Just Let Me Love You

by S. R. Grey

“Well.” She blows out a breath, and then surprises me when she says, “I have to say I think you may be the best thing that has happened to my son. He’s a little high-strung at the moment”—he’s high-strung? I almost blurt out—“but overall, he seems…different around you.”

  “Oh?” I raise a brow, curious as to her perceptions. “How does he seem different?”

  Abby taps a pink manicured nail to her chin in a thoughtful manner. “Chase is definitely calmer than he was a few months ago,” she begins. “And, despite his irritation with me a few minutes ago, he seems more grounded.”

  Okay, so this woman is not completely flighty and unaware. She’s perceptive when it suits her, or so it seems.

  I relax a bit.

  She relaxes too, and after a few more minutes of idle chit-chat, Abby asks me to accompany her to the kitchen.

  “Come on,” she says, turning and beckoning. “You can help me get dinner started.”

  I’d much rather head upstairs to make sure Chase is all right, but what can I do? Should I tell Abby no? I don’t think that would be prudent since I’m staying in her house, so I keep my mouth shut and follow her to the kitchen.

  When we start prepping for dinner, I discover something new about Chase’s mother—she’s quite bossy.

  She hands me three large, ripe tomatoes and says, “Here, chop these up. Finely chopped is what I prefer. I don’t like my tomatoes too chunky.”

  “Okay, then,” I say. “Finely chopped it is.”

  I barely get my response out before Abby is talking right over me. “Now put them in the salad when you’re done.” She pushes a big wooden bowl she’s just filled with a bagged salad down the counter to me.

  Eight minutes later, Abby is at the stove, frying chicken. “Kay,” she says, “can you come over here and turn these chicken breasts for me? I need to run out to the back patio for a little air. It feels stuffy in here.”

  I think it feels fine in the house, but I nonetheless set the salad aside, and say, “Yeah, sure,” as I step over to the stove.

  When the chicken is just about done, Abby returns. She takes over at the stove, and I get a whiff of cigarette smoke from the deep-rose sheath dress she’s wearing.

  Hmm…

  Chase suspected his mother had not given up smoking. Guess he was correct.

  Abby leans away from the stove, frying oil spattering in her wake. She turns down the heat while opening a utility drawer with her other hand. From the drawer, she removes a small bottle of perfume and sprays a little on the tan skin of her wrist, and then on the dress.

  “What?” she says as she catches me watching her. “I smoke when I’m stressed, okay?” She brandishes the perfume bottle. “This hides the odor from Greg.”

  I quickly turn away. Raising a hand, I say, “It’s not my business.”

  “Perhaps not,” she replies slowly. “But there’s one little problem… Chase also thinks I quit.”

  “Hmm,” I murmur.

  In a low, conspiratorial voice, Abby says, “I’d like to keep it that way, Chase thinking I quit. I mean, if that’s okay with you, of course.”

  Oh, no, I am not going down that slippery slope of keeping secrets from Chase for his mother.

  She must see hesitation in my expression, as she quickly amends, “You know what, just forget it. I’ll tell him the truth myself and just get it over with.”

  “That would probably be best,” I mutter.

  Ten minutes later we are all seated at the dining room table. Chase is freshly showered, hair unkempt and damp. Damn, he looks good every second of every day. How does he do that?

  I smile, thinking, that man, he sure is a stunner.

  Chase is wearing a dark-gray T-shirt—one with an old band name on it—and faded jeans. He works the jeans-and-tees look oh-so-well, like he’s ready to star in some hot male model spread. And here I sit in the same desert-dusty jeans and V-neck tee from earlier. Suffice it to say, I don’t look nearly as good as Chase.

  Oh, well, he loves me anyway.

  As if to accentuate that point like he’s reading my mind, Chase smiles over at me and mouths, “You look beautiful.”

  I just roll my eyes and laugh.

  When everyone is settled, dinner commences.

  I watch as Greg picks up the salad tongs and fills his salad bowl with lettuce. Abby, I note, messes with the napkin on her lap. She seems uneasy, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then I see why when I look over at Chase. He’s scanning the chairs around the table, frowning.

