Page 28 of The Rules

“I was the best man, Ma,” he said. “I was in charge of the party.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Besides, I didn’t want to split my time between a date and my mother. Whoever I brought would be sorely disappointed.”

She shook her head but her cheeks turned red. “You’re flattering me because you want food.”

He stood and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, kissing her temple. “I can get food anywhere. I wantyourfood.”

That was enough to put a smile on her face and she went back to humming at the stove. Doing a quick check of his clothes for sand, he went to her living room to find the television on.

“Ma, what the hell is this?” he asked, falling onto the couch and searching the cushions for the remote.

“Don’t you dare switch that station, Dylan.” Irene came rushing into the living room, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve been waiting all day to see what happens with Felicia’s husband when he finds out she married someone else while he was in a coma.”

“Huh?” He held up a hand, thinking better of asking for an explanation. “Can’t you wait another hour or so?”

“You want to be fed, you’ll leave my television alone.”

“Fine, but I don’t get why you watch this romance crap,” he teased. “It’s nonsense.”

“You sound just like your father,” she said with a sappy smile.

His smile fell.Here we go.

This was the other thing he could count on when he came here for a meal. The chores and the towel he could take, but why his mother thought it was a compliment to compare him to his drunk, serial cheater of an old man was beyond Dylan.

“You know I hate it when you say that, Ma.”

“Oh, Dylan.” She dropped into the chair across from him and brushed invisible lint from her pants. “You know, when I was pregnant with you, I would look forward to this show coming on so that I could sit and put my feet up for an hour and just get lost in the story. We didn’t have DVR then, so I had to get all of my house work done and get Katie down for her nap in time for it to start. You’ve been watching it as long as I have.”

“Maybe Dad could have been home more,” Dylan said. “Helped you out a little.”

“Dylan, not everyone owns their own business and makes their own schedule.”

He huffed out a laugh, forcing himself to let it go. She’d been doing this since he was a kid—making excuses, bending the truth to make it more palatable. His mother wasn’t crazy and she sure as hell wasn’t stupid, but when it came to his father, she was the definition of out of her mind. If it weren’t for his sister, Katie, Dylan might have thought he was the crazy one, but they both remembered the way his old man had dropped them all like a hobby he’d gotten bored of, even if his mother liked to remember it differently.

The truth was that a lot of his dad’s “long days at work” were sick-days turned seedy hotel room meetups with women he met at bars. And yet, for some reason, twenty-two years after he’d taken off with one of them, his mother was still making excuses for the bastard. And still tossing out comparisons between his father and him, while willfully ignoring the way they cut at him.

Unlike Vinnie Pierce, Dylan had never paid for sex. He’d had his fair share of women, sure, but he’dnevercheated, and he didn’t spend whole paychecks on swill from a can. Still, vices were vices whether you poured them from the top shelf or the well. What was the likelihood that he’d be raised by a man like Vinnie Pierce and not inherit an inclination to fall victim to them? He didn’t need the reminder of the damage his genes carried.

He studied his mother, hands folded in her lap, her olive skin permanently lined from a life of hard work and disappointment. That’s what marriage was really about, making excuses for hurting someone or lying to yourself about how much someone hurt you until you were so worn down you couldn’t tell the difference between love and pain. And he wanted none of it.

He opened his mouth to say so, but his gut twisted, and he reminded himself not to make things harder on her now by arguing about the past. “You’re right,” he said. “Sorry, Ma. Lunch smells amazing, by the way. Thanks for cooking.”

Her face brightened. “You’re welcome, sweety.”

He stood and walked to her chair, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “You have anything you want me to take care of while I’m here?”

“Oh, yes.” She pulled herself to her feet and headed toward the back door, rattling off a list with a smile on her face.

There. See? He was absolutelynothinglike his father.

Ten

Dylan felt a vague senseof crankiness inching over him as he waited in a line of evening traffic. Beside him, Josh tapped his fingers on the notebook on his lap, staring out the window. He’d been frustratingly quiet all day, and Dylan was starting to take it personally. Not that he needed to chit-chat the whole ride, but a little acknowledgment that he was sitting there might be nice.

Dylan reached up to loosen his tie, then turned the knob to get more cold air. The car crept another couple of feet, then red. Another pointless horn sounded.

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