His mother and Keith were quickly subdued in the lobby area, distracted by the receptionist, who had engaged them, however, Ruby caught site of Levi and waved, making a beeline for his desk.
“He’s my son, young woman,” Ruby called back when Caitlyn objected their dismissal of her. “Mr. Goode doesn’t have the right to not see his mother.”
Levi waved at Caitlyn, signaling that it was fine for them to come on back.
Keith was chuckling as he followed Ruby. Apparently the pair of them was already attached at the hip and of one mind after only a week and a half together. It meant that Ruby was once again quite mobile, now that she had someone to take her places.
Valerie scooped up her cell phone off her desk after it started chirping, tapping the touch screen. “Jake just texted, asking me to inform you that, should you continue to refuse his calls, he’ll just show up here and you’ll have to talk to him.”
“He’s pretty full of himself if he thinks he can force me to conversate.” Levi nodded, curtly, as if that should be the end of this discussion while ignoring the glare of disapproval coming from Ruby who’d overheard him. “How the heck did he get your number, anyway?”
“Is conversate even a word?” Valerie asked, seeming unsure.
Levi cringed, thinking it likely wasn’t and began cursing Jake for turning him into an
illiterate
buffoon as opposed to merely a regular buffoon.
“What in the hell are you doing to that sweet man?” Ruby demanded, stomping her foot like a petulant child as if that might frighten Levi into submission. “He’s been calling me for days now—”
“Well he needs to friggin’ stop that!” Levi said, a little louder than intended.
“Mmm, I see what you mean, honey,” Keith said, visibly displeased, looking Levi up and down. “He even looks uptight.”
Ruby scoffed. “Wound tighter than a drum, damn it.”
“I am in the room, you know?”
Keith placed a hand on his hip and sneered. “You need to unpucker your butt and watch that tone when you are speaking to your mother.”
Valerie stared laughing. “I’m totally stealing that unpuckering bit.”
“How are you, Valerie?” Ruby asked sweetly, as if a different personality took over, pushing mean mommy aside.
Valerie grinned. “I’m lovely, Miss Ruby, thank you for asking.”
Mean mommy returned the instant Ruby glanced back Levi’s direction. “I cannot believe you are treating Jake this way. He has been nothing but a friend to this family since the day he came into our lives and you are acting as if he’s some sort of pariah?”
“What goes on between Jake and myself is none of your damn business.”
Keith’s eyes bugged out and Levi shot him a look, daring him to say a word about his friggin’ tone.
“They both want to bump uglies but supposedly can’t because Jake has a boyfriend or something like that,” Valerie clarified, sounding utterly bored by the tedious details.
Ruby sighed, glancing around the room, before grabbing a chair and dragging it over next to Levi’s desk. “Look sweetheart, I realize that what has happened here between you and Jake isn’t ideal.”
“Isn’t ideal?” Levi asked, leaning back in his seat. “That’s putting it mildly, momma.”
“All I’m trying to say, is perhaps you shouldn’t dismiss the man quite so quickly. All sorts of things can happen in the future, Levi. If you cut him out of your life now, you won’t be there when the time—”
“Please stop, Mother,” Levi said, pleading with her.
“Couples split up all the time,” Ruby said, making it sound like something he should be rooting for.
Levi’s mouth hanging open was all it took to inform Ruby that wasn’t the best tack to take.
“They just need to have sex,” Valerie said, tapping away on her keyboard. “Get it out of their systems so they can each move on.”
“None of that matters, damn it, so you can both butt out. I’m not a date another guy’s-guy, kinda guy, so regardless of how great Jake is, regardless of how much I like him,” Levi placed a hand on his chest, “how much you love and adore him,” he gestured toward Ruby, “how boff-worthy you happen to think he is,” pointing at Valerie, “…he is in fact,
not available!
”
He felt his nerves beginning to fray and he tried taking a few deep calming breathes until…
“Who said anything about dating?” Valerie asked.
