Page 89 of Fierce-Hyde

He gulped. “Would you have?”

“I don’t know the answer to that and don’t want to lie to make either one of us feel better. It helped to hear your mother say what she had. That a woman tends to give up early if things aren’t working out and try to find it with someone else. I’ll admit in my personal life, I’ve walked away too easily. I did it with Raina too.”

“You said she needed space and left to move back home,” he said.

“She did. I reached out a few times and she wasn’t ready and then I just stopped. Kind of like what I did with my father. I just stopped. That’s giving up too easily. I’ve learned one thing from you and that is if you want something enough you’ve got to fight for it.”

“I’ve fought more with you than anyone else. And I don’t mean verbally, but just getting you to see things.”

“And as I said earlier. I’m very lucky that you did. I know it. I could have and would have walked away and would have missed out on what we have. I’m glad you didn’t let me do it.”

“I’m glad too,” he said. “Maybe now we can talk some more about this lust that we feel.”

She jumped up and straddled his thighs. “We can do that,” she said. “If you can find a condom in the dark. You know, boring dark sex in the missionary position.”

“Then I guess you’re in the wrong spot,” he said, flipping her to the sound of her laughter.

Talk about the best way to forget about a nightmare.

27

EMOTIONAL NONSENSE

Toward the end of the following week, Tori was in her office when her cell phone rang.

She picked it up and saw it was her mother calling. It was only ten in the morning and the fact her mother hadn’t called her in a long time but just texted or emailed vents most of the time, she thought it might be an emergency.

“Hello,” she said.

“Tori,” her mother said, sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up straight and preparing herself for emergency mode. “Are you okay?”

“Dan left me.”

“What?” she asked, sagging back into the canvas of her chair. “Who is Dan?”

“My boyfriend,” her mother said.

“Since when?” she asked, flipping her hand up in agitation.

Normally her mother told her everything in her life, but lately, it was only some vents about the people she worked with, the neighbors in her building, sometimes the cost of food and gas, or that she was tired.

It was a nonstop endless string of complaints and she wished she’d never suggested her mother do that to feel better.

All it did was add to the toxic mess that Tori was trying to clean up.

It’s as if her mother used her to dump even more emotional nonsense on knowing that Tori wouldn’t reply, but didn’t stop to think that the sponge was filling up and ready to ooze out green bubbling slime everywhere with other people’s problems.

“It’s been about a month,” her mother said. “He’s the only good thing in my life. Or he was.”

“You never said one word of it when you’ve texted or emailed,” she said.

“Well, those are venting like you said. You could have called to check on me and you haven’t.”

Her lips twisted in frustration.

She hadn’t called because she didn’t want a half-hour dialogue of what was in the texts or emails. Maybe if her mother put anything else in them other than bitching, she would have called.

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