“Fuck me,” he murmurs to himself. He takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have asked, Len. I’m sorry.”
All I do is shrug. What else can I do? Can I say? What’s done is done. My mother is never coming back. I’ve had to come to terms with that and figure out where to go from there.
I feel his eyes on me. “Is that…?”
When I look over, he dips his chin toward the piece of silver in my hand. I manage to smile, knowing what he’s asking. “It is.”
The necklace was a gift from him for my sixteenth birthday, right before all hell broke loose. I could have sold it, I’m sure it would be worth a decent amount since it’s real silver. But it’s special to me, a gift from the boy I could confide in about anything, and I never once thought to sell it for extra cash even if I needed it because it meant the world to touch it when my mind wandered to bad places. Ky grounded me.
His hand reaches out and takes mine, threading our fingers and squeezing once in comfort. “Let’s go to dinner and talk about it some more. UCLA. Dorms. A house. Everything. Okay? It’s Kyler and Lele, remember?”
I remember when he first told me that.
“We’re Kyler and Lele, right? It’s us against the world.” So why did it feel like it was us against each other the day he let us walk away?
I swallow, clamping my palm around his for a few seconds longer before letting go with a quiet, “Okay.”
Ringing my hands in my lap, I look around the semi-familiar warehouse renovated eatery and loosen a quiet breath. “Are you sure—”
Kyler doesn’t give me a chance to finish before cutting in, in exasperation. “I’m the one who suggested dinner out.”
Biting down on the inside of my lip, I give him a single nod. Anytime we went out in the past, he’d be tense, always looking over his shoulder or grumbling when people came up to him. It was something we rarely did, and I was okay with that. Less attention on him meant the same for me.
Dominick’s still has the same private ambience as it did all those years ago. It’s a quiet place for people like Kyler to come without too much hassle. I was surprised when the man outside looked at me and said, “It’s been a minute, Ms. Grier,” despite how forgettable I find myself compared to the guy sitting across from me in the same black booth we used to occupy.
Leaning an elbow on the edge of the table and propping my chin on the palm of my hand, I scope out the open space. There’s only one other table occupied across the vast dining area with a couple who are deep in conversation. Doing my best not to stare, something I’ve been trained in since becoming a would-be Bishop at twelve, I glance back at Kyler who’s already watching me intently. “What?”
His lips press together as he shakes his head, but his brown eyes don’t stop from roaming over my face. One eye, the other, my nose, my lips. He studies every single inch of me until I’m squirming in my seat. “Quit it,” I grumble, feeling my face burn as I toy with my messy hair that’s pulled back into a ponytail. When he doesn’t, I mock glare at him. “I mean it. Staring is rude.”
His lips twitch upward. “When did you become so…”
“What?”
He’s searching for the word, head cocked, eyes still trained on my features like he finds them intriguing. “Forward.”
I snort, unable to help myself. “I don’t know.” That’s not true. I grew into the fight or flight response when I was given no other option thanks to the woman I let myself have one full night to cry over. That’s all I allowed myself before peeling my head off my flat, stained pillow back in Arizona, and thought about my next step. The step that brought me here. Learning to be forward, to channel my inner Mia Bishop, was my way of fighting, on being heard without anyone misunderstanding my intentions.
“Maybe it was all the years of being around Mia,” I joke halfheartedly. Mia has always been the straight-to-the-point type even if you don’t want to hear it. It’s why I reached out to her when I ran out of options because I knew she wouldn’t let me chicken out of asking for help. I needed her, even if I didn’t want to need anybody.
Kyler cracks a smile, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Something tells me you picked up a thing or two on your own.”
As much as I want to frown, to show the twinge of pain that settles in my chest, I don’t. I refrain from telling him that the only reason I learned on my own is because I didn’t have him or Mia for the past few years. I had nobody, not even the shell of a woman my mother became before she died.
It may have been the cards I was dealt, but it’s not the ones I show now. “Maybe,” I reply instead, voice victoriously steady. We fall into a thick silence, one that never used to be awkward between us.
He says, “We should talk about the house,” the same time I say, “What have you been up to?”
We stare at each other, blinking.
Eventually, it’s me who shifts on my seat and gives him a hesitant smile. “The house is nice.”
He deadpans. “You already told me that. I want to know where your head is at with getting one.”
Does he really want to know?
When I rub my lips together hesitantly, his eyes narrow. “You never used to hold back from me.”
“People change, Kyler.”
His jaw ticks. “Yeah, they do.”
More silence.
Then, I sigh. “I already told you where I’m at with a house. Just because you say I’m not like my mother doesn’t mean I don’t feel like it by letting you buy us a house. A house. It’s not like you’re lending me twenty bucks or filling up my gas tank or something.”
“Do you even have a license?” he comes back with, making me want to roll my eyes.
I’m this close, but I blow out a calming breath instead. “Yes. I taught myself.” I drove illegally to pick up Mom more times than I can count before I even had my permit. I knew what to do—had watched her, Kyler, and Mia enough times to figure it out. Thankfully, I never got pulled over or got caught after forging my mother’s signature to sign off on mandatory driving hours before my road test. I passed with flying colors, no thanks to anybody but me.
“That’s not the point and you know it,” I tell him, turning the conversation back to what really matters.
“Enlighten me then,” he challenges.
There’s a playful cockiness in his eyes that I recognize from the past, but it’s shining here. He’s teasing me, and for some reason, I don’t like it. “You’ve had money your whole life. A home to come back to every single day. A job that you love. People who adore you. I only had that for six years out of the eighteen I’ve lived. I will never be used to somebody saying they can drop money on a house in a matter of seconds. I’m grateful you’re willing to help, but seeing those places…”
My throat tightens. “Seeing those houses reminds me that I have nothing. Not even a fraction of the plans I made for myself when I was younger so I could do better than Mom, or the people I lived in apartment complexes with. I’m determined to work and pay my way in any way I can, but that won’t be enough for college or even for my own apartment. I have to depend on somebody else and that feels like failure.”