Levi’s lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t be gross.”
“But that’s who I am,” Valerie pointed out. “It’s my thing.”
“I don’t want this for you, baby,” Ruby said, seeming genuinely distressed.
“Well, I don’t want this for me either, Mom, but it is what it is.”
“I’m a gross gal, I’m not ashamed of that,” Valerie added, apparently not catching on to the fact the conversation had moved on. Keith was staring at Valerie like he feared she might be damaged in the head.
“Try, damn it, try to be ashamed, Val?” Levi suggested, cringing over the realization he’d just cursed again. “For me? Pretty please?”
The evil smile on Valerie’s face told him that wasn’t going to happen. “I think you should slap it, smack it and take it up the crack until you—”
“Puh-lease stop talking, I am begging you,” Levi said, cutting her off.
“I don’t understand why you always have to focus in on the one negative?” Ruby asked. “There’s no reason you two can’t be friends until Jake realizes he’s meant to be with you.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“Baby, every day couples realize that they’ve grown apart or someone cheats
or
someone new comes along who shows them what’s been missing from their life.”
“Well, I’m not going to be that someone, Mother. I know how it feels to be cheated on and I don’t want to be that person—a home wrecker. Home wreckers totally suck ass, and they’re mean… and selfish… and mean. Meanie-suck-ass butts!”
“Why is he using that language?” Keith asked. “Is there a small child hanging around here I don’t know about?”
“No, he’s just a fucking moron,” Valerie clarified.
“You don’t want to be like me,” Ruby grabbed him by the arm. “I’m fully aware that you do not now nor have you ever approved of the romantic choices I’ve made, Levi. I can’t blame you for that because so often you were left to pick up the pieces of your broken-hearted mommy and help put her back together again.”
“I’m
not
like you, Mother, I can’t go out there and barrel through, ripping lives apart in order to get what I want. I don’t have that in me. That doesn’t make me weak or sad or pathetic.”
“I know that, baby. I never meant to make you feel that way and I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t make a mess of things. I went after everything, blindly chased every feeling and opportunity. But in spite of the fact doing all of that never produced the result I wanted for myself, don’t think for one minute that I wasn’t loved—that I never experienced the kind of passion they write about in books. I had it all. Just because I never managed to keep it, doesn’t mean that I would go back and change any of it.”
“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense to me.” Levi got up from behind his desk and started pacing.
Ruby sighed, shaking her head, visibly frustrated. “My biggest fear for you, the thing that keeps me up at night, is you’ll end up in the twilight of your life and have nothing to look back on but regrets. As much as I fucked things up in my life, there are no what-ifs for me now because I never held back.”
“But I can’t do that, Momma, it’s not who I am.”
Ruby stood and went to him, taking him by the hands. “I don’t want to see you miss out on love because you were too afraid to ask the question.”
Looking her dead in the eye, pleading for her to understand, Levi said, “I don’t have the
right
to ask him that question.”
“That’s just an excuse, Levi.” She squeezed his hands when he started to object. “I think you’re hiding behind it because you’re afraid. Love is messy, it doesn’t come to you all wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. Sometimes love is ugly, brutal, complicated and so help me, damn it, baby… sometimes people get hurt. But allowing
true
love to pass you by? That’s the only real mistake you can ever make. It’s the kind of mistake that will eat away at you for the rest of your life.”
Levi shook his head, not knowing what to say to any of that.
Ruby let go of him, taking a few steps back to lean against his desk. “I want you to ask yourself one question, if Jake Freeman died tomorrow, never having heard you express your love for him, would you ever be able to forgive yourself?”
The room went completely quiet and Levi sat there for a second, completely stunned by the words that had come from his mother’s mouth.
“That’s a horrible question!” Levi’s arms flailed through the air. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Gurl, that was messed up,” Keith said out of the corner of his mouth.
