Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (26 page)

We managed to get everything loaded into the trucks by six o’clock. Instead of working a double shift, the movers drove the trucks back to where they usually parked overnight, and would return in the morning, to the new location, where we’d unload.

Three things about the move surprised me.

1. Given all the people we had on site, I thought we would have been done by lunch time, but everything took so long. I bet if the movers had been paid a flat rate instead of hourly, they wouldn’t have spent so long fucking around with things needlessly. (Here’s a hint, guys: I’m no rocket scientist, but I know not to spend twenty minutes re-arranging a dozen huge boxes to save three cubic feet of space for a two-mile move.)

2. You’d swear, by the assortment of stuff found under the shelves (dice, bookmarks, dog treats, candies, elastic bands, and two rubber balls), that we hadn’t cleaned the store. Ever.

3. The store didn’t look bigger without the stuff. It didn’t look like an enormous lofty space for roller skating. It just looked like a very sad retail store that specialized in dust.

Gordon didn’t even seem excited at the end of the day, now that he could see what he was getting for the wine store.

“I guess I’ll deal with this eventually,” he said, and started papering up the windows with brown paper.

Gordon explained the paper was to create an aura of mystery and excitement about the renovation. Personally, I think it was to protect the old gal’s modesty, so people wouldn’t see the store nearly naked, looking worn out and forlorn with her scratched-up floors.

I’d said goodbye the day before, but I
felt it
that day when I walked out, leaving behind nothing but memories.

“I need a new body,” Adrian groaned as he rubbed his lower back.

We stood outside the bookstore, watching more brown paper go up in the windows, until there was nothing left to see.

“You could come to my house for a hot bath,” I offered. “We boil the kettle a few times to get it full and hot, but the tub’s got a good shape, and I have lots of girlie lotions.”

“Will you get in with me?”

“Hah! The tub’s not as big as…” Not as big as the one in the fancy hotel—the one I shared with Dalton in San Francisco three days ago.

Adrian gave me a loose hug and kissed the top of my head. “Thanks, but I’ve gotta go shower.”

“You could shower at my house.”

He looked down at me, his blue eyes looking sad—sad that I was so stupid, and couldn’t figure out he had a date with Golden that night.

“Another time,” I said, speaking before he could elaborate on exactly why he wasn’t coming over. “I’ve got some things to do on my own, anyway.”

“Say hi to Shayla for me,” he said.

I got another kiss on my forehead, plus a brief one on my lips, then he was off, rubbing his lower back.

A second later, I heard something that sent a chill down my spine.

My mother.

Yelling: “Petra Grace Luanne Clever Monroe!”

I turned around to find a middle-aged woman with freshly-streaked hair marching in my direction. (Yes, I have three middle names. Long story.)

“Mom, your hair looks great! Did you get a trim?”

She shook her phone at me. “Thissss!” She pointed to the phone as she got closer. “Thissssssssss.”

“Mom, you sound like Golem, with his Preciousssss.”

She stopped in front of me and shook her phone at my face. When the phone finally held still for more than a second, I was able to make out a photo of me and Dalton, posing together in San Francisco. Judging from that clue, as well as the fact her expression matched the one she gets when talking about my father’s ugly recliner or his methods for watering the hedges, it was safe to say she knew about the engagement.

“Surprise!” I said.

“My hairdresser.” She shook her head, to upset for complete sentences. “I said of course not.” She shook the phone some more. “Your own mother!” She made a choking sound, then some more garbled words.

“I was going to tell you, Mom. I’ve just been so busy, with the—”

“San Francisco!”

“You can come with me on the next trip. The plane seats six, plus the butler. I mean, the pilot. The pilot-butler.”

She started crying. “My baby’s getting married!” she wailed.

“Actually—”

“In two weeks!” She threw her arms around me, gripping me in one of the tightest hugs I’d ever experienced in my twenty-two years on the planet.

She gushed, “We don’t have long, and I need to find the perfect Mother of the Bride dress, and it’s short notice for the family back east, but I’m sure a few will come, and there’s so much to arrange, and—” Her words choked off in a happy sob.

