Page 38 of Trusting Blake
“You didn’t tell usthishappened!” she accuses, scooting the paper across to me and then pressing her index fingers to her temples.
“What is it, Marnie?” Dad asks. He screeches his chair back from the table and gets up, moving behind me to read over my shoulder.
The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is exactly the same as I had all those months ago in my own kitchen back home when Ruben showed me those headlines about me getting drunk on champagne and throwing up at Dad’s movie pre-screening event. Only this time, it feels worse, because I’m not the only person in the article.
Front and center is a photograph, one taken yesterday afternoon, right outside the front gate of the Harding Estate. In the midst of a blur of unfamiliar faces and a sea of cameras, there’s Blake and me. I’m pressed close against his back, my pink hair blown across my face, my features arranged in shock as Blake’s balled-up fist is suspended in midair. It’s the precise moment before Blake punched a pap in the face.
The headline reads:
SON OF NASHVILLE MAYOR LEANNE AVERY IN ALTERCATIONWITH PAPARAZZI OUTSIDE EVERETT HARDING’S FAMILY RANCH
Dad leans over me and snatches the newspaper to get a closer look. “Great, Mila! You picked a real winner!”
“The paps were being jerks!” I protest, knowing it’s not much of a defense.
“They’re always jerks, Mila!”
“Let me see,” Ruben grunts. Smoothie bowl in hand, he grabs the paper from Dad and leans back against his chair to study it. “Huh. This townreallyis the sticks – even their front-page news articles don’t flag up on my alerts.”
Sheri catches my eye across the table, her expression. . . disappointed. I doubt she’d have let me call Blake from her phone yesterday if she’d known he would punch a pap in the face when picking me up. I admit, it doesn’t make Blake look good, and this is a real dent in my efforts to win my parents around.
“The article mostly sweeps straight over you,” Ruben states, looking at me over the top of the newspaper. “This isn’t our problem. It’s a problem for thatdelightfulwoman, LeAnne Avery.” He sets the paper down and calmly takes a swig of his black coffee – after a week of staying at the ranch, Ruben has stopped complaining about standard filter coffee and learned to accept the offerings here.
“Mila,” Mom says, clinking her glass against the table. “Can I talk to you upstairs?”
I nod, and we rise from the table together, leaving the kitchen as Popeye mumbles something about how Dad and Ruben should quit pestering LeAnne after all these years, and we stop halfway up the stairs.
Mom leans against the wooden banister and crosses her arms, studying me intensely. Her demeanor is a lot more relaxed than last night. She and Dad were waiting for me in the living room when Ruben brought me home, and they bawled me out for what felt like hours. Though they are still fighting – quietly, at least – as a couple, they seem to have no problems uniting as parents, and they are growing increasingly exasperated by my behavior.
“Mila, do you seriously like Blake,” Mom says now, “or are you just trying to get back at your dad and me for not telling you how we really met? Because you have to understand that—”
“I really like him,” I cut in.
Mom sighs at me, thinking quietly for a moment. “But we live two thousand miles away,” she says. “C’mon, Mila. This can’t be anything other than a little summer romance, so I don’t know why you’re creating all this havoc just to see some guy.”
“And I don’t know why you’d date someone who had a fiancée, yet you were the one who ended up marrying him,” I fire back. “That’shavoc.” Mom flinches. I know I’m out of line, IknowI’m being a bitch to my own mother, but she is in no position to give dating advice. “Blake and me. . . We’ll figure something out. I’ll come stay here during the holidays, visit one weekend every month. Maybe he could visit me back home some time.”
“It’s just. . . so awkward, Mila.”
“Not for me it isn’t. I really like him,” I say again, harder this time so there is no doubt about it. “Can’t you and Dad get over yourselves and let me be happy? Maybe call Ruben off while you’re at it? Can’t you just let me – for once – make a decision by myself?”
Mom’s gaze softens. She reaches out to touch the ends of my pink hair, running her fingertips through the strands, and presses her lips together into a sad sort of smile. “When did my baby girl grow up?”
“It’s a work in progress,” I tell her, lightly reaching up to catch her fingers in my own. “I’m learning that you and Dad aren’t perfect, and that means I don’t have to be perfect either. Even though Ruben wants me to be.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Mom agrees, and I blink back at her in surprise. I expected this conversation to end up like all of the others with her and Dad this past week, but she’s actually listening to me this time. Am I getting through to her? Am I finally making my point clear? “But you’re still grounded for sneaking out twice, so under no circumstances are you allowed to leave. Blake will have to wait.”
“I know I can’t leave.” I smile sweetly. “But can I invite some friendshere? Just Savannah and Tori.”
“No.”
“Pleeeease,” I beg, pressing my hands together. “The atmosphere around here is mentally draining, Mom. You and Dad are pretty much locked in nonstop marriage counseling with Ruben at the helm, Popeye does nothing but grump and pick fights, and Sheri’s the only sane person around. It’s summer. I’m sixteen. . .Pleasecan I have some friends over?”
Mom mulls it over in her head. “I’d need to check with Sheri—”
“Sheri won’t mind.”
“IfSheri doesn’t mind,” Mom concedes with a scolding look, “then yes, maybe you can invite your friends over. Yourgirlfriends. No boys. No Blake.”
