“Welcome to Chez Gray, Pep.” He walks over and grabs my hand.
“Will that be all, Mr. Gray?” Sarita asks.
“Yeah, thanks.” He looks down at me as Sarita walks away, his eyes devouring me. “I’ve missed you.”
“It’s only been a week.” My cheeks heat and my belly somersaults under that look.
“I’ve gotten spoiled seeing you all the time.” He sets one hand at my waist and one at my neck, dipping to brush his lips over mine. I enjoy the warm contact for a few seconds before pulling away, my pulse slamming against my wrists.
“You were already spoiled, Rhyson, and it had nothing to do with me,” I say, hoping to thin the air that thickens around us when he touches me. “Where’s Grip? You promised I’d get to see a session.”
“I may have invited you over a little early.” He pushes back into me, sliding an arm around me again. “You think I want to share you with Marlon?”
“Rhyson.” I step back again and take a deep breath. “We need to talk about—”
“You said soon.” His voice, his eyes declare he means to hold me to it.
“I know.” I lean against the pool table. “But it’s a big step, and we need to talk about what this could look like.”
“It looks like us together.” He frowns. “It doesn’t have to be this complicated, Pep.”
“That’s easy for you to say. There aren’t photographers lined up at my door when you come to my place.” My phone ringing interrupts. I pull it out of the slit pocket of my skirt. “Geez Louise. It’s the bill collector for my mom’s hospital. I need to take this.”
“No.” Rhyson reaches for the phone. “Let it roll into voice mail.”
I pull back, shaking my head.
“Believe me, I wish I could, but they’ve called like three times today, and I’ve been ignoring.” I walk across the room toward one of the leather couches. “It’ll only take a sec. I actually meant to call anyway to make sure they got the payment I made after Christmas. I don’t want them bothering Aunt Ruthie about it.”
“Pep, I think you should wait.” Rhyson’s frown gets heavier every time the phone rings, but I answer anyway.
“Hello.” I sit on the leather couch and rest against the cool cushions.
“Hello. This is Central Financial,” the representative says from the other end. “Am I speaking with Mai Lin Pearson?”
“This is her daughter, Kai. Mai Lin passed last year, but I’m responsible for the medical debt.”
“That’s why I’m calling. We received your last payment and will be sending an electronic receipt reflecting the zero balance.”
“I did just make a payment, but it wouldn’t have brought the balance to zero.” I give a brief laugh. “That would be awesome, if it did. I’m hoping I can soon though.”
“Ms. Pearson, we received a payment for forty thousand, two hundred and four dollars and thirty-two cents last week.”
My heart stops, like the sun pausing in the sky overhead.
“That’s not possible. There must be some mistake. I didn’t make that payment.”
“It was made online.”
“Who made it?”
I already know there is only one person who has that kind of money so easily at his disposal and could have made that payment. Who didn’t want me to take this call.
“Ruthie Sherman was the name on the debit card. I believe she has access to this account too. I see a history of payments made by you both. You’re both listed as responsible parties.”
“Yes, but she . . .” I trail off. Aunt Ruthie and I talked about finances when I was home. She’s barely making ends meet with Glory Bee. There’s no way she paid this off. This representative doesn’t have the answers I need.
“I’ll be on the lookout for that receipt.”
“It should come to the e-mail we have on file.”
“Thank you.” My lips are numb, but I manage to get the words out.
I sit on the edge of the couch with my phone in my lap and frustration rolling up from my feet and over my legs until it reaches my heart. Rhyson looks way too casual for someone who knows we’re about to fight. He leans over the pool table, knocking a ball into the corner. I feel like one of those balls, rolling around at his behest, under his control. Being played by him.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
I don’t even bother with all the exposition. I don’t want the lies or the excuses. Let’s just cut to the part where he went behind my back and did something he knew I would never ask him to do.
Rhyson doesn’t budge from his position, bent over the pool table, pole sliding between his fingers before knocking the ball.
“What was me?”
“Did you pay off my mother’s medical bills?”
He drops the pool stick and faces me, arms folded over his chest.
“Is the fight we’re about to have in lieu of a thank you card?”
“You shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t ask you to.”
“You should have. You could have.” Rhyson leans against the table, the frown on his face showing me he’s as frustrated with me as I am with him. “At any point I could have erased that debt, and would have gladly done it. You know that.”
“I don’t want your money, Rhyson.” I cross the space between the couch and the pool table until I’m standing close enough to see how dark and stormy his eyes have become.
“Oh, so you can accept money from the good people of Glory Falls Baptist Church, who can’t afford to help, but you can’t accept it from me, who won’t even miss it?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is like that. You were fine with them collecting money at Christmas to help with the bills, but when you hear I gave enough to pay it off, it’s a problem.”
“I just needed to do it on my own.”
“No, you just needed to do it without me.”
He pins me to the spot with those knowing eyes. The ones that know I can barely stand being this close without touching him. The ones that tell me he feels the same.
“You know I don’t want your help.” I drop my eyes to the floor and my voice almost to a whisper. “Not with my career. Not with my bills.”
“What is this actually about, Pep?”
“You’re not listening to me.”
He lifts my chin, taking my eyes captive again.
“You’re not telling the truth. Tell me what it’s actually about.”
“You’re getting too close.” I force myself to keep looking at him, even though it will show him more than I want him to see. “Too deep.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know how close and deep I want to be with you.”
His words wrap around me as surely as his arms would, and the squeeze is too tight. What should comfort, constrains, and I need just a little room to breathe, to figure this out.
“Rhyson, I just want a little space to make it on my own.” I look up, some of my frustration dying. “To do things for myself.”
“You know what I think this is really about?” He cups my chin, eyes softening, and strokes my jaw with his thumb. “That step on your front porch.”
“What?” I pull back a few inches, hoping it will put distance between his words and the truth I don’t want to admit to myself. “It was just a step.”
“Not the step itself, but what it represented to you. Your mother depended on your father and wanted him so badly, she left that step like that for over a decade because he said he’d come back to fix it. You don’t want to depend on me for anything. You don’t want to need me for anything. You don’t want to trust me, but that’s what a relationship is about.”
“We aren’t in a relationship.”
Yet.
“Now who’s lying? I’m not in this by myself, Pep. You may not want to call it a relationship, but I don’t want anyone else.” He presses his hand just below the small of my back, resting at the curve of my butt. “And neither do you.”
Desire fogs any rational thought, but I’m not ready to let this go. Not until I can make him see my point of view. If he doesn’t understand, we’ll never make it anyway.
“Rhyson, how did you feel when your parents controlled you?”