Page 22 of Breaking Through the Doubt (Espen Jetties #4)

22

COREY

The bell on the front door chimed. With thirty minutes left before we opened, I wasn’t sure if it was Emilio or Karli coming in for the day. Saturdays were always busy as hell. I’d been able to interview a couple of people yesterday afternoon. Leslie had left for an away game so I figured I’d use the time to interview.

I walked out of the stockroom, clipboard in hand and found Emilio entering his station to get set up for the day.

“Do you have a lot of people scheduled today?” I asked.

I could go onto the computer and see what his day looked like, but I also had to handle my own jobs. I trusted Emilio with his schedule and how much time he needed for each job.

“Back-to-back all day,” he said, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it in the small closet in the back of the area.

“Did you at least give yourself time for lunch?”

“I did. I can’t do that to myself again.”

The last time Emilio scheduled himself for back-to-back jobs, he didn’t eat the entire day and almost passed out as he was cleaning up from his final client of the day. After that, I told everyone in the shop they were required to block out a minimum of thirty minutes a day to eat. We had a long talk about me not wanting to get my ass handed to me by the Department of Labor because of overscheduling.

“Good.” My phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out and walked toward my station.

I saw my dad’s name on the screen and answered immediately. It wasn’t like him to call me this close to the shop opening. He usually called first thing in the morning or later in the afternoon.

“Hey, Dad, everything okay?” I couldn’t keep the worry from my voice.

“Yeah. Sure. Everything is great.”

His voice was higher than normal. “Dad, I can hear it in your voice. Tell me what’s wrong. You never call me this time of the day.”

“What if I just wanted to check on my son?”

“I’d say you were full of shit.”

“Language,” he scolded, exactly like when I was a kid.

“Dad,” I said. “I’m not ten anymore and you’re stalling. What happened?”

He sighed. “I got a text or two from a couple of guys from work saying they saw your mom in Espen the other day.”

I covered my eyes with my hand and ran it down my face. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “And? I’m sure she was high.”

“Corey, please don’t be so harsh on her. She’s sick.”

My dad and I didn’t fight often, but this was one area of life we were never going to agree on. He still saw the woman he fell in love with all those years ago, even if she hurt him repeatedly. I saw the woman who chose drugs over us time and time again.

“That excuse might have worked years ago, but she’s had plenty of time to get help. Time to get clean and back into our lives. She doesn’t want us dad. She never will.” It was a hard truth to throw at my dad, but over the last few years, I’d been trying to give him the reality that my mom was never coming back into our lives. She would never want us as much as she wanted the drugs.

“This time could be different. Maybe she’s looking for us,” Dad, ever the optimist said, hope filling his voice.

It killed me to say the next words. He needed to understand, even if my mom had somehow gotten herself clean, something I very much doubted happened, that his feelings and mine weren’t the same. “Even if that were the case, that ship sailed a long time ago. I will never see her as a mother. To me she is just an egg donor.”

“Corey, don’t say that,” he pleaded with me. “She wanted you so much when she got pregnant. Even stopped doing drugs the entire time.”

It was the same old story. She may have stopped taking drugs for that nine-month window, yet it only took her a few weeks after I was born to choose drugs over us for the first time.

“Promise me, you’ll let me know if you see her around the city.”

If there was one thing I couldn’t do, it was not giving my dad that. He’d given me so much. How was I supposed to tell him no when his request was simple? Telling him didn’t mean I had to interact with her myself. I hoped like hell I didn’t see her ever again. It had been more than twenty years since the last time I saw her, and I was perfectly fine with it being the last.

“I promise only if you promise that if she does appear, you won’t force me to try to see her.”

“Oh, Corey. I wish I could change your mind. Maybe someday I will. For now though, I promise.”

I looked up and saw the first appointment of the day standing at the door. “Dad, our client is here. Can I call you later?”

“Of course. I’m sorry to have bothered you at work.” The hurt lingering in his voice hit me square in the chest. As much as I hated the woman who had brought me into this world, it killed me to upset the man who had been with me through it, even at one point giving up his own happiness for me.

“Dad, you never bother me, and you can call me whenever. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“It’s all right, Corey. I know you’re busy. Go take care of those clients so they come back for more.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up with my dad and immediately went to the front door to unlock it. “Sorry for the wait. Let me take you back to Emilio.”

