Page 43 of Sawyer
She gave acat eating the creamsmile that flipped his heart over as it eased his tension.
“Of course you are! The mad scientist. The original thinker. But paradoxically also ones who are known for being good in groups. A great friend. One of my girlfriends in London is an Aquarius, and we vibe because she’s like me in some ways. Sawyer, I think your quirky and wild nature was beaten down. Lucky you, I’m just the girl to bring it out.”
He blew out a surprised breath. “Me? Quirky? Wild? I’m the most regular guy on the planet.”
“Did you or did you not lock yourself into youratelierfor the past several days, barely eating, with little human contact, and paint? You are so much more than a regular guy, which is good for us. I don’t do regular. Too boring, although I appreciate the steady appeal for some.”
This introspection was causing his stomach to jump. “I’m also mixed race, as you can see pretty clearly. My mother is Chinese American—from San Francisco—and my dad is Black—from Atlanta. They met at Harvard, both on scholarships, and then worked in different high-level departments at Xerox. You already know my mother loved pushing me to achieve my full potential; I hate that it’s a stereotype, but she’s the original tiger mom. My father gave her the lead there, preferring to spend his time working when he was home or networking on the golf course. Is that enoughget to know youtalk?” Because he didn’t want to talk more about his upbringing. He wanted to enjoy himself, not feel sick at heart.
She tightened her grip on his hand. “Do you have that slightly giddyI’m out with the person of my dreamsfeeling, along with the queasiness ofI just told them some of my most guarded pieces of myselffeelings?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Then we need to play a game now to shake things up and laugh about it.” She let go of his hand and did a little dance in her seat. “You ready?”
“What is it?” he asked warily.
“It’s what I callMy Mother Is Worse than Your Mother, and I’ve played it with friends many times. It always makes people feel better. Me first. My mother…gave me a photo album a few Christmases ago of me at my thinnest in New York in my requisite, fashionable black to remind me of how refined I used to look.”
He sputtered in outrage. “But that’s completely awful! You’re beautiful. Enchanting. Mesmerizing?—”
“Thank you.” She patted the back of his hand with a grin. “See! I told you this game would make you feel better. My childhood therapist would approve. It combines an expression of your darkest hurts with the soothing outrage from another person who sees your pain. Now you.”
He faltered. God, how did he choose from a veritable smorgasbord of motherly awfulness?
“Come on,” she cheered. “Just step up to the proverbial bat and knock the first dark memory that comes to mind out of the park.”
That did it. His arm gave a sudden throb. “I broke my arm on the playground when I was a kid. Screamed. Cried. The whole nine yards. But when the school called my mom, she proceeded to dismiss two calls from the school nurse. Because…wait for it…she was in an important meeting!”
He gulped in a breath and plowed on as Phoebe sat there with her mouth open in shock. “She had the audacity to tell them on the third call to put it in a sling, give me some children’s Tylenol, and send me back to class. It was probably only a sprain anyway. She’d pick me up after school at the appointed time and take me to the doctor. Which was what happened—since my father was in the same meeting and refused to be bothered.”
Sitting back with a whoosh, he felt a little sick and a little catharized. Then he blurted out from his heaving chest, “I was six.”
“I want to kill her,” Phoebe said after a moment, pounding the table with a tight fist. “Both of them actually. Boil hot oil and pour it over them when they come out of their house in the morning. Every day. For the rest of their miserable, abusive lives.”
Coughing out a laugh, he felt a grin spread across his face. “That long, huh?”
“It’s not even close to the ultimate punishment they deserve for doing something like that.” She tapped hermouth. “The appropriate fate for them will take some serious thinking. Sawyer, I want their blood for hurting you so much.”
Oddly, so did he. His father had told him he needed to be tougher while his mother had clucked her tongue, saying it hadn’t been a bad break—only a fissure—when the doctor showed them the X-ray later.You made a lot of trouble for something so small, Sawyer, and you interrupted Mommy and Daddy’s meeting.
How did anyone treat their kid like that? But here he sat. Sawyer Jackson, the kid who’d gone through that and more. “God! I’ve never told anyone that story. Not even my roommates.”
She tilted her head to the side, studying him. “Why?”
Shrugging, he searched for the words. “Don’t get me wrong. They’d be boiling oil alongside you. But sometimes it’s easier for me to shove things into the back of my mind. It’s like when my mother texts me now. I try and ignore or avoid it for a while, and then I respond with vague, noncommittal bits of nothingness, hoping to coast until the next text. Because if she had her way, she’d run my whole life.”
Since Phoebe was watching him with a beautifully warm, compassionate face, he decided to keep going. “That I’m here in Paris again is a miracle. While my mother wanted me to excel in the arts as a student, she didn’t really want a wastrel artist for a son as an adult.”
“Wastrel.”Phoebe’s mouth twisted as she heaved out a disgusted breath. “Yes, that’s the first word I think of for you.”
His stomach was throbbing and full of hurt and anger now. “I only had the art and music classes because my mother excelled in spelling and math. My dad was great in sports. I couldn’t break their records. When I came to Paris ten years ago to attend the Sorbonne, I’d hoped to make it as an artist. I flopped. My parents were thrilled when theyfound out. That meant I would become the renowned academic they’d imagined for me—because we already have plenty of doctors and lawyers in the family. If not for Nanine having a heart attack, I don’t think I would be back here, going for my dream again. I’dneverhave wanted Nanine to go through any hardships, but it got me back where I needed to be.”
He pounded his chest then. “To find me. The man I really long to be. The painter. The friend. The brother to all of these wonderful people I call roommates while I get to be son to a woman like Nanine. Without that, I would be plowing away at tenure, my soul dying steadily as the sand disappeared from the hourglass of my time here on earth.”
Stopping suddenly, he coughed to clear his throat. “I hope I didn’t go too far. I know it’s heavy stuff.”
She leaned forward, the amber flecks in her green eyes warm and inviting. “You don’t need to worry I’m going to duck out to the bathroom and ditch you or fear I don’t want to see you after tonight. Sawyer…all I can feel besides a whole bunch of messy emotions is a total sweetness for who you are. I am so grateful you’ve come into my life and that you can share who you are with me. And that you let me do the same. Because you’re right. I sometimes shove those horrible memories in my proverbial attic and hope they catch on fire so I don’t have to deal with them. But while they don’t have to define who I am, they are part of my story and part of this person I’ve become.”
