Rattled, стр. 10

“You didn’t stay in a dorm all the time, did you? I got a house with friends my junior year.”

“I did the same. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to worry about cooking my own meals, though. Laundry, I had that down from high school. Cooking was an entirely different matter.”

“Cooking is fun.” I like trying to make different meals, within a budget of course.

“Well, I have finally graduated from frozen dinners and canned soups.” He smiles up at me. “I’ve moved on to boxed meals. The kind that you cook on the stove.”

“I’m so proud of you.” I laugh.

“I still live with those guys. We just aren’t on campus anymore, though. Our house wasn’t far from a frat house and we couldn’t wait to get away from them.”

“Why?”

“Rich kids, not a care in the world. More money than they knew what to do with. Daddy paying for everything, and partying every weekend, and sometimes during the week. All they had to do was pass their classes to stay in school.”

That would get obnoxious after a while. Not that I didn’t go to parties in college, but some of those houses, all they did was party. And they were loud most of the time.

“My friends and I were all scholarship and financial aid. We had to get good grades to stay in school and get jobs when we graduated. We didn’t have family money to fall back on and we studied our asses off.”

When you come from nothing, like me and Alex, you do work hard and appreciate your chances. I would’ve continued going to high school if I had remained in foster care, but it wouldn’t have been the same. Plus, when you’re moved from house to house, schools often change too and it’s really hard to make friends that way. I’ve got a couple good friends now. One that knew me in high school and ones that I met in college. Even after I graduate, I’ll have those same friends as we start establishing ourselves in the real world. I just hope I don’t screw up. I want to make Baxter proud.

“When the last one of us turned twenty-one, it was a Saturday and we decided to party like the rich kids did.”

“How is that?” I laugh, imagining they had a keg in the corner and half-naked girls walking around.

“Porn and beer.” He’s shaking his head. “We were convinced those guys watched porn every chance they got. Sometimes we’d see and hear it and had to shut our windows.”

“So, was it a fun night?” What is it with guys and porn?

“Not exactly.”

Some tension eased out of me. If Alex had claimed it had been the best night of his life, the respect I’ve gained for him since I walked into this room would disappear.

“It was all supposed to be a joke. Though we had the beer, and the DVD was in the player, we had our books out.”

“It was a Saturday,” I remind him.

“Finals were the following week.”

I’ve had many weekends lost to books because of upcoming exams.

“At first I thought I was imagining the voice…”

He isn’t looking at me, and I’m not sure if he’s changed the subject, or what he’s talking about. “Huh?”

“My mom’s. I heard it a lot, or thought I did, when I was little. It was my imagination, of course. She wasn’t coming back for me, but I could swear I heard her in the living room.”

My stomach tightens and I swallow against the bile, afraid of where this is going.

“So I go in there, and that’s when I see her. On the TV. In the movie. Porn. Not the way any kid wants to see their mother.”

“Oh, God.”

“At first I was shocked, and then I got sick. I told the guys that I’d had too much to drink and they bought it. I didn’t drink much and they teased me about being a lightweight.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to my room and tossed my mom’s picture in the trash. I had only the one, and I’d kept it with me, constantly lying to myself that something had to have happened to her and that’s why she didn’t come back. Or that she would be back one day and I would listen to her explanation.”

“I’m sorry.” What else can I say?

“Well, she made it big, apparently. I searched her stage name, if that’s what porn stars call them, on the Internet and she had a lot movies under her belt.” He snorts and I’m pretty sure that pun was intended. “Now she’s a bigwig at one of the production companies making the same kind of movies she starred in for so long.”

“Now that you know where she is, are you going to go see her?”

“Nope. She didn’t want me and I sure as hell don’t want her anymore.”

My heart breaks for him. What kind of mother can abandon her kid and go off to star in adult movies? “Maybe she didn’t mean to end up there, but in other movies, and couldn’t catch a break.”

Alex pauses in what he’s doing and looks up. His cobalt eyes darken with pain. “It doesn’t matter what her intentions were. She left me for a dream of a better life. It wouldn’t matter if she was a porn star or walking the red carpet after starring in a Spielberg film. She left me behind without a second thought. That’s what I’ll never forgive.”