You know, besides Dex.
My stomach couldn't help but clench up at the reminder.
I didn't recognize hardly anyone beside a couple of the women I'd met at Mayhem weeks back, but I couldn't remember their names to save my life. No one paid us any attention as we walked up to the group until we stopped alongside the picnic table furthest away from the lake shore.
"I'll leave our shit right here—" Dex started to say, dropping our two bags onto the bench.
"It's about time you got here," a woman's voice suddenly said. "We've been waiting for you to start grilling, Dex."
Holy crap.
The woman standing just to the side of Dex had to be his mom. The hair color, that square jaw line, the eye color—it was all the same. Well, minus the boobs and the gray hairs that peppered her blue-black mane. She even had the same smirk as she looked at what had to be her son.
"I'm not even late, Ma," Dex confirmed it, turning around with a matching sneer on his full, pink mouth. Holding out his arms, the woman stepped into them, slapping him on the back, hard.
"You're never late." She laughed. Her dark blue gaze moved from the ground and zeroed in on me just standing there. Her eyes went up, up, up, before they stopped on my face, and she frowned. "Oh dear."
I wanted to say something but I didn't because my stomach dropped nervously. Why hadn't I stayed at his house?
"You look just like Delia," she choked out.
My mom? Suddenly my voice seemed to find its way back to my throat. "Hi, Mrs. Locke." Shit. I hope she still went by Locke or this was going to be incredibly awkward.
Before I even realized what the hell was going on, Mrs. Locke—I hoped—was pushing Dex out of the way to stand right in front of me. Nearly eye to eye if it wasn't for the inch or two she had on me. Her fingertips moved to my face, prodding at my cheekbones. "Girl, you could pass for your mama," she breathed.
Of course, I started smiling like a fool, all overwhelmed nerves. "Thank you. You're really pretty." How lame was that?
It must not have been that lame because Mrs. Locke laughed right in my face. "I know."
Dear God, this woman really was a female Dex.
But just as quickly as she laughed, her face sobered, and no. I knew that face. I knew the words that were going to come out her mouth before they actually did. "I'm so sorry about your mama," she said in a low voice. Those dark blue eyes turned sad and heavy, and shit, shit, shit this was too soon after my conversation with Sonny to think about her.
"Thanks," I somehow managed to cough out.
"Ma, where's the food?" Dex rudely interrupted.
Those strangely familiar cobalt blue eyes narrowed in the direction of the man that unhinged me half the time. What came out of her mouth next made me laugh because I couldn't help but believe she was one of the select few that could talk to her Dex so crisply. "Open your eyes, dipshit."
~ * ~ *
"What are you doing out here all alone?" Dex's mom asked just as I'd started pulling my dress over my head.
For the last twenty or so minutes, I'd been sitting on the edge of the sandy shore, watching the group of shrieking little heathens throw sand at each other. After spending the last hour sitting and watching the group of people I barely knew interact with each other, it'd gotten to be too much. Their familiarity, their easiness, made me nostalgic.
It wasn't often that I was really struck by how lonely I was. Well, at least how lonely I'd become since Will left, even while living with Lanie.
Before, I always had someone. After The Greatest Disappointment left, it was Mom, Will, yia-yia and me. Then, everyone started getting picked off. We'd always been a tight-knit group. Everything was communal. We all worked in whatever way we could for the other, for the greater good of the family.
And now all I had left was Sonny. My little brother, the same little brother that I'd busted my ass for, couldn't even email me back.
So being around Dex's family, both the biological and the motorcycle club, reminded me of how in-between I was. I was but I wasn't one of them. I was but I wasn't Sonny's sister. I was but I wasn't a lot of things.
After getting introduced to a cousin of Mrs. Locke—or Debra as she'd asked me to call her—I made my way toward the beach where all the kids were. I realized it was rude but it just made me too sad to be around such a close group at least in that moment.
It made me want something that I wasn't sure I'd ever have again.
"I just needed a little break. I have a headache," I told her before throwing my dress onto the towel I'd bunched up on the sand.
She smiled sadly, and I had to wonder whether she had any idea that I was lying. She probably did. My mom had always known and so had yia-yia. It had to be some weird mom-instinct that gave them bullshit meters.