectionately rubbed him.

“Hey, pup,” he said soothingly as Dusky tried to pull away from me to lick his face.

I was barely holding the dog back, but when Grant said, “You’re all bark and no bite, just like your mom,” I released the lab.

I watched with some satisfaction as Dusky leaped on him and knocked him on his ass.

“When you’re finished making out with my dog, I’ll be waiting inside,” I said and turned away.

I was surprised to learn that lunch would be at Grant’s. I had been hoping for a public place, but at least I could find out where he lived so I could avoid him. He had been right; he didn’t live that far from me. We could have easily run into each other at any given time and any given place; however, there were enough streets, alleys, businesses and people between us that we could have just as easily not ever seen each other.

After less than ten minutes of driving, we arrived at a long rectangular industrial-looking building. I glanced at Grant with a raised eyebrow. He caught my look and smiled.

“It used to be a warehouse,” he explained as two green garage doors opened toward us. “I was going to buy a house in the burbs, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t want grass to mow, trees to trim, and driveways to shovel in the winter. I also didn’t want to deal with the commute to work.”

I considered him skeptically. “So, you bought a warehouse?”

“It’s a warehouse conversion,” he corrected, still smiling.

I peered up at the building once more before we drove inside. “How many units are in here?”

“Just mine.”

My eyebrow rose higher.

“Just yours is finished you mean.”

“I mean that the whole building is mine. The entire building has been converted.”

I looked around at the garage as I got out of the car. There was another SUV, a motorcycle, and a few bicycles. Tools and other crap you find in a garage were on shelves and hanging on the walls, and there was a door at the back.

“The gym,” he murmured, following my gaze.

I nodded as I wished for x-ray vision so I’d be able to see beyond the walls surrounding us. The building had to be at least four thousand square feet. I lacked the creativity to even imagine what that would look like.

“Why does one man need so much space?” I questioned as I followed him up a flight of stairs.

He glanced back at me with his eyebrows pulled together and mouth slightly ajar. The stunned and confused reaction made me a little uneasy.

At the top of the stairs, he turned around to face me. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew what? Do you have a time machine in there or something?” I gestured toward the wide door a few feet away. “Dinosaurs? Warheads? A speakeasy?”

He tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work out. “Mayson, I’m a single dad. I have two kids.”

“Ohhhhhhhh,” I whispered, staring at him.

It shouldn’t have made a difference to me either way. I had no plans to see him again after our lunch, so it wasn’t like I had to deal with the brats in any way, or with the baby mama drama that would be sure to follow. In fact, he would probably let me go very quickly if he knew that I never wanted children—mine or anyone else’s. I didn’t even
like
most children. I
wanted
him to let me go, so it really shouldn’t have mattered.

Except that it did.

I felt…betrayed. Grant had skipped out of my life without a second look back. He
said
that he checked up on me over the years, but did I know that for sure? Maybe he didn’t even leave me because of the drugs—or not entirely because of the drugs. Maybe, just maybe he had met someone else. Maybe he’d moved away with
her
and started a family with
her
, and maybe they recently broke up and that was the only reason he came looking for me again.

His fingers stroking my cheek startled me from my thoughts.

“I can tell that your brain is trying to process what I’ve just told you,” he murmured. “And I’ll bet any amount of money that you are jumping to the wrong conclusions. Come in, and I’ll tell you everything. That’s why we’re here, right? To talk.”

He gently patted my shoulder and turned away to unlock the door.

Grant gave me a brief tour of the ware-home, as I had dubbed it. It
was
a big space and it was beautiful. Before Kyle moved his family into a house in the suburbs in New Jersey, he had a penthouse in Philly on the riverfront. His place had been obnoxious and cold, and filled with a lot of expensive, useless crap. Grant’s place—only slightly smaller than the penthouse—felt comfortable and well lived in. It felt like a family home. There was evidence of his kids everywhere—from the toys left on the couch to the finger paintings hanging on the fridge.

There were also photographs of them everywhere. I picked up a framed picture of Grant and his kids on a beach somewhere, squinting and smiling at the camera. I wondered if their mother had taken the picture.

The little boy had a strong resemblance to Grant. He was a shade lighter than his father, but they shared the same mouth and smile. The little girl, to my astonishment, looked like a four or five-year-old version of Sharice. She was the same shade of brown Sharice had been, she had the same big eyes and narrow nose.

Gazing at the photograph of the happy family, my throat seemed to swell.

“She looks just like her,” I managed to croak out.

“She does,” Grant agreed quietly from my side.

I carefully put the picture back on the shelf it was displayed on and took a cleansing breath to loosen the knot in my throat.

“Aren’t you supposed to be feeding me lunch?”

I started toward the kitchen, but he caught my hand after a few steps. I turned to face him and tried to pull my hand out of his grasp, but he held onto it easily. I gave up for the time being, knowing that it would be like one of those Chinese finger puzzles. The harder I’d pull, the more stuck I’d be.

His voice was soft as he gazed down at me. “I promise I’ll feed you soon, but I want to tell you about Natalie and Alex first.”

My brows pulled together. “You named your kid Alex Alexander?”

He gave me a small, amused smile. “He’s actually Grant Alexander IV, but we started calling him Alex when he was just a baby so there was no confusion.”

“Look, you don’t have to tell me about your kids or their mother. I don’t need know.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you don’t need to know?”

I shrugged. “Why do I need to know? I mean, if you want to tell me funny stories about them or whatever, that’s fine, but I don’t need to know how they came to be. That’s way too personal, don’t you think?” I snorted. “Maybe you’re not the right person to ask about getting too personal, seeing as though you clandestinely pursued me for weeks. Anyway, what I’m saying is that I don’t need to know. This is only lunch after all.”