“Two weeks?” That was funny, since I didn’t remember setting a date for my PR wedding.
Fuck me like a pinkie finger in a powdered donut hole.

I really needed to get Shayla working for me on a regular basis. I needed someone to google me and filter out all the mean gossip while keeping me up to speed on my wedding dates and whatnot.

My mother asked, “Will Kyle be the ring bearer? I’ll have to get him a tuxedo. What are the colors?”

I couldn’t see her face, because she kept squeezing me, twirling us in a circle in her excitement.

“Mom, you’re making me dizzy.” I pushed her away and held her at a distance, my hands on her shoulders. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Of course I am. Furious. Can’t you tell?” Her flushed cheeks rose like apples on either side of a huge smile, and her eyes held happy tears.

“I’m getting married in two weeks.” Saying the words out loud didn’t make the situation any less surreal.

“We haven’t even met Dalton’s family yet, and your father and I barely met him that once. Why such a rush? Is there something else I should know about?”

She gave my midsection an accusatory look.

“Mom, I’m not pregnant, I swear.”

“You can understand why I wouldn’t take you for your word.”

“I’ll pee on a stick if you want.” I leaned in and whispered. “Aunt Flo is in town at the moment, so I’m pretty sure.”

“You probably didn’t tell us about the wedding because you thought I’d disapprove, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Now, you know I love your father—love him to pieces—but plenty of days I find myself wondering what might have happened if I’d married that famous actor, instead of just getting rogered by him.”

I looked around the street, feeling self-conscious about people overhearing us. “Mom, do you want to go somewhere a little less sidewalk-y to discuss getting rogered?”

“Good idea. My car’s back at the hairdresser’s.”

We walked up to her car and got in. She started driving, and told me there’d been more to the story of her affair with a famous art restoration client than she’d originally let on. The man hadn’t just rogered her at the art studio. He’d also flown her to Europe, and rogered her in the Swiss Alps, and in a small, very hot Venice apartment above a glass-blowing studio. Name a major city in Europe, and he’d rogered my mother there.

We pulled into a parking spot at the Barking Dog, an English-style pub near the edge of town. I begged her to stop talking about the specifics of her European tour.

“Mom, all this time, I thought you saw those museums and art galleries on a backpacking tour with your girlfriends.”

“That’s what your father thinks, too, so let’s not tell him. You know men. They get so jealous and possessive.”

“Be honest with me. Dad is still my father, isn’t he?”

“Sweetheart, you’ve got his brains. Isn’t that evidence enough? Besides, everything ended with (the movie star; name redacted to protect my mother from Scientologists) long before I even met your father. He’s the one who healed my heart, you know.” She popped open the car door. “Kyle’s with your father. Let’s get dinner here. I’d love to eat a meal I don’t have to cook or wash up after.” She gasped. “Lucky you, marrying rich. You won’t have to scrub anyone’s dirty gonchies. The maid will do that for you.”

We walked into the pub, me shaking my head as my mother listed all the things other people would take care of for me.

Once we were seated, I said, “Money isn’t everything. Aren’t you worried that we don’t know Dalton very well?”

“My first impressions are rarely wrong,” she said, sounding confident. “He seemed lovely at your cousin Marita’s wedding, and he was nice to Kyle, and he loves my beautiful daughter—though who wouldn’t—so I’m not worried.”

“What about Dad?”

“No boy will ever be good enough for his daughter, but he got over his fury about you parading around in your underpants, so he’ll come around.”

“He was upset about me modeling?”

“Livid. I had to give him a Time Out.”

“Wow.” A Time Out was something relatively new to the Monroe household, invented to calm down Kyle when he went through a tantrum phase. When you get a Time Out, you have to sit quietly with a blanket covering your entire body. You can wail and cry and rant as much as you want, but you can’t come out of the blanket until you’ve settled down.

I’m certainly no parenting expert, but speaking as the
subject
of a few Time Outs when I was a teenager, I must say there’s something very soothing about wailing and blubbering about the unfairness of life while under a fluffy blanket. You eventually get bored of your garbage and move your mouth to the edge of the blanket for more oxygen. Once you inhale that sweet, fresh air, you realize that’s what sanity tastes like, and you want sanity.*

*And you also want to eat your dinner, and not inside a blanket that smells like your breath.

