Right Kind of Wrong(29)

He looked at the bedsheets and smiled sadly. “A midnight bird. I like that.” He pulled his eyes back up. “When I was seventeen and decided to get a tattoo, I wanted something that represented hope, and a bird seemed like the right symbol.”

“Sixteen?” I scoffed. “What kind of tattoo shop lets a minor get inked?”

“The kind in my hometown,” he said seriously.

“Huh.” I stroked my thumb over the midnight bird of hope, memorizing every line and curve of the design. “So you were hoping for something.”

He nodded.

I met his eyes. “And did you get it?”

He smiled. “Yep.”

I smiled back. “Then I guess it’s a lucky tattoo.”

“I guess so.” His grin grew and our gazes locked for a long moment before he suddenly said, “Pancakes.”

I laughed. “What?”

“We should make pancakes.”

My heart danced as I grinned from ear to ear. “We totally should.”

So we made pancakes, in the middle of the night.

I wore one of his T-shirts—nothing else—and sat cross-legged on his kitchen counter as he fed me bites of freshly made pancakes. All his forks were dirty, otherwise we might have used utensils instead of our fingers, but it was more fun with our hands anyway. Our hands were sticky with syrup, our bodies were sated from our time in bed together, and I was the most content I’ve probably ever been.

And then Jack said the worst possible thing.

“I like you, Jenna.” His eyes were serious and cutting into me like hot blades. “A lot.”

My first instinct was to say, I like you too. But my next instinct was to shout, No, I love you!

And then shit got real.

Because my heart wanted to scream, I want you forever! And that wasn’t a truth I was ready for. I stared down at his oversized shirt and went into complete panic mode. Shaking my head. Denying that I felt anything for him.

He called me on my bullshit and tried his damnedest to yank the truth from my mouth, but I was stubborn. I had every shield up, ready for battle, because I had big goals for myself.

What if Jack’s goals didn’t cooperate with mine? What then? Which one of us would get to fulfill our dreams? How many compromises would we have to make? Love doesn’t accommodate dreams; it crashes into them. And even though I wasn’t ready to admit it out loud, I knew pursuing something—anything—with Jack would lead to love, if it wasn’t swimming in it already.

And here he was, asking me to be okay with that. It just wasn’t fair. Jack couldn’t just come in and undo all my best-laid plans. I was protective of those plans for a reason and I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

I would not be my mother. Single. Poor. Heartbroken with dusty dreams that will never be achieved. And I wouldn’t be my grandmother either. I saw what loving a man had done to them, and I refused to follow in those footsteps.

My grandpa left my grandma when she was eight months pregnant for a waitress half her age, and Grams raised my mama in such poverty that she didn’t even know what a ten-dollar bill looked like until she was sixteen years old.

Mama worked her booty off, saving money so she could go to medical school and become a doctor. She had a dream—a plan. Then she fell in love with a handsome man and got pregnant with me four months later. My father promised her he’d be there. Promised her that she could finish school and accomplish her goals. He said he’d stand by her side and help her.

And then he woke up one day and told her he’d changed his mind. That being a father was too hard and that his dreams were more important than hers. He left her—he left us—and Mama was completely broken. We never had a secure income so we moved constantly, always getting evicted. Always behind on bills. The electricity would get shut off. The water. I moved from school to school, always having to make new friends and hope they didn’t notice that my clothes were too small for me because we couldn’t buy new ones that fit. That my shoes were worn with holes and muck. That my hair was dirty because sometimes we lived in Mama’s car without a bathroom to shower in.

I had no control, no certainty. As a child, I vowed to find a way to provide for myself. To make a life for myself where I could fall asleep easily each night without worrying about when I might get to eat again.

Things got better, eventually. When I was sixteen, Mama got a good job as a medical assistant at the local clinic. It didn’t pay a lot, but it was a steady paycheck with guaranteed health insurance. And as a bonus, it was in the medical field, so Mama was happy about that. I was able to get a job waitressing at a neighborhood café, and with our combined paychecks we were able to make a somewhat stable life for ourselves. Together.