  “Where’s Will?” he sharply asks his mother.

  “He won’t be joining us for dinner today,” she replies, her voice unnaturally light and carefree.

  Abby abandons messing with her napkin and instead starts pushing around pieces of chicken on her plate.

  “Why isn’t Will joining us for dinner?” Chase’s voice is anything but light.

  Greg clears his throat, but Chase pays him no heed. “Mom,” he presses, “where is Will?”

  Abby picks up her water glass and takes a long sip. She sets it down carefully and, not meeting Chase’s stare, she says, “Your brother went over to Cassie’s house for the night. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.” Chase sounds incredulous. “He’s staying over there the entire night?”

  Abby nods.

  Chase shakes his head. “You do realize Mrs. Sutter leaves them alone all the time. What do you think they do when there is no supervision?”

  Abby shrugs. “I’m sure they talk, watch TV, maybe play a few video games. That’s what kids do these days, right?”

  Exasperated, Chase blurts out, “You cannot be this fucking clueless, Mom.”

  “Hey, hey,” Greg interjects. “Watch the language at the table, please.”

  Chase laughs. “Oh, that’s rich. I can’t say ‘fuck,’ but it’s perfectly okay that fucking is exactly what Will and his girlfriend are probably doing right now.”

  “Chase!” Abby gasps.

  Greg yells, “That’s enough!”

  Chase ignores them both as he stands and slams his chair into the table. “You’re both so fucking blind it’s not even funny. No wonder there are problems in this house.”

  I remain silent, having no right to intervene. I stare down at chicken I no longer have an appetite for and think: Welcome to a Gartner family dinner.

  Chase

  Fucking Mom, fucking Greg, fucking Will.

  Well, maybe not Will. He’s been okay.

  Or so it seems. Who knows?

  All I know is Will was abiding by the rules I set for him and Cassie in Ohio. The only sex going on under my roof was between me and Kay. Clearly, the situation is different here.

  But how can my mother be so blind to reality? How she can breeze on in to a place and blow things all to hell within a day? I’ll never know. But I do know her actions play a big part in Will’s problems.

  And I’ve had it.

  I storm in to the fucking five-car garage. Stomping over to the Indian, I take a seat on the cement floor next to the bike. When I notice some dirt on the left shock absorber, near the back tire, I lean toward a nearby shelf on the wall and grab a rag.

  Just as I’m wiping and polishing, I hear the opening of a door.

  It’s either Mom or Kay coming into the garage.

  Please be Kay, please be Kay.

  “Chase.”

  Fuck, it’s Mom.

  “What do you want?” I ask. I don’t bother to look up at her, even when she reaches where I’m seated.

  “Can we talk?” she quietly asks.

  “I don’t know,” I scoff. “And by the way, where’s Kay?”

  “She went upstairs. She wanted to come to you, but I asked her to give us a few minutes to talk things out.”

  “A few minutes to talk things out?” I scoff. “Really? You think we can get this shit straightened out in a few short minutes?”

  “Well, no,” Mom replies, sighing. “Maybe it’ll take m
ore than a few minutes. But how long, Chase? How long will it take before you and I reach some kind of common ground here?”

  “Try forever,” I snap.

  I still haven’t looked up at my mother, but I eye her up good when I stand. I have every intention of giving her one final stare-down before taking off. But when I see all the pain in her eyes—true sorrow—I ease up.

  I can’t do cold-hearted—not right now—so I say in a kinder-than-I’m-feeling tone, “Okay, where do you want to start?”

  “Where do you think I want to start, Chase? I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you’re really here. Your brother said you and Kay just up and decided to visit. Like, out of the blue.” She waves her hand around. “That’s pretty random, Chase, even for you. And don’t think I’m buying it even for a minute.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  My mom lets out a frustrated, “Jesus.” And then, after a beat, says, “Don’t give me that shit, Chase Michael Gartner. Your brother’s been acting shady, and I think you know why. What are you keeping from me? I know something is up with that kid.”

