And she was worth every penny.
I pulled out of the underground parking and sped through the historic district. I ignored the dirty looks from strangers on the street as I slid from fourth into fifth gear. The engine hummed and the steering wheel thrummed in my grasp. The power of the car dared me to open it up but I resisted. I wove through traffic, earned myself more than a handful of middle fingers, and sped out of the congested downtown core in favor of the long winding road along the Sound. A breeze blew in off the ocean that put white caps on the small waves and filled the air with salt. It was cold out but I cracked a window anyway. It rushed around in the car and filled my senses. Slowly, the heat that had tried to swallow me up in the conference room began to ebb away.
Kayla Goodfellow had sure grown into herself.
She was a beautiful young woman now. She’d done well for herself, too. She wasn’t sitting tall and proud in an office tower like mine but she was passionate about her work. It showed in her eyes when she spoke about it.
And you shit all over her and stormed out like a child.
I grimaced at the thought.
I hadn’t meant to be rude to Kayla, but the conversation had called up memories I never wished to return to.
There was a reason I hadn’t opened that box.
But seeing her brought all those feelings of inferiority and anger right back to the surface, along with other feelings like lust and desire.
I had no right feeling those things toward my sister’s best friend. Kayla was off limits.
But damn, did she look good in those jeans.
I cracked the windows a little more. Cold air hummed inside the car.
Kayla had always been pretty back in high school, but at the time, I’d been too focused on teaching myself how to code to really notice. Besides, she wasn’t around often since Lisa and I never lived together. Sometimes, we’d all end up outside with the neighborhood kids. We’d play kick the can or other games before being called back inside by our mothers.
Speaking of mothers, I realized that I’d been subconsciously driving toward my mother’s care home.
I hated the term “care home.” What I hated more was the fact that my mother had to be in one. She wasn’t an elderly woman, not even close. She’d just celebrated her fifty-fourth birthday two months ago and she’d stayed with me for two nights to get out and have a bit of normalcy. I wasn’t sure which one of us had needed it more, her or me.
It hadn’t gone how I’d hoped.
Leading up to that weekend, I’d been optimistic that things would go smoothly. I’d even entertained the idea that if I could handle it and her condition remained steady that I might be able to take her out of the care-home facility and have her stay with me every second weekend or so. In an ideal world, she’d live with me full time, but my work demanded that I was in the office five days a week minimum. Every specialist I’d seen when my mother’s health started to decline told me I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the level of care she needed anyway—even if I stayed home full time.
She needed the round-the-clock care the care home provided.
My grip on the wheel tightened as I remembered the day my mother was in her car accident. It had been a cool crisp fall day like this. It had rained that morning and the roads were slick with oil. She’d been on her way to meet a friend for brunch. Cindy, who’d practically been an aunt to me growing up, had called me when my mother was twenty minutes late for their brunch date.
It was unlike my mother to be late. She always used to tell me that there was nothing more disrespectful than showing up tardy. She used to get worked up when we were running behind leaving the house, whether it was for school, a dentist appointment, or Sunday breakfast a few blocks away with Lisa and her mother.
So when Cindy told me my mother wasn’t there, I knew in my gut something was wrong.
I’d called my mother’s cell phone seventeen times before I got a call from the UW Medical Center. They’d told me my mother had been in an accident and was in emergency surgery.
Nothing had ever made me feel like that before. The nurse on the phone asked if I could come in and suggested I get someone to drive me. She told me where to go once I got to the hospital, but everything after the words “emergency surgery” was lost on me. My brain went fuzzy, my ears filled with white noise, and a pit the size of my fist started to grow in my stomach.
There was nobody to drive me.
I’d gotten in my car and driven myself to the hospital. It was a miracle I didn’t get a speeding ticket on the way.
My mother was in surgery for four hours, during which I sat outside the operation room, rooted to the same chair the entire time, terrified to leave in case something happened. In case she needed me. Lisa, who hadn’t heard about the accident until it was somehow leaked to the press, showed up during that final hour of surgery and sat with me.
She’d been my rock that autumn afternoon. She held my hand, promised me that everything would be okay, and stayed there until the surgeon came out and told us the surgery had been a success. No words could explain the relief
