“Right, Essence, but—”
“She gets a job, and she has kids, she busts her hump to be all she can be at work, then at home, and still she’s probably expected to make dinner and buy all the Christmas presents and wrap them. Topping that, she puts up with the judgment of the women who stay at home and raise their kids. If she decides to stay home and look after her children, she feels she has to be Supermom to prove to the women who decided to work that she made the right decision. ‘Look how great I am, I made a birthday cake in the shape of a tyrannosaurus rex and it’s so lifelike.’”
Oh God.
Now she was talking about T-rex cakes.
Before I could slide in there while Essence let out a disgusted snort, she kept right on talking.
“Who cares? All that matters is that it tastes good. Kids care for about two seconds their cake looks like a stupid dinosaur. Then they want to eat it. The woman made that cake to prove to her friends how great a mom she is. She’s a size two and makes a dinosaur cake and that means she’s a great mom? A worthy woman? It’s ludicrous.”
Okay, she’d clearly been wound up about all this on behalf of womankind for a long time.
Still.
“You’re so right. So, right, Ess—”
“You know who doesn’t worry about all that stuff?” she interrupted me to ask.
She didn’t wait for my answer.
“Men!” she exclaimed.
“Right,” I muttered, grabbing my beer, taking a sip and finding Rush’s gaze.
He lifted his brows.
I gave him big eyes.
He turned his head, but I still didn’t miss his smile.
I took another tug of beer so I wouldn’t throw the bottle at him.
I also settled in.
I bought this. I had to take it.
Even Rush’s amusement.
“You know what’s important to a kid?” she asked.
I had a few guesses.
I still said, “What?”
“That they get love and guidance and time. That’s what’s important to a kid. And Rebel, part of that love you give a kid is you teach them how to self-love. You do not run around trying to make everyone else’s life easier and better and just right without looking after yourself. Women find themselves at a time when their kids don’t need them, and working or stay-at-home, they don’t know who the hell they are. They don’t have any clue where the last fifteen years have gone. They’ve been so damned busy trying to prove that they can do it all, they forgot to do one of the most important things in their life. Live it.”
Okay.
I was beginning to see her point.
Suffice it to say, I’d known Essence a long time. I loved her. I admired how she lived her life how she wanted to live it and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. I knew her children. I knew her grandchildren. Only one family lived close, but they all came to visit her as often as they could. They were great, and even though they’d all chosen more conventional paths, they loved her too.
But I’d never realized she was so damned wise.
She kept at me.
“So little boys go on to be like their fathers who’ve had their wives look after them and buy the Christmas presents and wrap them, and those boys grow up and sit back and watch football. And little girls go on to be like their mothers, busting their booties to be everything to everyone and forgetting to look out for themselves. And it’s not their bad. It’s not their wrong. It’s how their mommas showed them how to be.”
“You’re right,” I whispered.
“You cannot be all to everybody, Rebel. You can’t right all the wrongs. You can’t cushion all the blows. You gotta learn to look after you. And I’m seeing you, especially you, have got to learn to do that and you’ve got to learn it now. You put yourself out there for a friend like you have, when you have a man, when you have kids, all the glory of you will fade to dust.”
I was still whispering when I said, “Yeah.”
She was silent a beat and I thought I could get in there and maybe calm her down and wrap this up, but she spoke again.
And I braced when she did because her voice was again gentle.
“Now you need to keep listening to me, Rebel girl, ’cause I’m gonna tell you something you think you know, but it’s clear you don’t. Murdered or not, Diane died of an illness. Addiction is an illness. People do not get that. They can’t see a mutated cell or a lesion or whatever it takes for them to believe, but as sure as cancer, if you don’t fight it, it’ll eat you alive. It ate her alive, darling. And you and her parents tried to fight it, but it was up to her to wage that war and like cancer, like diabetes, there are just some who won’t win. She didn’t win. And that’s not your fault.”
I dropped my head.
