Page 9 of The Biker and the Loner
Her emerald eyes which were once full of life and warmth, are now vacant, dull. They’ve been that way since Papà left us.
Releasing a relieved sigh, she takes a sip of her wine. “Thank God, you are back. It was getting lonely around here.”
It’s always lonely around here.
Six bedrooms, seven and a half bathrooms, and we’re the only ones who live here.
Carefully, I ask, “You’re okay?”
“Now that you are here, yes.” She pats a spot next to her on the chaise. “Come sit with me, baby.”
I’ve learned a long time ago never to deny her. Setting my bag and car keys aside, I go to sit beside her.
Gently, she pokes her toes into my side as she swirls her glass of wine, watching me with those lifeless eyes. “Where do you go?”
Avoiding eye contact, I stall, “What?”
“When you leave here in the late mornings. Where do you go?”
I shrug with feigned nonchalance. “To the park. To people-watch. To think.”
“Think about what?”
I blow out a breath and circle my wrist. “To think about the fact that I’m twenty-five and I don’t have a life, or a career, or passion, or goals. I have...nothing.”
“You…ungrateful bitch,” she says in that dead voice of hers. “You have everything. Look aroundyou. How many people do you think can afford to live like this? All of this”—she waves her free hand around—“is yours.”
“No, mom, it’syours.”
She presses her lips together. “You have a trust fund—”
“That you change the access age to every year.”
At first, I was supposed to get my trust fund at nineteen. Only to find out, on my nineteenth birthday, she had pushed it to twenty-one. At twenty-one, I learned she changed it again. Then again the next year…
Why? Because she’s afraid I’ll leave. It’s her attempt to control me, erroneously thinking that the promise of millions is what’s keeping me here. It isn’t.
Intoxicated, she struggles to sit up and red wine sloshes from her glass onto the chaise. That stain’s never going to come out. There goes another ivory chaise. The fourth one in the past two months.
I lean over and take the glass from her before she can spill wine all over the white rug.
Once I have it safely out of her calamitous hands, she uses the opportunity to grab my face and pull it close to hers. Her thumbs caress the soft spot under my ears—she knows my body responds to that.
“Tell me what I can do,” she pleads. “Tell me what I can do to make you happier.”
There’s nothing. Because the truth is, even if she does tell me to go, I’ll never leave. Not when she’s this messed up. Who’ll be there for her? She would only stay here and waste away on pills and booze.
Papà asked me to take care of her with his last breath, and I promised him that I would. There’s no one on this earth whom I love more than that man.
Kathy is a detriment to my happiness, a hazard to my mental health, and a violator of my sexuality, but I’ll never break my promise to Juan Oliveros.
“Be stronger,” I whisper in return. “Just open your eyes andseethat I’m not him.”
Tears brim her eyes as she shakes her head. “I cannot.” Tears fall. “I love you. I love him. I love you. I love him. I loveyou…”
Then, she kisses me.
And because I never deny her, I kiss her back.
