The Mistake(14)

“I’m sorry,” I say with genuine remorse. “It always gets crazy busy at the end of the semester.”

“I know. That’s why I haven’t been bugging you. Are you studying hard for your exams?”

“Sure.” Yeah, right. I haven’t even cracked open a book yet.

Mom sees right through the noncommittal response. “Don’t BS your mother, Johnny.”

“Fine, I haven’t started yet,” I admit. “But you know I work better under pressure. Can you hold on a sec?”

“Yup.”

I set the phone down and drop my towel, then yank a pair of sweatpants up my hips. My hair is still wet, sprinkling droplets down my bare chest, so I rub the towel over my head before picking up the phone again.

“Back,” I tell her. “So how’s work going? How’s David?”

“Good, and great.”

For the next ten minutes she chats about her job—she’s a manager at a restaurant in Boston—then tells me what my stepfather has been up to. David is an accountant, and he’s so boring that sometimes it’s painful to be around him. But he also loves my mother with all his heart and treats her like the queen she is, so I can’t exactly hate the guy.

Eventually she gets around to my summer plans, taking on that guarded tone she always uses when she brings up the subject of my father.

“So I take it you’re working with your dad again?”

“Yup.” I make an effort to sound relaxed. My brother and I agreed a long time ago to keep the truth from Mom.

She doesn’t need to know that Dad is drinking again, and I refuse to dredge up that old bullshit for her. She got out, and she needs to stay out. She deserves to be happy now, and boring as he is, David makes her happy.

Ward Logan, on the other hand, made her miserable. He didn’t hit her or abuse her verbally, but she was the one who had to clean up his messes. She was the one who had to deal with his drunken tantrums and constant visits to rehab. The one who dragged him off the floor when he came home wasted and passed out in the front hall.

Fuck, I’ll never forget the time when I was eight or nine, and Dad called the house at two in the morning. He’d been slurring like a maniac and freaking out because he’d drunk himself stupid at a bar, gotten in the car, and had no idea where he was. It had been the dead of winter, and Mom hadn’t wanted to leave my brother and me at home alone, so she’d bundled us up, and the three of us drove for hours searching for him. With only half a street name to go on because the sign had been covered in snow and Dad was too drunk to walk over and wipe it away.

After we’d found him and hauled him into the car, I remember sitting in the backseat feeling something I’d never felt before—pity. I felt sorry for my father. And I can’t deny I was relieved when Mom shipped him back to rehab the next day.

“I hope he’s paying you accordingly, sweetie,” Mom says, sounding upset. “You and Jeffrey work such long hours at the garage.”

“Of course he’s paying us.” But accordingly? Fuck no. I make enough to pay for rent and expenses during the school year, but definitely not what I should be making for full-time work.

“Good.” She pauses. “Can you still take a week off to come visit us?”

“I’m planning on it,” I assure her. Jeff and I have already worked out a schedule so that each of us can head to Boston to spend some time with Mom.

We talk for a few more minutes, and then I hang up and wander downstairs to find something to eat. I prepare a bowl of cereal, the no-sugar, all-bran bore-fest that Tuck forces us to eat because for some reason he’s against sugar. As I settle at the eat-in counter, my mind instantly travels back to what happened last night.

Leaving Grace’s room five seconds after she’d jerked me off had been such an * move. I know that. But I had to get out of there. The second I’d recovered from that orgasm, my first thought had been, what the hell am I doing here? Seriously. I mean, yeah, Grace was awesome, and sexy, and funny, but have I sunk so low that I’m now randomly finger-banging chicks I don’t even know? And I can’t even use alcohol as an excuse this time because I was stone-cold sober.

And the worst part? She didn’t even f*cking come.

I clench my teeth at the reminder. There’d been a lot of moaning, sure, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain that she didn’t have an orgasm despite her telling me that she had. Or rather, lying to me that she had. Because when a woman drops a noncommittal “Uh-huh” after you ask if she had an orgasm, then that’s called lying.