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I remind myself not to judge where he is living, or what surrounds him — I came from a childhood home that most people in England wouldn’t call lavish — that I don’t look like my origins much anymore. I try my best to grow beyond them, but I’m still taken aback. I’m shocked by how much this place, everything about it, does not match with what I know of Tommy.
Before I have too much more time to myself to muse about how he can live here and still present that aura he carries himself with now — like he’s a man truly beginning to understand his worth — there he is. Tommy. He’s just appeared out of the side door on the house — one that has its own storm door and everything. He sees me and waves.
I hold my hand up in recognition, a smile automatically spreading across my lips. As I watch him practically sneak across his front yard, I notice that he’s in some slightly different clothes today. He looks super casual, but also nice-looking in a strange way. His outfit consists of baggy black jeans, a T-shirt with an eighties sci-fi movie scrolled across it, matching black tennis shoes, though scuffed. He’s got his longer, darker hair, swept back. His golden-brown eyes touch on me, and in them, I can see excitement along with desperation. There is also a hint of sorrow as well as if he’s holding on to some secret wound or some secret regret.
The sorrow disappears under a smile he tries on for me as he opens the passenger’s side door. He sits down with a huff and a sigh. The car rocks with his added weight, and he murmurs an apology about it.
I quickly lean over, kiss him on the cheek, and help him find the seatbelt buckle. “You have nothing to be sorry for, my love, only things to look forward to today. This is the date, not a judgment day.”
When Tommy doesn’t look completely convinced by my words, I give him an extra kiss. This one is closer to his mouth.
“Give me your worries, sir,” I whisper when he stubbornly refuses to give me a smile I know my kisses are forming in him. “Please, sir? It’s what receptionists are for. Listening to problems and solving them.”
Tommy turns to me. He smiles, but it’s weak and trembling. “Thanks, Melissa. Maybe later.” He looks out of the corner of his eyes toward the house to a part of the shaded windows. “For now, I just want to get out of here and forget everything and everyone around here for a while.”
Though my stomach knots over some of this, I don’t ask about it. I just nod and begin to pull out of the driveway. As I do, I pray that Tommy’s mood improves with the music and with knowing he’s with me now — and knowing that I have a fabulous day planned for us both.
After today, you’ll see yourself as I’ve always seen you: as a man with more promise and worth then the world has ever dared give him. When I’m done with you, you won’t ever doubt your capability and your strength. And you won’t keep surrounding yourself with things, people, and places below what you deserve. Starting with that house and ending with that horrible father, who I know you’re probably watching the window for.
No. After today, all of that’s going to be a thing of the past. The distant past, if I have anything to say about it.
Chapter Forty
Tommy
The day of our date has arrived. The date I’ve been waiting for, for over a week is finally here. I know I should be happy. And I am happy — to see Melissa, to be with her, to be in her car and heading away from my shitty dad and crappy house for a while — but I can’t be as happy as I want to be or as happy as I imagined I would be.
Dad made good on spending my money on all of the shit I knew he would last night. He came back with a metric-fuck-ton of lottery tickets. I don’t need to tell you that the money he invested didn’t pay off. The most he got was a fifty-dollar payout, out of probably what was at least five hundred spent on tickets for various games.
Worse than that, though, he came back with at least two cases of beer, a whole convenience store worth of snacks I hate, and enough porno mags to open up his own strip joint with all the pinups. And I had to hear him fucking masturbating to quite a few of them last night and this morning — right before meeting Melissa, in fact.
For all that punishment and abuse, I have only a couple hundred dollars to spend on today. A day I had promised I was going to use to lavish Melissa with meals and little gifts along with my own wardrobe update. Something I promised to furnish with my own money, while she provided the guidance.
