“And you had to bring me in here to ask me that?”
“I see the way your face lights when you’re around him, the way you try so hard not to smile when I mention him,” she says. “You’re holding back. You’re fighting your feelings. I don’t understand why. If you like him … why fight it?”
Dragging in a ragged breath of pine-and-bleach scented ladies’ room air, I lean against the counter and fold my arms.
Maritza is right.
She’s right about all of it.
“You know, Nick made the weirdest comment the other day,” I change the subject. “He said he missed me.”
My cousin’s head tilts and her mouth pinches. “This isn’t about Nick. Mel, I say this with nothing but love, but you’ve always gone for the guys you can’t have and you’ve done it your whole life. You’ve never wanted the ones who were easy, the ones who wanted you. You’ve always pined for the ones just a hair out of reach because that’s who you are. You love a good challenge. Nick’s been the biggest challenge of your life, and you don’t even like him. You just think you do!”
Her words resonate with weight, actual weight, and I find myself unable to move, everything paralyzed except my racing thoughts and a single question: what if she’s right?
The ladies’ room door swings open and a forty-something actress with a vaguely familiar face clicks across the tiled floor in her red-bottomed heels.
“They’re probably wondering what’s taking us so long.” Maritza eyes the door. “To be continued?”
I nod, following her back out to the banquet hall and asking myself yet another pertinent question: if Maritza is right … and I do like Sutter … do I only want him because I can’t have him?
I’ve never met anyone more unavailable than Sutter.
And evidently, unavailability is Kryptonite.
“THAT’S THE LAST FUCKING time.” This is the one and only time I’m grateful Tucker can’t hear what I’m saying.
My father leans back in his ripped La-Z-boy, running one callused hand over the faded arm and his other along his salt-and-pepper five o’clock shadow.
“You don’t scare me, boy,” he says with a leer on his wrinkled face. “The hell you thinking? Come in here, into my house, talking to me like you’ve got some balls on you.”
The stench of cheap whiskey permeates the stale air as he slurs his words. Of course the old bastard is drunk. He probably won’t remember a damn thing I said come tomorrow, but it’s not going to keep me from saying what I came inside to say.
“I’m hiring an attorney tomorrow,” I say. I’ve been saving for months for a good one, someone experienced in this sort of thing. You can’t simply tell the state that you think a child isn’t being properly cared for and then the state gives that child to you. It doesn’t work that way. There are processes and investigations and proper channels. There are protocols and court hearings and psychological evaluations.
None of this will happen overnight and it’s going to cost me my life savings if this dipshit fights it (which he will), but if I can finally get my brother out of this shithole, it’ll be worth it.
“You’re a pathetic coward,” I say through clenched teeth. “A joke of a father. Tucker deserves better than that.”
“Guess it would hurt you to remember the good times, eh?” he asks with a sick chuckle as he rubs his belly.
“Good times? What good times?” My voice booms, fists clenching. It takes all the self-restraint I have not to get in his face. “You mean before Mom left?”
He doesn’t answer, only nods.
“I don’t have a single good memory of you. You know who taught me how to swing a bat? Grandpa. You know who taught me how to change a tire? Joe Collins down the road. You know how I learned to—”
“—enough, enough.” He lifts a hand before swatting it toward me, batting my words away because he doesn’t want to hear them.
The truth hurts.
“Anyway, I didn’t come here to rehash the past,” I say. “That shit’s dead and buried. Just wanted to give you a chance to be a man. Let Tucker live with me. Don’t put him through this messy custody shit. Because it will get messy. And it will get expensive. And I will win.”
“Get the fuck outta here.” He leans to the side in his chair as if I’m blocking his view, eyes straining on the screen.
My jaw tightens. “If you so much as attempt to retaliate on Tucker for any of this, I’ll fucking kill you.”
And I mean it.
I head down the hall, the floorboards sinking and creaking with each step, and I stop outside Tuck’s door, gathering myself so he doesn’t have to see me like this.
I take three deep breaths, close my eyes, and paint a smile on my face before going in.