I shove the rest of the second brownie in my mouth because I don’t know how to respond.
“If you like her, I don’t understand why you can’t ask her to be your girlfriend.”
At this unfortunate moment, my Dad returns from outside and it don’t matter how many snakes are tattooed up your neck or how many piercings you got in your face or otherwise when you’re forty-two and being told how to pick up females by your parents who are in their late sixties? You feel like a goddamn loser.
“Goldie?” Dad questions as he hangs his scarf and coat on the hook near the back door.
“Yeah,” Mom answers for me. “He went down to the dumpling place where she was on a date and dragged her outside to tell her she could do better.”
Dad blinks at me, his weathered eyes narrowing in an effort to figure out just where the fuck he went wrong. He reaches for my Mom’s mug and takes a drink of her Brandy. “Well, even a drink of Brandy ain’t helpin’ me understand how you got to be so stupid.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I sigh sarcastically. “Listen, I’m here to fix shit. What needs fixing? Because right now, I don’t feel like hearing this.”
Mom folds her arms across her chest, and when Dad notices, he winces and excuses himself from the conversation by loading his mouth full of brownie.
“That’s when you need to hear it the most. When you don’t feel like it.” Our eyes hold, and I’m genuinely scared my Mom’s gonna rip me a new one and add to the bullshit misery of this night.
She leans forward, her gold cross necklace slipping free from beneath her blue sweater. That was Mere’s necklace, and though Mom never takes it off, I also hardly see it. But laying eyes on it now, talking about Goldie, I don’t know. I’m feelin’ shit. Like it’s a sign or something.
Mom rests her hand over mine. “Your sister wouldn’t want you to be miserable, son.”
I’m taken off guard by her words. She’s said as much without actually saying it but now… she’ssayingit. Stripping away pretense and misdirection and just calling me on my shit.
A knot forms in my throat at the mention of my sister, at seeing her necklace looped around Mom’s neck. “I know,” I manage to say, feeling less 6’4” and 245 lbs than I ever have.
“That girl has been through things you can’t imagine,” Mom says, her voice low and steady. I glance over at my Dad who is nodding along with the conversation quite seriously, arms folded, head tipped down to face his snow boots.
“She surely has,” he adds.
I scratch my head. “She got another job, though. She just found out last week.”
People get fired.
My parents have lost a child.
Why are they acting like Goldie getting fired from the Brutes is some goddamn emotional cross to bear?
I pinch my chin and stare back at my Mom. “It’s just a job, Mom. She’s okay. She’s got shit to sort through, yeah, but we all do.”
I think of the way Goldie’s Mom talks to her. The phone call that night when we were supposed to be celebrating her victory. All her mom did was make her feel like a speck of shit. My own Mom blinks back at me slowly, carefully, wide eyes full of love and understanding. I am lucky, and I do feel bad that Goldie doesn’t have the support she should.
Even at my age, I need my parents. Fuck, look at us now. I came here to help them and here they are again, helping me.
“There’s more to it than that.”
“To what?” I scratch at the small beard taking over the lower half of my face as I think.
“What happened with the Brutes.” Mom glances over her shoulder at Dad, and they share a private look that gets under my skin.
“What?” I look between the two of them.
“Do you like her, Atticus? Do you want her to be your girl?” Mom asks, her face steady and serious.
I don’t take a second to consider her words. I know me and Goldie ain’t best fuckin’ friends, and there’s still a lot we need to learn about each other, but I want her.
Something about her, I’m pulled toward her. I can’t explain it. Something deep inside me magnetizes, gravitates toward Goldie fuckin’ Berry.
When I first laid eyes on her, I didn’t like her. She reminded me of the girls that Mere struggled with. Always perfect, looking down on others, judgemental, small and close-minded… and I can’t say she doesn’t have those qualities. That she can’t be a goddamn brat.