She shook her head forcefully, closing her eyes tight.
She opened them and carried on.
“I shouldn’t be saying these things to you.”
“Yes, you should. You can lay on me whatever you want.”
She looked to her lap.
“Mom,” he called.
She lifted her head.
“I hated watching what he did to you, but you were my touchstone in that house. I knew you loved me. I know you love me. We never talked about it, but it was there. I had you, and you had me. And that was how we got through. And since I left, I had sleepless nights, worried, because I was out. But you were still in.”
“Oh, Axl, darling,” she whispered.
“You taught me how to cook. You didn’t send your assistant to come pick me up from school or practices, you were always there. And those were our times, just us, driving home, being normal. And every meet, when I’d finish my event, win or lose, I looked for you in the stands. Not him. Because I knew, win but also lose, I’d see pride coming from you, and I only got that from him if I won.”
“Sweetheart,” she said softly.
“And now you’re out. And you’re not drinking San Pellegrino. I can’t drink. I gotta get back to work. But you’re drinking champagne. And tonight, you’re going out to dinner with Hattie and me and Hattie’s dad. Then you’re going to the club with us and watching her dance.”
“Axl, really—”
He squeezed her hand tight. “That’s what’s happening, Mom. Unless you have something special planned.”
“I was thinking of trying one of those restaurant delivery services. Your father thinks they’re millennial. That’s his new word for anything that annoys him. Which I’ve realized are things he doesn’t quite understand. Progress, which is something he despises. He wants it to be 1992. When greed was still good and Basic Instinct was a hit film and it was okay to villainize femininity. Where he was very approving of Jazzercise, because women should spend a good deal of their time engaging in whatever they could to make themselves attractive to a man. But disapproving of Anita Hill, because what was her issue? Men need to be free to be men and women should just put up with it.”
He grinned at her and encouraged, “That’s it, Ma. Get it all out. Though, if DoorDash is your big plan for tonight, you’re going out with us so we can celebrate. You can DoorDash tomorrow.”
Her jaw ticked to the side, she squeezed his hand, and he took her cue, let her go and sat back.
And this was because the waiter was there with his San Pellegrino.
“We also want a bottle of Dom,” he told the guy.
The waiter blinked.
Then he smiled. “Of course, right away.”
And he was off again.
“I can’t drink a bottle by myself, Axl,” his mother protested.
“Is Dad paying your cards?”
“I have my own cards now.”
“You still have the joint ones?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s paying for lunch today and who cares if you leave a half a bottle of Dom?”
That was when she grinned.
She got serious again fast.
“I don’t want you to worry, darling. I took some classes. Then I opened a web design business about a year and a half ago. I do it from home.”
Holy fuck.
“Seriously?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Does Dad know that?”
She shook her head. “It was easy to do it under his radar. He hasn’t asked how my day was or how I spent it for at least ten years.”
Fuck, his father was a dick.
“I now have a goodly number of clients,” she shared. “Enough I’m nearly full time. I have money coming in, my own accounts, my own cards. Of course, I bought that condo using your father’s and my accounts to get financing, but I’ll be able to afford it as I do not intend to serve thirty-six years of duty at your father’s side and let him cheat me out of my due. He can have the house. I hate that house. It’s boring. He can have the cars. I don’t want to drive a Jaguar. I want a Mazda. One of their smaller-size SUVs. I test-drove one. They’re zippy. I just want the money. And I’ve engaged an attorney. Colorado is a marital property state. Your father can make it ugly, and he can make it drag on, but he can’t circumvent that. And we already have a strategy. Demand everything at first, but since I don’t want anything but half of our liquid assets, the investment portfolio and his retirement, he’ll feel like he’s won when that was all I wanted in the first place. And we both know, it’s very important for your father to feel he’s won, even if he hasn’t.”
Seemed she now had her ducks in a row.
“Sounds like a good strategy,” he noted.
“I hope so,” she murmured, reaching again for her water.