Confident and classy, despite your sailor mouth, and you always but always choose honesty over a lie. Whether that be when it comes to others or even just being honest with yourself. Fiercely protective of the people you love and loyal to a fault. I am so proud of the woman you are. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
As a layer of wetness coated my eyes and blurred my vision, she leaned in, kissed my cheek, and finished. “I really like Danny, I do. There was something so natural, even familiar about him, but none of that matters. Whatever happens with Danny, I know you’ll make the best of it. And I know you’ll come out of it even more remarkable on the other side.”
She cupped my cheek with her soft, petite hand briefly, and then turned and left the bathroom.
It took me a few minutes to get my emotions under control and dry the tears off of my cheeks. When I finally made it into the bedroom, she was curled up on her side of the bed, facing my direction with her kindle open in front of her, but she was sound asleep.
Walking around the bed to her side, I gently reached for her kindle, closed the case to put it to sleep, set it on her nightstand, and clicked out the light above it.
After padding back over to my side, I pulled the covers back, climbed gently under three layers of sheet, blanket, and comforter, reached back and clicked off my light, and then blindly reached out to find my mom’s hand that was loose and relaxed on the bed in front of her.
It took me several minutes, my mind reeling about what a lucky lot in life I had gotten, but my breathing finally evened, and I fell asleep, my hand tucked gently into the one of the woman I wanted to be.
OUR MORNING HAD been pretty routine, filled by mindless gabbing and breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We decided to do that instead of venturing out because I wasn’t really sure what Danny’s plan was for the day, when he wanted us to come over, and most of all, the buffet of food looked really good.
When we got back up to our room, I was six crispy pieces of bacon, two eggs, and a piece of toast heavier, and feeling like I should have laid off the bacon at slice three.
Still, I didn’t waste any time and took out my phone to call Danny as soon as we walked back in.
He answered after one ring, and his greeting was vaguely omniscient. “Hey, Hales.”
My guess was that he knew it was me by the unknown number, but who knew. He had pretty much proven his skill as a pick pocket last night. I had no idea what else he was capable of.
A smart girl would have been scared of a guy like him.
Thankfully, I had a knack for flipping the switch to the off position on my smarts. Being stupid was way more fun.
“Hey Danny. You sound too chipper for someone who has a late night job this early in the morning.”
“Chipper?” he questioned in a way that made me rethink calling a guy “chipper”.
“Okay, maybe not chipper. But awake. Yeah, you definitely sound awake,” I replied stupidly.
Silence.
“Right. Listen, I wasn’t sure when you wanted us to come over so I figured I’d get a plan going early so that we know what the day is going to bring.”
He barely even breathed when I finished talking, let alone paused, but instead jumped right in with, “Come over now.”
“That sounded an awful lot like an order, Dan-o. Do you think I’m the kind of girl that does what she’s told?”
Once again, he didn’t miss a beat. “It was an order, you’re not even remotely that kind of girl, but you’re still going to come over now.”
I smiled, bit my lip, and then answered, “Well, at least you’re honest. Fair enough. Just tell me how to get there.”
I listened to him talk, spitting out four or five lefts and rights before I realized there was no effing way under the sun I was going to remember these directions if I didn’t write them down.
Therefore, I let him finish, just because I was kind of mean like that, and then
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