I’m real with her because she asked point blank.
“I like a girl,” I say. It’s my Mom. If there’s any place you don’t gotta wrap shit up nicely and add a bow, it’s with Mom.
She pushes the brownie toward me so I pluck it from the plate and take a bite. When my mouth is full and I can’t speak, Mom starts in.
“After what she’s been through, you better treat her right if you treat her at all.” She traces the edge of the milk glass with her finger, narrowing her eyes at me. I manage to swallow down the dense fudgy bite, and take the glass from her, taking a long, much-needed swig.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and Mom swats me from across the table, right upside my head. “What was that for?” I growl.
“Don’t use that tone with me. You wiped your mouth with your big dirty hand. Use some manners, Atticus.”
Glaring, I take a paper napkin from the bamboo holder in the center of the table and delicately dab the corners of my mouth. “There,your highness.”
She continues to glare.
I circle back to her comment. “After what, who's been through?”
Mom reaches for the knife and cuts another brownie from the tray before forking it onto my plate. “Goldie.”
Puzzled, I scratch the side of my cheek as I pick a chunk of brownie off and pop it into my mouth. “How do you know I’m talkin’ about Goldie?”
Mom’s face is thoroughly unimpressed. “Son, you haven’t brought a girl here in… seventeen years,” she says, our eyes holding together on that number. Because we both know why it’s been that long.
“I know.” Then I consider her words one more time. “What do you mean after what she’s been through?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. First, you tell me what happened tonight.”
With my knees still soaked from the snow and my scruff still holding the smell of Goldie’s warm little pussy, I choke a little on my morsel of brownie and slam the rest of my milk.
“She went on a date with some fuckin’ guy that asked her out at a job interview.” I shake my head. “Who does that? Who is waiting for an interview and thinks, gee, what a great time to pick up a woman.”
“Losers,” my Mom says easily.
“Thank you,” I huff. “So I went down to King-Dum where she had her date–”
“How’d you know where she was, son?” Mom asks with some fear on her face. She’s probably wonderin’ if her son, on top of being a grouchy single jerk, is also a creepy stalker.
“Beau told me. Beck told him.”
“Ahh.”
I continue. “So I went down there and pulled her outside and told her she could do better.”
Mom makes a face that makes my stomach feel at odds with that brownie. “What?”
“You interrupted her date to call her decision-making into question,” Mom says, reframing the night to make me look bad.
“I was tryin’ to get her to see that guy isn’tthe guy. That she could do better.”
Mom stares me down and then pinches off a piece of brownie, tossing it back like it’s a shot of whiskey. “Did you offer her anything better?”
I look away as the image of Goldie writhing over my open mouth comes to mind. “What do you mean?” I ask, still focusing on the clock on the oven.
“Did you tell her you want to be her boyfriend?”
“Mom,” I sigh, “that’s not how it works anymore. You don’t just… become boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“No?” she cocks an eyebrow and reaches back toward the counter, snagging her bottle of Brandy. “Then why go down there and ruin her night?”