Page 16 of I Found You
“Don’t worry about it. Any of it.” He sent another wink my way. That seemed to be his go-to move. I wasn’t mad about it. “You going to share that pizza? I’m half-starved, and considering I had to leave before I was done, I think I should be entitled to half that pizza.”
“Half? No chance. You can have a slice,” I said to him while I was getting paper plates from my cabinet. It wasn’t that I didn’t have or use real plates, but pizza was a paper plates kind of meal in my opinion.
“Three,” he countered.
“Two. And I’ll split the salad with you.”
“Deal.” He put his hand out to shake on it like we were making some kind of contract. His broad, warm palm wrapped around my hand, and it sent a shiver down my spine.
I divvied up our plates, two pieces of pizza and some salad on each, and brought them into the living room. I had a dining room directly off the kitchen, but the layout didn’t allow me to see into the living room where Jane was. It was easier just to eat in there. After handing Wyatt his plate where he had taken a seat on the sofa, I put my plate on the coffee table and sat on the floor with my legs tucked under me.
Putting his plate down to stand, Wyatt asked, “Do you mind if I grab a water? Can I get you one while I’m up?”
“Oh, I can grab it.” I moved to get back off the floor, butWyatt stopped me.
“I’m already up. I’ve got it.”
“Oh sure, and yes, I’ll take one, please.” I smiled at him.
When he came back with our drinks, he picked up his plate, but instead of bringing it to the sofa with him, he sat on the floor next to me.
“Sorry about the paper plates. I don’t want you to think that I don’t know how to eat like a grown-up. I do. I have real plates.”
I was always so embarrassed growing up when I brought friends back to my house or wherever we were sleeping at the time. Everything always felt so temporary, like our whole lives were disposable. I’d worked hard to turn our lives around, but every so often, I still felt like that poor kid with the drug-addicted mother, like everyone could see right through me.
His lips quirked up on one side, head tilted at an angle as he turned to look at me. “I don’t give a shit about paper plates, Maeve. Not one bit.”
He stopped to take a bite of his pizza, so I did the same. The silence in the house was cozy rather than oppressive. Comfortable, like we didn’t need to fill every second with noise.
“Can I ask you a question?” His brow furrowed slightly. “You look familiar, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Did we go to school together or something?”
“We may have crossed paths years ago, when Andrea Petit was your girlfriend. She was kind of a friend, or we would hang around with the same crowd, anyway. I was a few years below you though. I knew who you were, but you wouldn’t have known who I was.”
“Girlfriend? I’ve never even had one of those. Andrea and Ihung out a bit, but I definitely wasn’t calling her my girlfriend. But more importantly… you knew who I was?” he asked, glee written on his face, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
Shoot.
“Oh, um, yeah. But only because I was in the grade between Luke and Lydia at school, so I kind of just knew who the Wilders were. And I always thought Lydia was so cool, even though she was younger than me. How is she, anyway? I don’t think I ever see her around town.”
“No, she moved away right out of high school, and she doesn’t come home much. She’s doing great though. She’s an art curator for some small galleries in New York.”
“Wow, that’s really impressive. The art world is supposed to be super hard to break into, isn’t it? I bet your parents are so proud of her.”
“Yeah, but my dad’s easily impressed, so it barely counts,” Wyatt laughed. “After our mom died, Lydia put all her focus on one thing: her art. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from making it. She can be a complete wild card sometimes, but no one can take away that she is determined as fuck.”
“I’m so sorry. I always thought her life looked so perfect. I had no idea.”
“That’s three times you’ve apologized today for things that need no apology. I think we’re going to need to work on that.” He paused to take a bite of his pizza. “And you weren’t completely off base. We had a privileged childhood. I was just out of high school when my mom passed, but until she got sick, honestly, it was damn near perfect.”
“Wow. I’m going to try really hard to not be envious of that. I think it’s really insightful of you to recognize it too. A lot of people seem to take it for granted, and I don’t blame them. Ifthat was all they knew growing up, then I think people can’t, or don’t, realize that not everyone has what they have.”
“That sounds like someone speaking from experience,” Wyatt said. He wasn’t looking at me but rather focusing on his food. I could tell he was giving me space to either tell my story or not. I could brush it off and change the topic. I knew he would let me without another word. But after what he shared about his mom, I couldn’t imagine how tough that must have been for him, for all of them. I felt like I owed him a little piece of my history in return. Or maybe I just liked the idea of him having that piece of me.
“My mom isn’t winning any ‘Mother of the Year’ awards, that’s for sure. She had me when she was young, only seventeen, so I want to give her some grace where motherhood is concerned. My dad stuck around during the pregnancy and the first few months, I guess. All I know about the man is that his last name is Graham. As far as I’m concerned, that was the only thing I got from him, still to this day. My mom struggled. A lot.” I paused, my mind going down a spiral of memories from my childhood. I didn’t know how long I zoned out for, but Wyatt’s question brought me back to reality.
“Struggled how, like financially?” he asked quietly.
I brought my gaze to his but quickly dropped it in favor of looking at my salad. It was easier to talk about this if I wasn’t looking directly at the sun. “Yeah. We were homeless a couple of times when I was little. My mom and I would couch surf, bouncing between whichever of her friends was willing to let us stay with them. I didn’t always know where my next meal was going to come from. My mother’s meals were usually of the liquid variety, and she always seemed to manage to have some of that on hand.” I huffed a nonamused laugh justthinking about it. “When she got pregnant with Jackson, I really saw a change in her. She stayed sober. She told me how things were going to be different now. She was excited for the chance to have a do-over in the parenting department. That lasted a couple of years. It wasn’t until Jackson was about five that things started to go downhill again.”
