Page 287 of Falling Backwards
“You okay?”I call because I see she has gone out of my sight.I hurry to locate her.
What’s wrong?Has she gotten hurt because I wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing?
But I find her in the laundry room, cussing to herself while simply kneeling and scrambling to use two socks to clean up the liquid soap pooling widely on the floor from a dropped jug.
I snort into laughing into an, “Oh no, Mom!Hold on, I’ll help!”
“This is gonna be a pain to clean up,” she groans as I start off to get towels or something.“The floor is gonna be soapy forever, Luke!I’m gonna have a damn Slip ‘N Slide in my damn laundry room!”
I crack up even more.
Ireallycrack up when I get back and see how pissed she looks with soap still on the floor and the socks hanging goop-heavy in her hands.
Only now does she give in to a smile, though she shakes her head too.“Hell!”
“Mom,” I barely get out, “why did you grabsocksfor this?”
“They were close by and I was panicking!”
I drop into a kneel, not quite steady because of my laughter.“The—the soap wouldn’t have gotten far if—if you’d taken…a second to….”I judderingly hold out one of the towels I brought, unable to finish talking through laughing.
As she takes the towel, she finally starts laughing too.“Well, I guess that’s true!”
I start cleaning.The stretch feels good on my already-aching muscles and helps me calm enough to breathe properly.I blink a few times.“Shit, that watered my eyes.Socks.”
My cracking up is dwindling, but hers is heightening.“You love me!”she declares with cute cheekiness.
I grin over to her goofy self.“Yep.”
And I wonder why she hasn’t been doing much dating of her own over the years.I can only think of two guys she briefly talked about.Is she scared to look for love because of what my dad did to her?Or has she been happy as she is?
The latter would be great, but I have to say I do kind of wish she had her person.The one who would treat her right and make her smile the way only they could.She deserves that.Plus, it would be special for another human being to have her warmth in their life.
I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t had it in mine.
—
As I walk from the employee lot to Lucent’s entrance, I look forward to seeing Maggie and do not look forward to seeing Ronald.
In truth, I’m not sure if he’s here or not; she hasn’t had her break yet, so I haven’t gotten any texts about him or anything else.Still, better to prepare for having to be around him than to get my hopes up for his absence.
Such a jackass.Such a poor choice for a management position.
I try to calm the aggravation that comes up every time I think about him.He was never a great assistant manager and lately he’s been actual garbage, plus it pisses me off that Maggie in particular is who he’s had it out for—but I’d much rather have more of her in my head than him.
I get through the door just as she’s returning to her hostess stand from the dining room.She notices me and her already-warm expression lights up.I know I light up, too, because laying eyes on her is exactly what I want right now.
Well, I’d like to lay other things on her as well—my hands, my mouth, my body.
A fact not helped by my recent discovery of the small love mark she left on my collarbone last night.I’ve been a little bit wild about it and a little bit wild with desire to give one back to her.
Alas, this is not the time or place for those kinds of thoughts.
So I call, “Hey,” at what even she would deem an acceptable volume.I simply can’t wait until I’ve gotten five seconds closer before I talk to her.“How’s it going?”
“Hi,” is all she says until I’m at the stand.I lean forwards and rest my elbows on the wide surface, clasping my hands, and she copies me.“Things are busy, but they’resogood.”
Her tone and the sparkle in her eyes back up the words.They bring my mood up to the level of hers.
