I Promise You: Stand-Alone College Sports Romance(32)

“Told him you took the last guy out.”

He shakes his head. “What are we gonna do with her?”

A long sigh comes from me. “Heaven help me, I’ve tried. You should talk to her…”

He winces. “Serena, nah, don’t make me. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Maybe if you sat down with her and told her a guy’s point of view on sex, how they may not feel the same emotional attachments—”

He sucks his teeth. “Look, you’re a girl, she’s a girl…you got it.”

Then why is she always in some kind of trouble? Frustration builds in my stomach. In March of her junior year, while I was in the middle of dealing with the fallout from Vane, she hooked up with a bad crowd at the public school. The administrators caught her and two other girls smoking pot under the football bleachers. Drugs on school grounds are an automatic 180-day expulsion and admittance to an alternative school. I scrambled to find the money and managed to get her accepted at the local private school. Lucky for us, one of the board members is a policeman and worked with my dad, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken her.

An hour later, I’m slicing strawberries while Romy takes the chicken breasts out of the oven. A plate of warm waffles sits on the counter next to a bowl of eggs ready to be scrambled, just waiting for Julian to come in from mowing the yard.

My gaze drifts over the soft blue curtains in the breakfast area, the faded filigree wallpaper, the ancient oak table with a centerpiece of grapes and apples. The house is old and ramshackle, but tidy. Selling our family home was never an option after my parents died.

“How’s school? It’s your senior year, so that has to be exciting,” I ask Romy, offering an olive branch after I talked to her in her room. While she glowered, I sat on her bed and went through my checklist with her about teen sex, how she’s experiencing raging hormones, that sex doesn’t mean love…

Now in the kitchen, she shrugs, a wary expression on her face. Deep purple lipstick colors her mouth and her eyes are heavy with eyeliner. Magenta streaks pop in her hair. That’s new.

“Two weeks in and calculus sucks. I flunked the first test.” Her shoulders dip, and a panicked look flashes over her face before she turns back to the stove. “The uniforms drive me batty, and the girls are snotty. Headmaster Roberts glares at me like he expects me to fire up a joint at any moment. Same as last year.”

“Would you prefer I homeschool you?” I could, I guess, in between catering jobs and writing.

Her face reddens and her eyes grow shiny. “I miss my old school is all.”

“How’s the hip hop?”

“Tryouts are soon.” She turns away, giving me her rigid back.

“I can help you, if you want.” I took dance classes for years, ranging from ballet to modern. Once I thought I might do it professionally, maybe own a studio and teach, but the uncertainty of that career choice made me wary—especially after my parents died. I had to grow up quick.

“You’re busy.” She shrugs.

I sigh. “I’m sorry I’m not always here. Nana is.”

“At least I see you more now that Vane is gone. Asshole.”

“Language,” I murmur.

“Like you don’t say worse.”

I am trying.

“I’m sorry about letting Liam stay. We honestly just fell asleep.” Her lips twist. “Do you believe me?” Her eyes find mine and hold them.

I nod. “Just…don’t rush into anything, okay?”

“Like you did with Vane?”

A long exhalation comes from my chest. “Yeah.” The first night I met him, I slept with him. She knows about the pregnancy, the rushed marriage, the quickie divorce when he cheated.

My almost-seventy-year-old nana flounces in, her two Yorkies, Buster and Betty, behind her, their nails clicking on the hardwood. An unlit cigarette dangles from her pink lips, sponge rollers still in her graying brown hair.

“Nana, those are bad for you,” I warn. She claims she quit smoking ten years ago after her COPD diagnosis, but she sneaks them when she takes the dogs for a walk.

“Just one of those days when I like to have one in my mouth.” She stops at the butcher block island in the middle of the kitchen. “Girls, would you be willing to eat a bowl of live crickets for twenty thousand dollars?”

“Gross! No!” Romy takes a chicken breast and sets it on a stack of paper towels.

“How many crickets are in the bowl?” I ask.

Nana scoops up Betty, the sweeter of the dogs, and scratches behind her jeweled pink collar. “Twenty.”

“Maybe.” Money is always tight. My parents had insurance, but a lot of that was used to pay off the house, Julian’s college loans, mine, Nana’s medical bills, and now Romy’s private school. I’m also socking money away for Romy’s freshman year at college. Julian contributes to her college fund, but he doesn’t live here with us, and sometimes it feels like an uphill battle just to stay afloat with the day-to-day.

She pats me on the cheek. “I asked Turo, and he said he’d eat anything. His eyes got all sexy like and he waggled his eyebrows. That’s a come-on if I ever heard it.” She sucks on the end of her unlit cig. “I’m gonna bang him. Have I mentioned he’s Italian?”