God, God.
I should have walked to Essence’s place and unloaded months ago.
God.
I was such an idiot.
I only lifted my head when I felt Rush’s hand curl around the back of my neck.
He was reaching across to me, his beautiful eyes soft and sweet.
“Okay?” he mouthed.
I wasn’t.
But I had a feeling I was getting there.
Essence was helping.
But it was mostly about those beautiful eyes across the counter, soft and sweet on me.
I nodded.
Rush’s hand gave me a squeeze and he let me go.
“You’re a beautiful soul,” Essence cooed in my ear. “And I sure am glad I know what’s put that gray in your aura that hasn’t gone away. Now I can help you bring back more pink, add some yellow and get you some green. But I want you to promise me you’ll call on me no matter what comes for you, you’re in my little cottage, or not. I love you like one of my own, Rebel, and it eats me you didn’t lean on me. I might no longer be young, but my heart’s working just fine, and you’re in it and just like you wanna take care of the ones in yours, others feel the same about you. So let us take care of you. Okay?”
“Okay, Essence.”
“Now go get your brains banged out by that beautiful biker,” Essence bid. “You come home, I want details. All that’s him, I’m sure the Goddess gave him a beautiful member. Be good to it, it’ll be good to you.”
I started giggling.
“Right. This little mama’s gonna light up a doobie,” she told me. “If any day deserves some good reefer, today is that day.”
“Don’t let Boz get too stoned,” I warned.
“We’ll be just fine. You hear that, Rebel girl? We’ll be just fine.”
“Love you, Essence,” I whispered.
“Love you back, child. Don’t be good,” she replied, then rang off.
I put my phone down and picked my beer up.
“My take from your end of that, which wasn’t much, she read you and good,” Rush remarked.
“Hmm,” I hummed, swallowing beer, wishing it was more tequila.
He grinned at me and slugged back more of his own beer.
Then he leaned into his forearms on the counter across from me.
Okay.
Straight up.
I could simply look at this man for eternity.
He was that amazing.
“You wanna take our beers in and watch TV?” he asked.
Okay.
Straight up.
I could kiss this man for eternity, not only because he was a fantastic kisser, but because he was just that sweet.
Things had been extreme, but he had not once made a mention, or even assumed a look like he was ticked about what was interrupted on his couch.
And I felt him hard against me, we were going fast and it was getting intense and all that had been outstanding, and then he was racing us across town to look at a dead body.
Not a word.
Not a look.
And now he was offering me beer and TV.
No pressure.
Just unwinding.
In his house, where he’d moved me in to look after me.
On our first date.
“You know, I can probably call Diesel. Head down to Phoenix. Put up with their sex noises, and D and Mad will look after me, and Molly will feed me, and I’ll be safe. You don’t have to move me into your awesome bachelor pad to look out for me.”
“You stay, am I eventually gonna get laid?” he asked.
But it was a tease.
Still.
I gave it to him straight.
“Yes.”
His gaze grew gentle on me, not heated.
He wanted that, but he wasn’t going to push it and he liked my honesty and showed it.
I mean, seriously?
This guy really could not be real.
“I like my space, Rebel,” he said quietly. “But I also like you. Lived twenty-nine years waking up mostly alone. Spent the last ten coming home to an empty house. I figure I’ll get off on the change.”
That was nice, him continuing to be so sweet.
But I was staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re twenty-nine?”
“Yeah.”
How could he only be twenty-nine?
He didn’t look twenty-nine.
All right. Riding his bike, sun and wind explained those little lines by his eyes.
But he did not act twenty-nine.
He acted far older (read, far wiser) than that.
“What?” he asked again.
“I’m thirty.”
“Yeah?”
That yeah was more so?
I was staring at him again.
I was one year older than him.
Maybe not even a year.
Why did I instantly jump to the thought he might not be all right with that?
The way he was looking at me, he was all right with that.
Something else struck me as I kept staring at him.