The woman smiled and I led her back to his station. I returned to the front and my first client of the day waited in one of the chairs. Rolling my shoulders, I tried to push the conversation with my dad out of my head. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

Through every piece of art I did in the early afternoon, my dad’s voice kept repeating in my head. They saw your mom in Espen .

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself as I pulled the different ink colors off the shelf.

“It’s early to be in that bad of a mood.”

I glanced over my shoulder and found Emilio standing in the doorway, most likely waiting for me to get out of the way.

“It is. My dad called before we opened this morning.” I took a step to the side, letting him look through the shelves.

“Bad news?”

I scoffed, “Depends on how you look at it.” I grabbed the last color I needed from the shelf. “Someone he knows called him the other day and said they saw my mom in Espen.”

His eyes went wide. “Your mom? I thought you hadn’t seen her in years?”

“I haven’t.” One slow night when it was just the two of us in the shop, we had a long heart-to-heart about our lives growing up. Something about Emilio made me feel comfortable telling him about my mom and what had happened during my childhood.

Maybe it had been a similar story from Emilio about his uncle. It hadn’t impacted him as deeply as it had me, but his cousins had been abandoned for drugs. He saw the damage it had done. Very few people knew the whole story and I hadn’t let Leslie be one of them.

“I don’t even know if it was her. Hell, would anyone really know what she looks like after so long?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

He glanced behind him, then back at me. “I have someone waiting, but let’s get a drink after the shop closes and we’ll talk.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Emilio clamped his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I knew he was in my corner. He would help me work out exactly what I was feeling.

I went back and finished the work on the latest person in my chair. It wasn’t easy to keep focus, the little voices in my head trying to make themselves heard. I managed to keep them at bay and work through each person I had scheduled.

When we locked up, I breathed a sigh of relief, not sure how I’d made it that far without losing my shit. By the time we finished cleaning up and I settled the register, my brain had created an entire scenario in my head about what it would mean if my mom had really shown up in Espen.

Emilio practically pushed me out the door. I walked next to him toward the bar in a daze. We grabbed a high-top in the corner. Emilio stood at the bar to grab our first round. I couldn’t help noticing the eyes on me or the people who pointed in my direction.

Thankfully, none of them approached me or Emilio as he set the two bottles on the table. Each nerve ending felt like a firecracker waiting for the right spark to set me off.

“Talk to me.” He lifted his beer to his lips and swallowed a bit down before continuing, “Why does someone possibly seeing your mom have you so on edge? Would it really matter if she was back?”

I ran a hand through my hair and picked my beer up with the other one. “No. It would change absolutely nothing.”

“That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.” He pointed the neck of the bottle toward me. “There’s something you’re leaving out.”

I lifted the beer to my lips, swallowing the cool liquid, and trying to find the words to explain how I’d fucked up. I set the bottle down and looked Emilio in the eye. “When I told Leslie about my family, I left out the part about my mom being an addict.”

“You told him about your childhood and left out the biggest reason your life happened the way it did?”

I leaned against the back of the chair and picked at the label on the bottle. “Not my finest moment. He’s got this wonderful family and he tattooed their names on his body. Explaining my mom didn’t want me was difficult enough.”

“You can’t let him keep thinking she just didn’t want you. Her addiction is much more than that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Is it really? Seems pretty clear to me that she wanted to take drugs more than she wanted me.”

“I didn’t say it was a good reason to abandon you.”

“I know. And you know I don’t talk about my mom often. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“You can’t not tell the person you’re dating. That’s not something to hide because people always find out in the end.”

As much as I hated the thought of talking about my mom to anyone, Emilio was right. Leslie deserved to know. And it had nothing to do with knowing my mom could be wandering around Espen somewhere.

“You’re right. It’s just not easy talking about her.”

“It never will be. My cousins still struggle to talk about their dad, but anyone you’re in a relationship with deserves to know.”

Emilio might usually be the jokester. He also knew when a serious conversation was needed.

“Thanks, man.”

“Anytime.” He lifted his beer to me. “Now, get me another round.” He laughed. I grabbed both bottles and took them up to the bar, ordering more.

When Leslie came home from his latest away game, I’d sit him down and tell him about my mother, even if it hurt.