The moral of this story is (probably) don’t do drugs.
I inch away from him and text Tani as a distraction. She missed the meeting, so I’ve been trying to find out what’s going on. My issues with Elliot’s closeness instantly fall by the wayside when it occurs to me that I haven’t heard from her since right before I went on my date last night.
Maybe we’re finally adapting to the distance? She could be out with her other friends—unlike me, she has a few of those—and she forgot to check in. On the other hand, she was expecting a detailed report on date number one, and she hasn’t missed a meeting since I was advised to step back a bit, so this really isn’t like her.
I wonder if it has to do with her brother’s odd behavior. If I don’t hear from her by tomorrow, I’m calling her parents.
Fine. I’ll call mine and have them do a drive by. Tanisha would never forgive me if I put her already overprotective parents into panic mode.
J-Pop: I’m off to get drunk at a pub with my neighbor. Too bad you’re not there to talk me out of it. Why aren’t you there? Blink twice if A is on your couch again.
“Texting the princess?”
My phone flips out of my hand and tumbles onto the floor. Nice. “How did you know?”
“Wild guess. I’m sorry about that. We got a little carried away about the game.”
“History,” Derek’s impassioned whisper drifts back to us and Elliot tosses me a wink.
“I love baseball,” I lie, and he laughs in my face. “I mean, it’s obvious I’m missing out. I’d love to try it some time.”
He squeezes my knee, and I try not to react to the innocent contact. “I’ll take you to the batting cages next week.”
“You’re always trying to take me somewhere,” I joke.
“I am, aren’t I?”
I remember Derek’s presence and change the subject. “If you’d been discussing Skyrim or Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
Elliot lifts his eyebrows. “One of those has dragons, right?”
I press my fist to my chest. “I’m so proud you know that.”
He and Derek share a laugh at that, and then he’s shifting to face me, his strong thigh brushing mine. “I know how odd it is from the outside. To be this focused on one thing.”
It sounds like he didn’t have much of a choice.
“It’s natural to want to do what you’re good at. What you love.” I point to myself. “Babysitter.”
He looks thoughtful. “But no one is supposed to love just one thing, are they? Even if it’s the only thing they’re good at. I think of all the things I’ve missed, the jokes I don’t get. I traveled all over, but I never saw much more than my hotel room and the baseball diamond. It narrows your field of vision. It limits your circle of friends. I don’t know, looking at it now, it feels like a smaller way to live.”
My throat is tight. “Good points. On the other hand, if you scatter your attention too much, then the people in your circle, people you’re supposed to protect, might fall through the cracks.”
Why did I say that?
Elliot’s closer now, his warm hand lingering on my knee. “Is that what happened to you?”
“What? No. Not me.” I shake my head, but I can’t stop the words from escaping. “This isn’t… I’ve been thinking about what you said to your mother. I’m supposed to be relaxing. Stepping back because I’ve been too controlling, and I’m driving all my case managers crazy. The nannies too.”
“You don’t seem that controlling to me.”
I give him the stink eye. “As if I could control you, balcony hopper.”
“So why aren’t you enjoying your break? Why go to Bellamy House? Why go to your office every day?”
“I might miss something.” Someone might need me.
“What did you miss?”
It looks like it’s my turn for a confession, whether we’re on the balcony or not. “Before Rick and Matilda brought me home, I lived with another foster family. I use that term loosely. What they were was a collection of open wounds. Unhappy, uneducated, careless people. Rarely interested in the kids under their roof.”
Elliot’s presence is a tether, grounding me in the present, helping me find the words. “It wasn’t a good place. My foster sister, Carol, was younger, but we bonded right away. I think it was because we were both drop-offs.”
“Drop-offs?”
I stare down at his hand. It looks as strong as it feels. “It means exactly what it sounds like. Carol’s parents dropped her off in a grocery store parking lot. I was left by the road near a biking trail and, well, people made a thing about it. The Redmond Rescue.”
I bet my father saw it on the news and kept driving.
“Shit.”
“I won’t go into the details, but things got pretty bad at that house. I tried to protect her, the others, myself. Eventually we convinced the social worker assigned to us to get us out of there. After that, I wanted Carol to come with me, but Rick and Matilda already had four boys And they said they’d found her a home with people who wanted to adopt. We met up on social media a few years later, and I promised her we wouldn’t lose touch again.”