Misfit(130)
“Son, are you there?”
“Yeah, Mom.” He cleared the emotion clogging his throat. “I’m here. Nothing’s wrong, except I haven’t spoken to you in weeks.” Months, but who was counting?
Even over the phone, he heard her grin. He was such a fucking asshole who had a good mom. Stretch was a good guy who had a self-righteous fool for a mother.
“I’m back in Houston. Can I expect a visit from you soon?”
Usually, he balked at the question. “Yeah. I need to spend more time with you.” He stood from the sofa and paced to the window. “Show my appreciation for you.”
His mom laughed and sniffled. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
Was it? He felt…How?
Scared. Out of his league.
Complete.
“I met somebody else,” he blurted. “I’m in a relationship with two somebodies.”
“Two?”
“Stretch and I are still together, but we’ve found a woman.” Finally, he could say they had found her. Fee gave them a choice, something Cash couldn’t have done without a lot of hurt feelings. “Her name’s Ophelia. Fee.”
Turning, he paced the length of the sitting room before returning to the window. The flags of the hotel directly across from the one they were in flapped in the afternoon breeze. “I lo...like her a lot. As much as I do Stretch. We all get along famously.”
He paused his narrative, thinking of this morning when she’d snuck a fuck with Stretch. Her patience was giving Stretch his confidence back. Cash had never suffered fools. Watching her, though, he knew he went overboard sometimes. If she hadn’t been with them, the King family would have to bury more than just Stretch’s father. Cash would’ve fucked up the entire fucking bunch.
“If you get along, what seems to be the problem?”
His mother never judged him. Not like he judged everyone.
“Fee wants kids, Mom. Domesticity. I want…” Not to be hurt. Not to hurt Fee and Stretch. “There’s no good ending to this,” he confessed, then explained Fee’s relationship to Outlaw.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That does present a problem.”
“Yes.”
“All problems have a solution,” she reminded him. “You just have to be willing to work it out.”
“The only solution I see here is ending it. There’s no way Outlaw would agree to both of us with his sister.” His mom had met Outlaw once, so she didn’t know him as Cash did. “I don’t know what to do.”
“First things first. I’d like to meet this young woman.”
Cash would like that. However… “She might read more into such a visit than there is.”
“Keep telling yourself that. You unburdened your soul to me. There’s already more to this relationship than you want to admit.”
“I need time to adjust. Think of how to come clean to Outlaw and live. I need to see if I really want kids.”
“Take the time you need, but don’t let them go if you have feelings for them. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She cleared her throat. “How does three people in a relationship work, Cash? What is it called?”
Cash smiled at his mother’s unapologetic questions, even as he appreciated her support. She had not a shred of censure. He took a few moments to educate her.
The door opened and Fee breezed in, looking like a breath of fresh air. She blew a kiss to him.
“I have to go, Mom.”
“Don’t be a stranger, son,” she said as shock marched across Fee’s face.
“A bad son,” he corrected with no small amount of guilt.
“Cash—”
“Maybe, Stretch’s father bit the dust to show fuckheads like me the value of my mother. Thank you for overlooking me not keeping in touch and offering me advice.”
“My expected payment is a visit to see me,” she said in a teasing voice. “Bye, son.”
“Bye, Mom.” He glanced at Fee as she sat on the sofa, then turned away, heat creeping into his face as he continued the conversation with his mother. He had something important to get off his chest. “I-I-I love you.”
The silence made Cash think she’d already disconnected, until she said, “And I love you, son. Never doubt that.”
“Have a good evening.”
“You too, Cash.”
Disconnecting the call, he laid his cellphone on the coffee table, still feeling the fire of embarrassment on his neck and in his face. He scratched his temple and considered Fee. “Where’s Stretch?”
“Still at the House of Horrors.” She shivered. “Jesus, I couldn’t take another minute there.”