Page 143 of When Fate Breaks
“Hi there, Bobby!” she grins, waving at him.
“Hello, Miss Emily,” Bobby nods, taking the information from me.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she pouts. “You know how my Blake Bear is.”
“I sure do, ma’am. Been pulling your boy over for speeding for over a decade now.”
“I always tell him to slow down.”
“Maybe one day,” Bobby replies with a tight smile, handing my license and registration back. “I’ll let ya off with a warning this time, boy. Slow it down,” he says, knocking on the hood of my truck with one knuckle before turning and walking back to his police car.
Bobby gives me a warningeverytime.
“Thank you!” my mom calls after him before I get a chance to respond.
I put the truck in drive and pull slowly back onto the road, waiting until Bobby is no longer in my rear-view mirror before I return to my normal speed.
“Mom, I’m 28 years old,” I say. “I think we can stop with the ‘Blake Bear’ now.”
Not two seconds later, I’m being whacked in the arm with a bottle of Dr. Pepper.
“Ow! What the hell, Mom?” I groan, rubbing at my arm.
My mom aggressively drops the bottle of Dr. Pepper back in my cup holder before spinning to look at me.
“Number one,” she says, holding up a finger, “Blake Alexander Di Fazio, I birthed you from my own loins, therefore, I will call you whatever I please until the day I leave this earth.”
“Please never say loins again.”
The Dr. Pepper bottle makes a return, smacking me on top of the head this time.
“Ah! Would youstop that?”
“And two,” my mom continues, ignoring my protests. “I’m not finished with our conversation from earlier. Where have you been the last two and a half weeks? And what happened wherever you were? Because you’ve been in a piss-poor mood since the moment you got back.”
“I got back last night. And I’ve only seen you in the last twenty minutes.”
She raises the Dr. Pepper bottle again and I flinch away, holding up my hand. She raises one brow at me. “Where were you, Blake?”
“I told you,” I say, finally relaxing once the bottle is back in the cupholder. “I had a job. Out of state.”
“Where?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
I glance at her and immediately look away.
Damn that mother’s intuition.
“South,” I reply, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“South,” she echoes me, her voice flat.
“Yes.”
A few seconds of silence go by before she says, “Blake, look at me.”
