Page 29 of The Southern Thirst Trap

When we land in LA, I’m back in a role. This one the beautiful, aloof model who enjoyed a fabulous tropical vacation with a billionaire and expects nothing from him now that it’s done. It may be harder to play than I would have imagined going into the trip, but I somehow manage. I follow Zander off the jet, and he hands me into the waiting car without so much as a kiss on my cheek before he heads back onto the jet so he can return to Atlanta. He doesn’t even turn to look at me once.

Just like that, the trip is over, and Zander Olsen has left my life forever.

seventeen

Harlowe

“Harlowe!Whoisyourbaby daddy?”

“Is Zander Olsen Hendricks’s father?”

“Why hasn’t Zander ever been seen with your son?”

“Harlowe, are you that greedy you wouldn’t even share custody?”

“Why wouldn’t you want a billionaire in your life?”

“What does Knox think? Does he want to fill the shoes of an Olsen brother?”

“Who is the father?”

The questions have been non-stop and come from every direction. I’ve been asked in comments sections on my latest cooking videos, on my social media posts, in my direct message inboxes, from strangers on the street and paparazzi alike as I dropped Hendricks off at school, shielding him with my jacket and body to avoid any photos being taken. I’m going to have to arrange for someone else to do school drop-off and pick-up for my son if this continues so there aren’t photos of my child plastered all over the internet. Everyone is suddenly very interested to know about my sex life from five years ago and why I’m a single mother, and won’t give me even a moment of privacy to gather my thoughts or figure out my next move.

The front door opening startles me from scouring the comments of my latest YouTube video, my defenses high after all the unwanted attention.

“If you’re walking into my house without an invitation, you’re about to get stabbed,” I call out, clutching a large kitchen knife in my hand and tentatively peeking around the wall to the entryway.

“I tried calling you, but your phone must be broken. No other reason not to answer your mom’s calls, yes, Lolo?” returns a familiar voice with a slight lilting accent that thirty years in the United States hasn’t managed to remove.

I lower the knife as a flood of relief courses through me and feel the first genuine smile in a week split my face. “Well, look what the cat dragged in!”

I quickly set the knife down before I cross the kitchen to greet my mom. I lean down to embrace her shorter frame and inhale her familiar perfume of exotic spices.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were in Singapore visiting Auntie June, Auntie Nancy, and the cousins.” I take the bag from her hand and lead her into the living room to sit down.

“I know you need me and still you didn’t call. Family first, Lolo. When have we ever weathered a storm on our own when there is absolutely no need to? You’re lucky the aunties and cousins didn’t come with me for an intervention.” She settles herself on the couch and opens her arms to me. I gratefully nestle into her side. There’s something so comforting about having your mom show up when you need her most. I could cry in relief now that she’s here, even if there is nothing she can do to stop the flood of press and accusations.

“When the storm involves the media, a billionaire, and revolves around who I’ve had sex with, I figured I would leave you out of the mix.”

She pats my hair and then pushes my head abruptly off her shoulder.

“Hey,” I say, mock indignation flashing as I sit up.

“You talk cock,” she says, slipping in aSinglishphrase for nonsense that pulls from the phrases of her past life in Singapore she must have picked up again from her recent visit. “We have to stand by one another, even if it means I have to know about who you take to bed. It’s not that unusual. You think I don’t know you have sex? How’d you get my grandbaby if not from sleeping with a man?”

“Mom, I will never feel comfortable talking about sex with you. Not after your scared straight campaign to keep me out of trouble in high school.”

I shudder, thinking of the blown-up photos of the reproductive tract, graphic illustrations of women in labor, and even regret-filled articles supposedly written by teen mothers she stuck to the refrigerator weekly from the time I turned thirteen. I knew exactly how babies were made and had intimate knowledge of anatomy and the horrors of childbirth. I wanted nothing to do with boys until I graduated and moved to Los Angeles to pursue modeling. At least I knew what to expect once I did have sex.

“You know I just wanted to protect you. Your father would have done worse things to make sure you knew the risks. And he would have been the most excited when you came back here growing that darling little boy in your belly,” Mom says, her voice resolute and reassuring.

My father died when I was twelve. He was a six-foot-five-inch Nordic giant, the kind of man wrought from Vikings. He was from Denmark originally, an architect by trade—a real white-collar job for someone so insistent on working with his hands and laboring every chance he got. He could build anything you imagined from metal, fabricating everything from custom-built bird cages to impressive iron sculptures that live on in palaces and hotels across the world even now.

He met my mother at a hotel in Singapore where she worked as the head desk clerk. She came from humble Malaysian roots, growing up rather poor in the affluent metropolis of Singapore, yet from the way she tells it, the strapping Dane who walked into the lobby looking for his meeting with the company head in order to build a new decorative iron sculpture immediately treated her like royalty. They were married six months later, and he moved her to Georgia, where the architectural firm he worked for was based. She’s been in Atlanta ever since, even after he was hurt on a job site and succumbed to his injuries.

“You didn’t seem to care who Hendricks’s father was back then. You never even asked,” I muse. Mom had opened her home, the one I now occupy, to me and my swelling belly, no questions asked. She seemed to know I needed this baby to be mine alone, and she never so much as questioned how her twenty-four-year-old daughter found herself with child and retired from an exploding modeling career.

“There are some things that don’t need answers, only intentions. You were intent on bringing a life into this world and providing for it the best you knew how. I was intent on making sure you were supported. Simple as that.”

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