Page 63 of Raising Love
I turned on my shower and peeled off my clothes, praying that the water would cleanse my skin—and the feelings I thought were developing for Leo—but that I needed to just go away.
And fast.
FIFTEEN
leo
The sound of my mother moving pots along a burner grate as she rambled on about how she wasn’t expecting me but was so happy to see me filled my sound-space.
“Thankfully, I stopped at the market earlier,” she said, her eyes searching her counter. “Because I got some stuff here to make your favorite. You’re hungry, right?”
All I did was nod before leaning forward over the island, folding my arms so I could balance my chin on top of them.
My mother turned to glance at me before turning completely to face me, waving her wooden spoon at me.
“Aht, aht,” she said with a grin. “You know the rules. You wanna eat, you better help. Up, up!”
I snorted a laugh, standing from my seat and making my way around it toward the stove.
My visit to my mother’s house was not planned, but I couldn’t take staying in Greene Gardens for another minute. My team and I had a couple of rest days between games, which would’ve been great before all this shit with Ivy—but now it just made my time at Greene Gardens feel like torment.
I bought this house for my mother. It took a lot of convincing for her to move out of our old one, with her fussing that the old house was her forever home.
But eight years ago, when I was drafted by the Ballers and received my sign-on bonus, one of the first things I knew I wanted to do was buy my mother a bigger house.
She worked hard raising me on her own. I didn’t make life as easy as I could’ve growing up. It was her who put me in sports at a young age. I did so many sports, and I finally settled on basketball, which became more than a way to keep me out of trouble when school was out. It became my ticket to college and, eventually, a professional basketball career with the Ballers at twenty-two. I was eight years strong with my team. And that was all my mama.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, her attention down on the green peppers. “You look… tired.”
I sighed and shook my head at the same time. “It’s a lot of stuff happening right now, Mama,” I confessed. “Too much.”
She stared at me for a moment, her eyes scanning my face.
I snorted to myself. Ivy did the same thing a lot, and it always reminded me of my mother. It was probably why I hated when Ivy did it.
“Get the tomatoes from the fridge so you can cut them up,” she instructed, gesturing that way. “And tell me what’s going on.”
My mother’s house was every bit her style—from the soft pastel blue paint on just about all the walls to the flower baskets that hung on the spacious wrap-around porch, it was all Cheryl Vanguard.
My father, Felix Vanguard, died when I was only a kid, two months after my eighth birthday. I have memories of him, but none concrete enough. My mother and he were not on the greatest of terms when she finally got pregnant with me, and once I was born, my arrival seemed to worsen what was already turning sour in their marriage. She doesn’t speak of it often, even at my big age. She always says she wants me to maintain a good memory of him because, at the end, that was all that mattered.
She always said I was a lot like him… and not always in a good way.
“Ivy and I,” I started. “We got beef.”
My mother turned her head to look my way. “What did you do?”
I barked a laugh. “Damn. Why I had to have done something?”
“Because Ivy is a sweet woman who don’t look like she causes problems.”
I shook my head as I reached for the knife to begin dicing the tomatoes I’d gotten from the fridge. “That’s foul, Mama.”
“Well…” She turned to look at me. “Is it true?”
I stopped dicing to drop my head and inhale a deep breath.
“Because the last time I spoke with you about this, I told you not to leave everything up to her,” she started. “Raising a baby is difficult. Then you tack on the fact that neither of you were ready for that. She can’t do it alone.”
