Only One (Reed Brothers)(6)

Mom rests her left wrist on the steering wheel and shifts with her right hand. Once we hit the highway, we’re all breezy air and noise. And I’m fine with that because I don’t have to talk to her. I don’t even have to pretend that I like her.

###

I wake up with a jerk and a squeal of the brakes, and my eyes open. My skin is gritty, and I have never felt less like myself than I do at this moment. Where are we?

We’re in the driveway of the beach house. That much looks familiar. But I have to blink my eyes a few times before I remember how I came to be here.

“We’re here!” my mother sings. She shoves my shoulder. “Help me unload.”

It’s late. Almost midnight. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Nope.” She doesn’t say any more than that. She just shoves my shoulder again and I get out. I start unloading suitcases and boxes of food and supplies.

The house looks different. I remember it as larger than life. But it’s not. It’s small and quaint. It’s all beachy, with fishing signs hanging in the carport and fishing nets decorating the space. None of us fish. I never did understand those being there.

The inside is just like I remember it, but smaller. It’s painted in yellows, blues, greens, and peachy colors. And the furniture is just as bright. I walk through and push open the sliding glass door. I step onto the deck and the ocean wind wraps around me, covering me in wet, cool, refreshing air.

I lift my face to the breeze and close my eyes, inhaling deeply. For a second, life is perfect. Then she steps outside with me, and it’s not.

I walk down the steps that lead to the ocean and let my feet sink into the sand. I hear the sliding glass doors close behind me with a slight bang. She’s gone back inside. Good. I walk down to the shore until the sand starts to suck at my feet.

This place used to be magical. But now it’s just that place that belongs to my mother.

The saltwater laps at my shins, tugging me in with its greedy grasp. Maybe if I just try to focus on the ocean, I can make this work. This trip doesn’t have to be about her. It can be a little about me, too, can’t it?

I turn and look back at the house. The light in the living room goes off. What? I start back in that direction and open the sliding glass door. My mom’s bedroom door is closed. She just went to bed?

“Good night, Patty,” I whisper, throwing up my hands.

I take a quick shower and go to my old room. The sheets are folded up on the bed, so I put them on it and then slide between them in a T-shirt and my underwear. I can’t believe she went to bed without a word to me. Then I remind myself that I’m not supposed to care.

###

I wake up the next morning and stumble into the hallway. I can smell coffee brewing and I walk toward it. If there’s one thing I get from my mother, it’s the love of the coffee bean. I’ll take it iced, brewed, instant, or any other way you want to present it, as long as I can have some. As though on auto pilot, I walk toward the kitchen.

I hear shuffling and see that the fridge is open and someone is rummaging around in it. She’s wearing jeans? At the beach?

But then the person stands up, and it’s not my mother at all. He’s blond and tall and he’s…not my mother. His eyes go wide for a second and he freezes. Then they start to take a lazy slide down my body. My seriously under-dressed body.

I cross my arms in front of my chest, since I’m not wearing a bra. “Who are you?” I ask. I step behind the counter, trying to put something between me and him as I tug on the hem of my T-shirt.

His brows shoot up. He has the end of a cheese stick hanging out from between his lips. He bites down hard and chews for a second with one eye closed. Then he grins. “How quickly she forgets,” he says. He hitches a hip against the counter and looks at me. There’s a quirky grin on his lips and I find myself wanting to smile along with him. Well, I would if I wasn’t wearing just my undies.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

It hits me like a ton of bricks when I realize who he is. “Nick?” I gasp out.

He grins and I know I got it right. How I missed it to begin with, I’ll never know.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He points toward the door. “I came to mow the grass, and your mom was on her way out the door for chemo, and she said to help myself to some food. So I did.” He smiles again.

“She’s gone?”

He nods, a curious expression on his face. “To the hospital. A friend picked her up.”

“Oh.” I play with a loose thread on the sleeve of my shirt, because I don’t know what to say to him.

“She’s not well, huh?” he asks. His gaze is curious, though. Not sympathetic.

“Guess not,” I say.

He holds out his half-eaten cheese stick. “Want some cheese?”

“Ew. No thank you.”

His eyes narrow. “I seem to remember that once upon a time we swapped more spit than there is on this cheese.” He laughs as heat creeps up my cheeks. “Are you aware that you’re in your undies?” he asks.

“I was kind of hoping you weren’t aware of it, actually. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

He points to his face. “And you have pillow marks on your face.”

I scrub a hand down my cheek. I probably have dark rings of old mascara under my eyes, too.