CHAPTER 8
Reagan
Isat at my desk and did my best to concentrate on anything other than the man behind the cocky half-grin that had taken up residency in my brain. No use, though. It was all I could think about. He was all I could think about. I’d never been so affected by someone before.
I’d been half joking when I’d considered the possibility that I might be having a nervous breakdown before, but I was starting to grow concerned. It had been four hours since Billy Comfort walked his tight butt out of these offices and I hadn’t gone more than a minute without thinking of him since.
He’d hijacked my mind and I needed it back so I could work.
Was I obsessing about him because it was easier than facing all the changes in my life?
No. That didn’t track. I wasn’t avoiding my reality. If anything, it was the opposite. I was relieved. It terrified me when I thought about how close I’d been to making a huge mistake.
Deep down, I think I’d known it was a mistake for a long time. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t texted Blaine on that fateful day to let him know I was stopping by like I’d always done before. I hadn’t consciously suspected that he was cheating on me, but looking back on it now, it was clear that I’d known something wasn’t right.
We got along. We shared the same taste in TV shows and had the law in common. On top of that, we never disagreed, which I was now beginning to think wasn’t such a good thing.
There hadn’t been any passion for a long time. Even in the beginning we hadn’t been burning up the sheets. Our sex life was always the same. It’s not that it was bad, it was just always the same. It started the same, the middle bit was the same, and it ended the same. I’d even timed it down to the minute. It was seven. And unlike the game, it wasn’t seven minutes in heaven.
I’d tried to spice things up a few times but it had gone over like a lead balloon.
A realization hit me as I sat trying to concentrate on the brief in front of me. Part of what had been so shocking when I’d walked into Blaine’s office was the position that he’d had the woman in. She was bent over his desk, doggy style. Blaine had never taken me from behind. Every time I tried to flip over he’d stop me and say he wanted to see my face.
At first, I’d thought it was sweet. But after a while, it just got boring.
My phone screen lit up and I was momentarily relieved for the distraction. The relief was short-lived, however, when I saw a picture of my mother at age twenty appear on the screen. It wasn’t a photo that I’d chosen; she’d been the one that’d put it in my phone.
The reasons not to answer the call were countless. I had a stack of files in front of me that I needed to get through. This was my first day on the job. I could go on and on, but the biggest one was that I knew I didn’t want to hear anything my mother had to say. She was Team Blaine all the way and I didn’t need her telling me, again, that I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
I seriously considered letting it go to voicemail. But I knew that if I did, she’d just call back again. And again.
Drawing a fortifying breath, I closed my eyes as I answered the call.
“Hi, Mom, can I call you back? I’m actually knee deep in—”
“You’ve made your point, Fancy,” she cut me off before I was even able to get out my greeting, which included an explanation as to why I needed to call her back.
She also used the name that had been on my birth certificate before Hal had talked her into allowing me to change it when I was ten. That’s right, my mother had named me Fancy after the Reba McEntire song. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great song. But I was literally and non-ironically named after a girl whose mom turns her out because they are poor. Let that sink in for a minute.
That wasn’t all. My last name, before Hal adopted me, was Cox. Yep, ladies and gentleman, my birth name was Fancy Cox.
When Hal told me that after he adopted me I could legally change my name, I’d been so excited because I’d assumed it was my entire name. When I found out that it was only my last, I’d been heartbroken. He somehow convinced my mom to let me change both, and that is one of the countless things I will forever be grateful to him for.
I chose Reagan because it was Hal’s middle name. Harold Reagan York. It just made sense to me. He was a better father to me than I ever could’ve dreamed of. He never had any biological kids and my biological dad was MIA. Hal used to always say that when people had kids “the old fashioned way” they didn’t get to choose them, but he was lucky because he chose me. He chose to adopt me.
Not a single day went by that I didn’t miss him. There was a Hal-sized hole in my heart that I knew would never be filled.
“Now it’s time to stop playing games and come home,” my mother spoke with an authority she’d rarely used when she was raising me.
“You want me to move back home with you?” I asked with sarcastic sincerity. It was my coping mechanism when dealing with Tina York. Sarcasm was the only way I hadn’t completely lost my sanity while growing up in the home of a woman who bragged about being equal parts Peggy Bundy and Dolly Parton, again non-ironically.
“Don’t sass me, little missy. I’m still your mama.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I responded in the verbal equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction.
My Southern roots ran deep. It didn’t matter that my mother had never been in the running for Mom of the Year, I still had some home training and responded to her with respect.
“Now this has gone on long enough. You know people are callin’ you a runaway bride. I just spoke to Blaine and he said that if you come home now he won’t—”