“You’ve got a nasty little dark side going on there, Miss Ruby,” Valerie said, staring at her like she was seeing the woman in a whole new light.
“You start getting up there in age and the topic of death becomes less taboo,” Ruby said, dryly. “It’s constantly staring you in the face, waiting for you slip in the tub and crack your head open.”
“That’s messed up,” Valerie said. “But the underlying message here is we’re all going to croak at some point so you may as well fuck yourself senseless in the meantime.”
“That is not the underlying message here, you crackpot,” Levi said, scolding her. “I would love it if you all would just butt the hell out of this. We aren’t ever going to see eye to eye, and if you can’t be supportive, then just keep your mouth shut.”
Ruby looked particularly wounded and Levi immediately felt guilty for making her feel bad. That didn’t stop him from adding insult to injury.
“I’m never going to be like you, Momma. You need to let this go.”
He wished he hadn’t said it before the words had even finished tumbling out of his mouth.
Keith was visibly livid, puffing himself up as he moved to Ruby’s side. “It never ceases to amaze me that children who hate having their parents meddling in their business—attempting to change who they are—will turn right around and do the same damn thing to their parents.”
“I did no such thing!” Levi protested.
“Not directly, no, but with each declaration that you are not your mother, you are in fact saying just that. Don’t be like you, be like me.”
“That isn’t what I intended,” Levi said, getting even more pissed off. “But I can see how it might have been taken that way.”
“How ’bout you accept her for who she is and I’ll work on her doing the same for you?” Keith asked.
“Well that sounds… completely fair,” Levi said, pissed off but unable to truly argue considering he’d been so effectively put in his place.
“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” Ruby said, quietly. “We should go, Keith.”
Levi sighed, feeling like a major shit-heel. “I am sorry, Momma. You know I love you, right?”
“I do, baby, and I love you. Every mother, even the slightly selfish and meddlesome ones, dream that someday, someone will look at their child the way Jake Freeman looks at you. I got scared, thinking you might miss out on… Well, I’ll just leave it. I’ve said my piece.”
Keith was still giving him the stink-eye as Levi walked over and gave Ruby a hug.
Accompanying them both back up to the front entrance, Levi nodded at the locksmith who was packing up his tools.
“Call my office and set up a time for me to come back and reset the locks for your loft,” he said, handing Levi several sets of keys. “Sorry I don’t have time to do it now but I at least managed to get all the doors to the business reset for you.”
“Thanks for doing that, I know you squeezed us into your schedule as it was.” Levi sighed. “This is just a precaution, I’m sure the missing keys will turn up somewhere.”
“Never hurts to be too safe,” the locksmith said, slipping out the door.
Levi gave Ruby’s hand a squeeze, turning his attention back to her and Keith. “I heard everything you said, Momma, but I need to handle this thing with Jake my way.”
He could see that she was less than enthusiastic hearing that, but she rebounded quickly when he invited her out to dinner later that week. He was well aware that Ruby took it as an invitation to work on him a little more, but the smile it put on her face in that moment had been worth any sacrifice to his own sanity later.
Chapter Thirteen
Two weeks later…
Sitting quietly in the attached living area of the hotel suite Julia had secured in the Harper Grand Regency, Levi was anxious—doing his best to preoccupy himself with checklists instead of fidgeting himself into oblivion. Not about the party later that evening and the gazillion minute details that came along with it—he was nervous about seeing Jake.
The hotel sat across the street from Wilde City Tower and it was where most of the family visiting from out of town was staying. Julia had decided getting a room for herself would be the best way of preventing the bulk of her relatives from trampling their germs though her overly sanitized home during the familial onslaught. The senator had taken inspiration from his daughter’s idea, though his reasoning had more to do with providing a level of separation over sanitization when it came to dealing with their relatives. Even though Christmas was actually still a week away, he’d decided to host their family holiday celebration at the hotel during the weekend following Julia’s party.