“Your father eventually came around,” my mother said.

“I had no idea. He acted so calm when he was working on the contract.”

“Men guard their emotions. Their kind have many advantages in this world, from height and strength to writing their names in the snow, but they hide their feelings. Maybe it’s another advantage they have over us. I don’t know.”

The waitress came by to drop off our Diet Cokes and take our food order. We both asked for the beef dip with a side of horse radish. I never order the beef dip, unless I’m out with my mother. It had been too long since we’d gone out, just the two of us.

Once we were alone again, I asked my mother, “How do you get a guy to open up to you?”

“You have to listen. And what I mean by
listen
is you have to shut up on occasion.” She started to laugh. “I’m still working on that, but Aunt Gracie told me that trick on my wedding day, and she’s a wise lady.”

“You have to shut up?” I joined in with her laughter. “Sounds like more effort than it’s worth. I mean, how many feelings could they possibly have?”

She began laughing harder, tears at her eyes. “Men have plenty of feelings. There’s Sleepy and Grouchy and… wait, no, those are the seven dwarves.”

“Same difference.”

She howled with laughter. “Being sexist is so much fun.”

“Did I ever tell you about the he-man gorilla showdown, where Dalton cranked up the crazy airplane fans in his house?”

She wiped at her eyes with a napkin. “Maybe you shouldn’t. He’s going to be my son-in-law.”

“You should know what you’re getting into,” I said, then I relayed the entire story, including the bit where Dalton whispered something in Keith’s ear as we were leaving.

“Well?” Her eyes were big. “What did he say?”

“I don’t know.”

She sat back, crossing her arms. “That’s not much of a story, without the best part.”

“I’ll find out, Mom. I’ll tell you, unless it’s something gross.”

She made a face. “Now, about my dress,” she said, and we moved quickly into talking about wedding preparations.

The food came, and I was surprised by my hunger. The day of moving had been long, but sitting in the warm pub with my mother, as people came and went around us, pool balls clinking on the nearby pool table, everything in my life seemed to be working out for the best.

Basking in the warmth of my mother’s happy glow, I completely forgot the wedding was fake, and that I’d still be spending the rest of the week lugging around boxes of books with the other guy I was dating.

After the plates were cleared, my mother got out her phone to check for messages, and I did the same.

I had a new message from Dalton:
Hey.

“Speak of the devil,” I said out loud.

“Is that your
fiancé
?” She put an extra-strong emphasis on the word fiancé.

“Yup, just my fiancé. Checking in.”

“Tell your fiancé I said hello.”

“I will tell my fiancé that!”

We went on for a bit, and the waitress who refilled our Diet Cokes must have thought we were crazy.

My hands were sweating as I wrote back:
Your apology card was very sweet. I liked the frog.

Dalton:
I took your advice about getting someone to help with my heartfelt speeches, but the card was the best I could do on short notice.

Me:
I’m sorry I got so worked up in San Francisco.

Dalton:
I need to ask you something.

Me:
Ask me. Don’t ask me if you can ask me. You’re killing me with the suspense.

Dalton:
Would you bring your family this weekend to a winery I have booked for us? I want your people to meet my people.

Me:
Do you mean meet your family?

Dalton:
Yes.

I must have started breathing funny and making a face, because my mother asked what was going on.

I explained, “Dalton wants to have you and Dad go on a trip this weekend, to a winery. We’ll meet his family. I don’t know what that means. His mother… well, she died a while back. And I didn’t think he was speaking to his father, but I guess they’ve sorted things out.”

She nodded. “A wedding, like babies, can bring people together. Weddings are as much for the extended family as for the young couple. If it wasn’t for weddings, we’d only see each other at funerals.”

“Dark, Mom. Really dark.”

“His father was in a lot of those adult movies. Do you think he’s proud that his son has done so well at acting? It can be difficult for a parent, when their child does
too
well. We all hope for the best for our kids, but… we don’t want them to be ashamed of us.”