Page 67 of Sweet Chaos
“Because she cares about you.” I had no idea how he knew that or why he would even think it. “And I think you care about her too.”
“Playing matchmaker now?”
He snorted. “Not sure it’d be a smart move to push you two together. I was thinking you could use a friend.”
Afriend. That dirty f word again.
“Why did you call her to drive you to the hospital the night Kai was born? Why did you talk us into selling her designs in the shop? Why did you talk me into hiring her as a surfboard designer when I wasn’t even looking for one? What was all that about?”
“So many fucking questions. You’re making my head spin.”
“That’s the whiskey. When’s the last time you’ve been sober?”
When I was thirteen. “I didn’t invite you over here.”
“When are you going to get it through your thick skull that I give a shit about you? There’s more to it, isn’t there? What really happened?”
Instead of answering his questions, I drank more whiskey. Then I lit a blunt and smoked it, hoping he’d take the hint and leave. You couldn’t get blood from a stone. But that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Who found her? Who found your mother?”
“I’m two seconds from kicking you out of my fucking house.”
He nodded as if he had it all figured out. “That’s what I thought.”
After that, he sat next to me in silence for a while, stargazing or navel-gazing or whatever the hell Zen people did, before he finally stood to go. “Come surfing with me tomorrow.”
“Don’t you have a wife and kid to take care of?”
“That’s why I surf. You’re no help to anyone if you don’t take care of yourself. I learned that the hard way. Whatever you’re going through, it helps to let people in. The right people. The ones who care about you. I know you always act like you don’t need anyone, but you fucking do.”
With that little gem, he left me to my peace and quiet. I didn’t tell him this, or anything else of any value, but he was starting to sound more and more like his dad. And as much as I would love to be more like Shane, more like Jimmy, I wasn’t built that way.
You and me, baby, we’re two of a kind.
That’s what my mother told me. Had always told me. And as much as I didn’t want to believe it, I was starting to think it was true.
Time to end this pity party for one. Time to move on and let go of the past. I’d worked too hard to get this far. It would be too easy to lose myself at the bottom of a bottle and I couldn’t allow that to happen.
I wrapped my hand around the neck of the whiskey bottle and took a swing at the fence. And then another. And another. The bottle smashed, the glass shattering and I left the jagged pieces on the lawn, the whiskey soaking into the lawn as I walked away.
Stripping off my clothes, I dove into my heated pool. The blood from the cuts on my hand clouded the water and I swam, and I swam, and I swam.
I tried to forget the first woman I had ever loved. My mother. The tragically lost, careless, manipulative bitch who could sometimes be loving and kind and funny and so full of life it was contagious. But my good memories of her were so distant, so long ago, that I sometimes wondered if they’d all been nothing but a dream.
What kind of idiot would mourn the loss of someone who had always let him down, who had fed him lies and empty promises, who had rarely shown up to be a mother? The same idiot who had gotten into countless fights, defending his mother’s honor. Despite her failings and her disregard for anyone other than herself,Iwas that idiot.
By the time I finished swimming my last lap, I was ready to let go and move on.
All I wanted now was that little fucking ray of sunshine.
I wanted her to put the broken pieces of me back together. To revive something inside of me that had died a long time ago.
In other words, I wanted the impossible.
25
Scarlett
