Chapter Sixteen

August felt terrible. Physically, he’d never felt more relaxed in his life. Sex with Mo was amazing. Like nothing he’d ever experienced before. It was like their bodies were fine-tuned to each other’s. Every opposite aspect they had outside the bedroom flipped to make them so compatible in bed, they were almost one person.

So yeah, physically, he was great. But emotionally? He felt like an ass. Mo had been joking, being flippant. It’s what Mo did. And he’d gotten serious, killing the mood.

That’s what he did.

Honestly, the intensity of it all kind of freaked him out. He’d never felt so connected to a woman during sex. Or during no sex, for that matter. Something about Mo made him feel…safe. Which was odd, because the woman was anything but. Caution didn’t seem to be in her vocabulary. She saw something and went for it, and damn the consequences.

If it didn’t freak him out so much, he might admire it. But how did a person live like that, so in the moment, never giving a thought to the future, to what tomorrow might bring? August had been conditioned at a very young age to think ahead. Monday through Wednesday at Mom’s, Thursday through Saturday at Dad’s, alternating Sundays with each. He always had to plan ahead. Make sure his homework was with him at all times. Coordinate his school schedule with each parent so he didn’t miss an activity because he was at Mom’s and she forgot he had baseball practice or he was at Dad’s and it was his stepbrother’s birthday so he had to find his own way to study group.

He’d often felt like a stranger in both homes, neither belonging to him, but both trying to claim him.

“How’s that popcorn and ice cream coming?” Mo called from the living room.

August glanced at the microwave. “Got one more minute.”

“Sweet. Oooooh, Tiffany Haddish has a new comedy special!”

“Great.” He didn’t know who that was, but Mo had tried—and enjoyed—his cauliflower pizza, so he supposed he could bend a little and try some comedy act.

When the microwave beeped, he grabbed the bag and the bowl of ice cream he scooped and headed into the living room. He placed both items on the coffee table in front of Mo, hesitating. Did he sit by her on the couch? Take the chair? He knew he’d upset her with his reminder of what they were, but it needed to be said.

For both their sakes.

Mo glanced up at him, shaking her head at his hesitation. She patted the couch next to her.

“Sit down, weirdo. I don’t bite.” She bobbed her eyebrows. “Unless you want me to.”

Grateful she seemed to be letting the earlier moment slide, he sat next to her, draping his arm across the back of the couch. She scooted over, snuggling into his side and grabbing the bowl of ice cream.

“Are we sharing?”

He shook his head. “No, you go ahead.” Too much dairy made him sick, and since he’d already had the mozzarella, he’d stick to the popcorn for dessert.

“Your loss.” She shrugged. Grabbing the remote, she grinned up at him. “Be prepared to laugh your incredibly sexy ass off. This woman is hilarious.”

The woman in his arms was hilarious and sweet and sexy and surprising, and he really needed to get ahold of himself. He was leaving in a few months. This was all temporary. It might feel like nice domestic bliss now, but he knew that didn’t last. Didn’t for his parents and half the other people in the world. Why the hell would he think it would for him?

Mo started up the show, which he surprisingly found entertaining. August liked a joke as much as the next person, but he didn’t voluntarily go for standup. Maybe he’d have to change that.

“So?” Mo asked as she shut off the TV. “Funny right?”

He tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Very.”

“I love standup comedy. My dad did some amateur stuff when us kids were growing up, but he didn’t like the travel, so he mostly stayed in local spots. I always loved going to see his shows.”

“They were appropriate for kids?”

She grinned. “Not always, but my brothers and I would sneak down to the basement and catch him rehearsing the more not-safe-for-work stuff. Then Mom would inevitably catch us and send us up to our rooms, giving Dad grief when we repeated the bad words he used.”

She laughed, as if her parents fighting was a fond childhood memory. Maybe for her family it was. If her parents were still married, perhaps they were like those mythical TV couples who argue to a laugh track and solved all their problems in thirty minutes or less.

“Are they still married?” he asked, not sure why he was poking into this particular vein of conversation. “Your parents.”

Mo grabbed the bag of popcorn, digging into the last of the kernels. “Oh, they’ve never been married.”

“What?” His jaw opened in shock. Mo, the wedding planner with stars in her eyes when it came to love and happily ever after, had parents who weren’t married? It didn’t add up.

“My parents are kind of…” She wrinkled her nose. “Hippies? I guess that’s the best term to describe them.”

Now that he could believe, seeing as who their daughter was.

“They never felt the need to cement their love for each other with a piece of paper. But they’ve been living together for decades, so by now they’re common law married anyway.”

