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"I don't understand how you can be pissed at me when you were looking at him like that."
"Looking at him like what?" I huffed, positive that if she was going by that grainy photo, the only thing she got a hint of was that there was some unidentified brunette sharing dinner with someone that kinda looked just gorgeous enough to be famous.
She lurched toward her purse and scooped out her phone. I didn't have to wait for her to figure anything out because she was more tech savvy than I was. She held up her screen for me to see, and my heart immediately surged to my throat.
Since I'd been avoiding all things with headlines and pictures, I'd missed the latest round of images. This one was a classic—a shot of Jason and I at the Madison Creations cupcake booth.
Even if I didn't remember every aching moment from our encounter, from the heat that spread like wildfire every time his dimple winked at me, to the flash of hope that maybe we could start over, I couldn’t deny that I did have ‘the look’. The look that I used to have when I looked at my ex. The look that I'd tried to run away from because I thought he was playing me for a fool, again. It was right there. In living color.
I looked like a woman in love.
And that was before I knew him. How stubborn he was. How he deflected with humor and a quick wit that almost matched mine. A man that ran away from love almost as vigorously as I did. With parents that drove him just as crazy as mine did me. But when I eyed my mother, I felt my frustration evaporate. I even let go of my niggling annoyance that my dad didn't put his foot down and insist that he come along, because I was his daughter too. It drifted out of my grasp, like a balloon string getting caught by the wind, fluttering out of reach.
I swallowed a knot I wasn't aware was lodged in my throat until now. "So I'm making googly eyes at some dude." I relocked my arms across my chest and jutted out my bottom lip. "I still don't understand how any of that translates to your daughter being capable of roping some other woman's man."
"Because I did."
I blinked, sure that my ears were playing tricks on me. There was no way that my mother would do such a thing. Or admit it to me, if she had committed such an act.
"You did what?" I asked warily, my hands dropping to my sides.
She suddenly became preoccupied with the state of her nails, peering at the acrylic with laser-like focus before holding them out and fluttering her slender fingers. "Snagged a taken man."
I arched my eyebrows, pretty certain I didn't want to hear the dirty details about her sordid, man stealing past. "I'm not sure what to say to that, Mom."
"Well, you of all people should be telling me thank you." She gave me a sly grin. "It was your father."
My eyes popped from their sockets as I took a step toward her, then stopped myself from going any closer. There was a part of me that wanted to plug my ears. I didn't want to picture her wooing Dad, even if the end result was me. From the look of relief that was all over her face, it was clear that she was glad to finally share that juicy tidbit. And knowing my mother, I was about to get way more information than I wanted.
She swatted her platinum flyaways, her smile no longer a demure and secretive thing, but showing me every bleached tooth in her mouth. "Don't look at me like that, Natalee!" She licked her lips and since I wasn't moving from my safe distance, she leaned forward. "They weren't serious. I would never go after someone that was truly committed."
I shook my head, holding up my hands and backing up a step. I didn't want to touch her moral tic tac toe (or any lustful memories) with a ten foot pole. "Whatever you need to tell yourself." I went still, holding up a finger when I remembered the 'how we met' story my mother had told a million times. "So I guess you didn't meet dad when you were working at Rudy's Diner when he almost got into a fist fight with a handsy customer?"
It was her favorite story to tell and she was always spurned on by Dad turning bright red every time she had a captive audience.
"It didn't happen exactly like that," she explained, biting her lip coyly. "His girlfriend was tore up from the floor up, drunk or high or both and was propositioning every man that came into the diner. Most of them scurried off to their own significant others or ignored her advances, but one beefy looking trucker was more than willing to take her up on the offer." Even though my imagination did a good job filling in the blanks from the descriptor 'beefy looking trucker', my mother still went out of her way to contort her face, hunch her shoulders, and spread her arms at her side to demonstrate this mystery man's girth. "Your father had played along with his ex's antics, shrugging it off as he does, but when the guy reached for her and she declined his offer to hook up in the back room, the trucker called her a bitch." My mother's eyes got that far off look and I knew she was reliving those moments. "Your dad rose up, his shadow alone making this man continue on his way and when he foolishly thought he was about to sit in my section, I sent him packing. Your dad stared him down until his truck pulled out of the parking lot. " She sighed whimsically and I could almost picture her ogling Dad with hearts beating in her eyes.
I wasn't sure what to be more shocked by, that Dad had almost gotten into some sort of diner fight, or that Mom had been so smitten. She snarled 'men' whenever the tabloids shared that yet another celebrity marriage was dissolving because the dude was screening the nanny. My mother was the nanny. She was the other woman.
I put aside my knee jerk reaction, trying to remember that things were never black and white. This whole thing with Jason had taught me that. We were straight up in some gray area and since I'd decided to just bury my head in the sand and ignore it like that would make it go away, hadn't I lost the right to be judgmental about matters of the heart?
Now I had the faraway look and it earned a wink from my mother before she picked her story back up.
“Naturally, his ex was too belligerent to realize what a steal she had, talking crap the rest of their meal. So when I brought over their bill, I put my phone number on the end of it. We talked on the phone for hours for a week before he ended things and..." She gave me a ta-da flourish. "We lived happily ever after and had the most beautiful little girl."
Her flourish melted into an attempt to give me a hug, but I sidestepped her, smirking despite my attempts to maintain my annoyance.
"So, you think because you took another woman's dude, I did the same thing?"
"Nothing quite so dramatic," she scoffed, playing off my diss by striding into the kitchen. She plucked a glass from the strainer, then held it up to the light and shuddered, rummaging through cabinets for dish soap. "I know from experience that the heart wants what it wants."
"Well, my heart wanted to be left alone altogether," I muttered. From the look my mother gave me, she wasn't buying it. I wasn't even buying it. I had a million opportunities to walk away from Jason and I passed on every one. Even now, I didn't block him. I could close the door on us forever, for real, but my heart wouldn't let me.
The heart wants what it wants.
And my heart wanted Jason.
The sound of the water was enough to remind me that before all this mess I was gonna embark on a Kleenex sponsored cryfest. Emotion bubbled in my chest, ready to boil over and erupt from my mouth in sobs. Streak down my cheeks.