  Ha, if only she knew. But I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with Mom’s histrionics when she learns “that kid” bought a gun in Ohio.

  Swiftly, I steer the subject to what caused all the fuss at dinner, thinking the whole while best to pick your battles carefully.

  “Will and Cassie are having sex, Mom,” I blurt out. There, take that. Those blinders are coming off.

  “Oh, Chase.” She waves me off dismissively.

  But I am not deterred. “No, Mom. No, ‘oh, Chase’. Those kids are not just hanging out at Cassie’s house like you think they are. You need to wake up and see what’s happening. You’re being duped by your youngest. You have to start keeping a tighter rein on Will.”

  Mom wrings her hands. She’s giving in, allowing herself to see what’s right in front of her face. “But Will is only fifteen, Chase,” she cries.

  “Exactly. He’s fifteen, Mom. Not eight.”

  “He can’t be having sex,” Mom whispers, stricken.

  “He grew up fast,” I say gently. “You know that. You’re actually lucky he didn’t start sooner.”

  Will is her baby, though, so I know this is difficult for her to hear.

  Mom leans back against a work bench, like she needs the support to keep her upright. Maybe she does. She’s a leaner, not a supporter.

  “I’ve been a bad mom to you boys,” she says in a pained tone.

  I don’t want to lie, but I don’t have it in me to be brutal. I choose to go with a half-truth. “You did the best you could, Mom.”

  She sometimes did.

  We look at each other meaningfully for a few seconds, and then she says, “You don’t have to say things that aren’t true to try and make me feel better, Chase.”

  I let out a long, tired breath. “Still, the past is the past. Not much we can do about it now.”

  My mom touches my forearm. “Honey, I should never have sent you away.” She sighs deeply. “You ended up in prison, for God’s sake.”

  “You helped me get out early, though,” I offer.

  “Small consolation,” she snorts.

  “Hmm…” I nod.

  And then she lays it all out there. “Don’t let me off the hook so easily, son. It’s time I admit what I did. I gave up on you. I chose the easy way out. Sending you to your grandmother’s only made things harder for you. You were already paying for your father’s sins and suddenly, there you were, paying for mine.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she covers her mouth to stifle a sob. “You reminded me so much of your father back then. I couldn’t deal with it. Every time I looked at you, I saw Jack. And seeing your father in you reminded me of how much I had failed him.”

  Mom chokes back a sob, and I put to words what I accepted today at my father’s grave. “You didn’t fail him, Mom. None of us did. Dad was fighting his own demons…and he lost.”

  “But to kill himself,” she hisses as she swipes away tears.

  I raise a brow. For so many years my mom has maintained that Dad driving off a cliff was an accident. She used to tell me and my brother she believed Dad had been running away that fateful night, that he had taken off so he could start a new life in California.

  “You believe it, now?” I ask my mother in a low voice. “Are you saying you no longer think Dad was running away to start a new life? You finally believe he killed himself?”

  “I think I knew it all along,” she admits. “I was in so much denial. I just loved him so much. He was my life, Chase, and I didn’t want to accept that he could so easily end it all.”

  My father was my mom’s life, and, in many ways, she was his. I remember their love well. They were sweet and kind to each other, they loved hard and played hard. No matter what has transpired, I can’t deny that Jack and Abby gave me the tools to love like that myself.

  My love for Kay is as true and pure as my parents’ love once was.

  I only hope and pray our love doesn’t have a similar tragic ending.

  I glance at Mom. She’s sobbing softly, wiping away tears. She still feels the pain from all she’s lost. All of the money she has nowadays means nothing. Fancy cars, a huge home, the best of everything and still, Mom’s as broken as before.

  I put my arms around her and give her a heartfelt hug. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry all this happened to our family.”

  She holds onto me for dear life. “We were good once, weren’t we? The four of us really did have perfect lives. Tell me it wasn’t just an illusion, Chase. Tell me it wasn’t some image I conjured up in my head by always looking back.”

  “It was real,” I choke out, closing my eyes.