“And they’ve never separated? In all that time?” What was holding them together? He knew a marriage license wasn’t set in stone, but it kept his parents together long after they should have separated. How did two people stay with each other for so long if they weren’t legally bound to each other?

“No. They love each other.” Mo stared at him as if he had two heads. “They’re soul mates. Why would they ever leave each other?”

He shrugged. “Married people get divorced all the time. Even when they claim to be soul mates.”

What a silly word. What did it even mean? No one really knew what a soul was, so how could it have a mate? Never made sense to him.

Mo’s teeth came out to worry her bottom lip. Her eyes soft, she asked, “Is that what happened to your parents? They got divorced?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.” Not like he was the only kid in the world to have parents who split. “It’s not a big deal.”

She placed her hand on top of his, squeezing gently. “I think it is. How old were you when it happened?”

“Ten.” He used his free hand to reach into the bag and grab some popcorn. Not because he was hungry, but because he needed something else to focus on while he told this story. “They’d been fighting for years, so it was more of a relief. For them anyway.”

“Oh, August, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged off her sympathy. He didn’t need it. It happened a long time ago. He was over it.

“It was a pretty amicable divorce.” He tossed a few kernels in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I spent half the week with Mom, the other half with Dad. A few weeks in the summer with Gran.”

Those had been the best weeks of the year, his one-on-one time with Gran.

“You home hopped?” Her jaw dropped open in shock. “That must have been so hard for you. And your parents.”

“I was fine,” he lied. “Besides, they both got remarried within a year, and their spouses already had kids with full custody, so they had their core family and an extra kid every few days of the week.”

Suddenly, the popcorn bag was tossed onto the coffee table, and August had an armful of Mo. She wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly, her face buried in his neck.

“You’re not an extra, August.” She sniffled. “You’re a person who matters. If your parents ever made you feel like a spare or superfluous, that’s on them. And quite frankly makes them bad parents. No child should ever feel unwanted.”

He wouldn’t say he felt unwanted as a kid. Second fiddle to his stepsiblings was more the feeling he got. Dampness hit his skin. He tugged softly, pulling Mo from his arms to see a few tears running down her cheeks.

“Hey,” he said, brushing away her tears with his thumbs. “What’s all this?”

Was she crying for him? No one had ever cried for him. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it. He didn’t need her tears. He’d been out of his parents’ houses for a long time now. And it wasn’t as if they were abusive or anything, just sort of wrapped up in their lives and new families. He wasn’t neglected so much as…forgettable. A second thought to their primary families.

“Don’t cry, Sunshine.” He bent his head, placing a kiss to her lips. “I’m fine.”

The tears stopped, but she shook her head. “You’re not fine. How could any child be fine after being sent back and forth between homes like a gravy boat?”

Gravy boat? Weird analogy. It wasn’t like his parents didn’t want him at their new homes or resented him or anything. They just kind of…didn’t know how to fit him in their new lives.

“It wasn’t that bad.” He tucked her into his side, finding it kind of hilarious that he was trying to comfort her about his crappy childhood. “They provided for me. I never lacked anything.”

“Except love,” she interrupted.

He shifted on the couch. “They loved me.” In their own way. “I was just left out of a lot of family decisions since I lived at each home part-time.”

“That had to be hard for you.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I got used to it. Ended up making a lot of my own plans.”

“But families are supposed to talk about things, agree on them, include everyone,” she argued.

They were supposed to, but life rarely did what it was supposed to do, he’d learned.

“My family always keeps each other in the loop about our lives.”

“Really?” He had a hard time imagining a family dynamic like that.

“Yes.” She nodded. “It’s how I know my oldest brother and his husband are thinking about adopting a second baby, and my mom hates hot flashes more than she hates creamed spinach. And she really hates creamed spinach.”

Wow, okay. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be that close to his mom. Some things a son didn’t need to know. But it made him wonder just how much Mo had shared with her family about him. About them. He wanted to ask, but he also wasn’t sure he would like the answer. No matter what it was.

“The only person who’s ever included me in everything is Gran.” He smiled. “Whenever I came to stay with her in the summers, she always asked what I wanted to do, always gave me her schedule for the day, and made adjustments if I needed something. She never made me feel like an outsider in her life.”

Which was why he so desperately wanted to take care of her now. She provided him the only space he truly felt at home as a kid. He wanted to give her a home now. One where she’d always be taken care of. By him.

“Your grandmother tells you everything?” her soft voice asked.

“Yup.”

