Page 88 of RomeAntically Challenged
The part that really scared her, she realized in the middle of a cold shower, was that when she was first coming awake, in that split second when dreams merge with reality, she’d had this overwhelming feeling of belonging.
She’d gone to Pho Shizzle tonight searching for a better understanding of who she was, where she came from. Yet she’d walked away feeling as if she were an interloper and worrying that she’d always be in transition. Her outsider status gave her the fluidity to move from one group to the next, one patient to another, make them all feel loved and cared for in the moments when their own people couldn’t be by their side.
But when she’d been curled into Emmitt’s side, their arms causally slung over one another, their bodies stuck together like magnets, she’d imagined that was what it felt like to be with “your person.”
Here she was, no longer touching him, and that feeling hadn’t disappeared in the slightest.
A gentle breeze lifted the curtain, and a few of the leftover sprinkles dotted the fabric. The storm had passed through, but Annie didn’t want to risk getting the windowsill wet. She rolled off the bed and padded over to close it.
The night was still. The leaves on the maple tree hung heavy with rain, and the grass shimmered in the moonlight. She watched the runoff slide down the roof in a slow but steady drip into the swimming pool below, creating ripples on the surface and breathed in the fresh scent, which reminded her of wearing her dad’s bright yellow galoshes and jumping through puddles.
She was about to close the window when something caught her eye at the far end of the pool. Two lean legs hung over the side, their bare feet dangling in the water. A closer look revealed Paisley, slouched on a cushion from the patio chair and dressed in jeans and a drenched hoodie, looking small and lost.
Annie checked the time even though she already knew that it was way past curfew.
She quickly ran through every option before deciding that there was no right way to handle this situation. The possibility that any of Paisley’s dads would allow her to wander between houses this early in the morning, was close to nil. Especially when it was cold and wet out. Nope, if anyone knew she wasn’t safe in her bed, Emmitt would already be out searching for her.
His first stop would likely be Sam’s house.
To add to Annie’s conflict, Paisley had come here, to Emmitt’s, for a reason. It seemed she was waiting for the courage to reveal that reason because she hadn’t bothered to wake him. So while the adult thing to do would be to wake Emmitt and tell him his daughter was crying in the backyard, girl code demanded that Annie go out there and see if Paisley needed to talk.
When put like that, her choice was clear.
Grabbing a roll of chocolate doughnuts from her emergency stash—some people had Go Bags; she had doughnuts—and the blanket off the bed, Annie climbed through the window.
She wasn’t even all the way out when Paisley spotted her. Without missing a beat, Annie confidently strode across the deck as if she were meeting up for a girl chat and plopped down next to Paisley.
Paisley watched, eyes wide like a cornered bobcat, as Annie wrapped herself in the blanket, then opened the roll of doughnuts and popped one in her mouth. She may have moaned just a little, then licked her fingers before grabbing another. This one, she nibbled at before setting the bag on the edge of the blanket nearest Paisley.
Paisley cautiously met Annie’s gaze in question and Annie shrugged a shoulder, letting her know the doughnuts were fair game.
Paisley selected one, and the crinkle of the plastic was amplified by the stillness of the night. Neither said anything for a long while, just sat beside one another, watching the movement of the water. At one point Paisley pulled her feet out of the pool and hugged her knees to her chest. Annie took a corner of the blanket and draped it over her knees.
When the last doughnut was gone, Paisley asked, “You going to tell my dad?”
“Depends,” Annie said. “Do you think he’d be worried if he found you weren’t where you were supposed to be?”
“I guess.” Paisley tilted her head slightly toward Annie. “But everyone else does it and no one freaks out. I mean, Dad One gets a call and the next day he’s gone, or Bonus goes out sometimes for month-long sailing trips and no one says a word. But if I want just a quiet night to myself, or to go to the beach and just think, my dads think I’m depressed or that something’s wrong.”
Annie considered what Paisley had said, put two and two together, that Dad One was Emmitt and Bonus was her uncle. “What’s Gray’s nickname?”
“Dad Two.”
“Do they know you call them that?”
She scoffed. “No. I don’t do it to be mean. I do it because when I’m really upset, calling them Dad One or whatever takes some of the sting out of it.”
“Makes sense,” Annie said, looking back out at the pool. “My dad calls me Flapjack.”
“Are you like a pancake freak?”
“I like them, but I’m really apastry for breakfastkind of girl.” Annie shook the empty bag, and Paisley gave a tiny laugh, not much more than a little breath pushing through her nose, but Annie could tell she was starting to relax.
“Then why did he call you that?”
“When I was six, my parents tried to enroll me in school, but they discovered one of the papers from my adoption had never been filed, so the adoption had never been finalized. My parents had to go through the whole adoption process again, prove they were good parents, that they had no criminal background, a ton of red tape kind of stuff. Then they had to go in front of a judge and petition to adopt the daughter they’d raised since birth,” Annie said. “So for about two months my parents were terrified that they’d somehow lose me.”
“They were your parents—how could someone just decide to take you away?” Paisley asked in a protective tone that was all Emmitt.
