I needed a cigarette whenever I talked to her. I was doing good. I hadn’t had a smoke in two months. I wasn’t about to let Nan send me backpedaling.
“I don’t give a shit where those two are but I want to know if you’re with them. I won’t let that happen. Do you understand me?”
I understood that she was delusional, as always.
“Nannette, if I start sleeping in Harlow’s bed, there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. So back the f**k off. It’s over. I’m tired of being your backup.”
The boiling rage implicit in her silence made me smile. I liked pissing her off.
For so long I had just wanted to make her smile. I had wanted to save her from herself. But she’d made sure to destroy all those feelings in me. Sleeping with one man after another and rubbing it in my face, then calling me the moment she needed someone. I had let her use me, and slowly it had eaten away at me. Being needed was something I thought I wanted. I thought it would make me feel like I had a purpose. What I hadn’t realized was I had become Nan’s bitch. That was a sour pill to swallow. Backing out of her life hadn’t been easy, but once I had managed to kill my feelings for her and accept that she was bitter and angry, and that I could never change that, I had been a happier person. Sleeping with her when I was drunk was just easy. I knew what to expect in the morning. I knew I was no longer in danger of falling in love with her.
“Is this because I’m screwing around with August? You’re being childish. I told you I just wanted to do the friends with benefits thing for a while. I don’t like serious, and you wanted serious.”
I’d been f**king insane. She’d saved us both from hell—I should thank her for that.
“I’m bored, Nannette. The benefits thing is over. We’re in the past. I don’t want it from you anymore. You can f**k whomever the hell you want to, and I’m okay with that. Hell, if he needs a condom I’ll tell him where I left my stash.”
Nan squeaked in disbelief. “You think she’s sweet and pretty, but that’ll get old, too. She’s uptight and boring. When you’re done trying to f**k Harlow, don’t come running back to me when you realize it wasn’t worth the effort.”
I didn’t take the bait. She was fishing. I wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t about to give her anything to throw in Harlow’s face later. Nan played games. Mean, brutal games.
“Who I decide to spend time with is my business. I’m not yours, Nan. Never was. Now, if you’re done I have important things to get to.”
“Where are you?!” she screamed into the phone.
“Not in Rosemary,” I replied, then hung up the phone and dropped it. Nan had been a hard lesson to learn. She was the kind of girl her father had warned me about. Loving Nan would only lead to disaster. Good thing I never really fell in love with her . . .
My phone rang again before I could think too much about Nan.
This time it was Rush.
“Hey,” I said, thankful for someone I could actually talk to.
“Just talked to Dad,” was his only reply.
“Yeah. It’s f**ked up. I’m headed there now. She wanted to go alone but I want to be there when she leaves.”
“You and her talk things out before all this shit happened?”
We talked it out, all right. We talked it out in ways I hadn’t expected.
“Yeah, we did. We weren’t done but then Dean dropped this on her and she was gone.”
“I’m having a hard time believing this, and it ain’t even my momma. I can’t imagine Harlow is handling this well. She seems so breakable.”
I pushed back the possessiveness that rose up in me. Thinking about Harlow being breakable upset me. I didn’t want to think about that. Not when I wasn’t there to catch her.
“Not gonna lie. I’m pissed at your dad. He just blurted it out—no preparation or anything. That kind of shit needs to be eased into. He didn’t ease into it.”
Rush sighed. “Yeah, well, he’s not exactly good with words. He just says what he’s thinking.”
That excuse wasn’t enough for me. Dean was on my shit list.
“Nan is looking for you,” Rush said.
“She called me,” I replied. This was not something I wanted to talk about with him. Nan wasn’t one of my favorite people but she was still his family.
“She’ll eat Harlow alive. Be careful.”