“What if…what if she kept something from you? For your own good? To keep you from worrying?”

He glanced down at her. “That would be lying, and lying isn’t good for anyone. Besides, Gran knows I don’t worry about problems. I take care of them.”

Mo pulled away, shifting on the couch, her demeanor changing, closing off. She grabbed the bag of popcorn, now empty except for a few unpopped kernels at the bottom. She stared intently at the bag, brow furrowed as if the answer to some complex math problem lay in the emptiness of the popcorn vessel. He wondered what he’d said to cause her to pull back, but before he could ask about it, she tore off a piece of the paper bag and stuck it in her mouth.

He reeled back in horror. “What are you doing?”

She glanced up at him, pulling the bit of paper out, scraping her teeth along it as she smiled and popped the paper out of her mouth.

“Licking the salt and butter off the bag,” she said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “It’s delicious. Try it.”

She held the bag out to him. August leaned back so far the arm of the couch cracked his spine. “Moira, that is disgusting.”

She arched one eyebrow, ripping off another small piece and repeating the process. “No, it’s not.”

It was. He’d seen the woman eat some pretty strange stuff, but sucking on an empty popcorn bag? Who did that?

“Come on.” She threw a leg over his lap and straddled him, tearing off another small part of the bag and holding it up to his lips. “Just one little lick.”

Hell no. He might be willing to branch out of his comfort zone a bit for her, but this was crossing a line. He did not eat literal trash.

“It tastes really good, I promise,” she insisted.

Plucking the paper from her fingers, he tossed it on the coffee table. He grasped the back of her neck in a gentle hold, tugging her closer to him. Their lips were a breath apart.

“I can think of something that tastes even better.”

He felt her smile as he pressed his lips to hers, thrusting his tongue inside when she opened for him. Yes. Nothing tasted as good as Mo. The woman was quickly becoming an addiction. He craved her, needed her. And not just to warm his bed. More and more he was finding he liked spending time with her, whether they were in bed or sitting around watching TV. And how the hell had she got him to open up about his childhood? He never shared that with anyone.

Somehow, Mo made him feel…safe. He could tell her anything, and he knew she wouldn’t judge. She’d give her opinion loud and clear, but it came from a place of wanting to help. And she had. The tears she shed for him, the anger she voiced over his upbringing, validated his own feelings on the matter. And somehow that made him feel like he could start letting some of that resentment go.

How did she do that?

Mo pulled back, a warm smile on her face. “Mmmm, you’re right. That was more delicious.”

“You’re amazing, Mo.”

Her eyes widened, shock filling their golden depths. August froze. He hadn’t meant to say that. It’d been in his head and just sort of popped out. Now he didn’t know what to do. He could take it back, but that’d be a dick move. And he didn’t really want to take it back. He meant it. She was amazing. But he shouldn’t have said it. It implied things he wasn’t ready to admit.

Now or ever.

He sat there, mouth slightly open like a fish out of water for a solid minute.

Come on, you ass, do something before she starts asking questions you don’t want to answer.

Mo smiled, laughing softly with a shake of her head. She bent down to kiss the tip of his nose. “Unfreeze, August. It’s okay. I’ll take it for the compliment I’m sure it was meant to be and not add any feelings into it.”

She slid off his lap, grabbing her empty ice cream bowl, the empty popcorn bag, and the shreds of paper.

“I can take care of those,” he said, standing and grabbing the items from her hands. If he was going to act like a jerk, the least he could do was clean up. He’d have done it anyway because Mo usually just stacked everything on the counter instead of throwing trash away and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher. He wondered if her old roommates had cleaned up after her, too, or if she just did it to mess with him?

He tossed the trash, stacking the dirty bowl into the top rack of the dishwasher. When he turned around, Mo had disappeared. Fearing he had hurt her feelings, he started to head down the hallway to the bedrooms.

“Mo?”

The squeak of a floorboard sounded before her bedroom door opened. She stuck her head out with an impish smile.

“Hey, August. Catch.”

His hand went up in surprise as her arm rose and tossed something directly at him. Luckily, he’d been on his high school varsity baseball team. He caught the item, which turned out to be a large, pristine white softball. Looked like it hadn’t gotten lots of use. But there did appear to be some writing on it. Black and fresh from the looks of it. He read the words scribbled on the ball.

Feelings.

Glancing up, he saw Mo holding up a black magic marker in her fingers, leaning against the wall to hold herself up as she doubled over with laughter. “Oh no! You caught them.”

He shook his head, chuckling along with her, but inside his heart raced and his stomach cramped.

Because he was terrified it might be true.