  My mom and I hold onto one another, adrift on the choppy seas of our post-destruction lives.

  Mom finally speaks first, whispering, “I really messed things up after Jack died, didn’t I? I was gone all the time, lost in my own grief.” She leans back and looks up at me, sorrow in her big green eyes. “I was never around, Chase. No wonder you turned to drugs.”

  Shaking my head to let her know not all the fault lies with her, I take a step back and say, “Your absence back then doesn’t excuse all the things I did. And, Mom, trust me, I’ve done far worse things than drugs.”

  “Do you mean you did some bad things in prison?” she tentatively asks.

  “Both in and out,” I admit.

  It’s the truth. I’ve beaten men, I’ve used women. I’ve lied and cheated, and I’ve stolen things. I’m a would-be drug dealer and a one-time drug user.

  And I still deal with temptation every day.

  But I am learning.

  “You don’t do any bad things now, right?” My mom wants to know.

  Hearing the hope in her voice is nothing short of heartbreaking, and I think about some of my most recent transgressions—using Missy by letting her blow me behind the Anchor Inn, beating the junkie who hurt Kay, getting drunk and high at Kyle Tanner’s, threatening Doug Wilson, keeping secrets from Kay. Shit.

  I could easily lie to my mother, but what’s the point.

  “I’ve done some things recently,” I confess. “Things I’m not proud of.”

  Fear darkens Mom’s eyes.

  She knows the hold one drug in particular used to have on me. And that is what surely prompts her to ask, “No cocaine, though, right?”

  “No cocaine,” I assure her.

  She visibly relaxes, her shoulders slumping. “Thank God.”

  She sighs, like the possibility of coke ruling me again might be too much for her to bear.

  I hear `ya, I think.

  Mom and I are quiet for the next several minutes, lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, she breaks the silence with a laugh.

  “What?” I ask.

  She points to the top drawer in the work bench. “There are cigarettes in there, and it’s taking everything in me not to go over there and light one up. I su
re could use a smoke right about now.”

  I’ve known all along Abby never quit smoking. But I’m not going to get on her ass now. Not after this talk.

  Waving a hand to the workbench, I say, “Go ahead. I won’t tell Greg.”

  She breathes out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Chase.”

  While Mom walks over to the workbench and lights up, I point to the motorcycle.

  “What about this old thing?” I say. “Where in the hell has it been all this time? I thought we lost everything.”

  “I thought we did, too,” Mom says on an exhale of smoke, her voice pinched with nicotine and tar.

  I wave away the smoke and ask, “So, where’d you find the bike?”

  I am curious since most everything my family ever owned was lost to bankers, creditors, or pawn shops.

  Mom takes another quick hit of her cigarette, and then puts it out on the edge of the work bench. As she’s sliding the hardly smoked cig into the pack, she says, “One day, I was cleaning and came across an old shoebox of letters your father had written me. There was a key for a storage unit in the bottom of the box.” She shrugs. “Jack must’ve tucked it in there ages ago and forgot about it. Anyway, the name of the place was on the key, as well as the unit number, so I drove out to the address. That’s where I found the bike.”

  “What else was in the unit?” I ask, curious.

  “Nothing. Just the bike.”

  I look over at the old Indian. “That’s pretty amazing we still have it.”

  “It is,” Mom agrees. “And if you want it, Chase, it’s yours,” she adds with a smile.

  I’m thrilled and touched. To have this piece of my dad would mean so much.

  I thank my mother, and then say, “Guess Kay and I can drive back on this. We could actually see the country, instead of flying over it at thirty thousand feet.”

  “It’s up to you,” my mother says. “I can just ship it to Harmony Creek if you change your mind.”

  “We’ll see,” I say. “I’ll ask Kay what she wants to do.”

  Mom nods, and then quietly says, “By the way, Chase, I like Kay. She seems like a very nice young lady, perfect for you.”

  “She is perfect for me,” I agree.

  “Well,” Mom continues, “if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get to know her a little better. Since she’ll be in town all week, would you mind if I ask her out to lunch?”