I stared at myself in the decorative living room mirror and fondled with the small tattoo just behind my right ear. I turned to the side so I could see it, and the memory made me smile. The two little swans were small, but the heart they made with their heads and their necks seemed bigger than ever before.
It was a matching tattoo that Tanner and myself had gotten back in high school when we were young and stupid.
But just as rapidly as things changed back then, things were changing now.
Six months. It had been six months since I’d seen Tanner at The Body Shop, and the man didn’t so much as utter ten words to me. Ten words, after all we had been through as kids. We both grew up on the other side of the tracks, so to speak, and we weathered the teasing together like the team we were. High school was brutal, and I was terrible at math, and soon Tanner had become my math instructor just to get me to pass the damn class in the first place.
He always thought I’d make it out of there. Go to community college and get a degree.
He always thought much more of me than necessary.
I wanted to tell him, though. The second I laid eyes on him at The Body Shop all those months ago, I had wanted to blurt it out. But after he practically avoided me like the plague and refused to talk to me while also staring me down like a fucking creep, it made me second-guess telling him about things.
Hell, it made me second-guess coming back to Santa Cruz in the first place.
After everything with Josie and those fucking owners of the strip club, though, I quit. After I got all of those girls squared away at the police station, I went to clear out my locker and I never went back. I didn’t want to be affiliated with anything that was going on there, and I even went so far as to go back to the police station to tell them what I had experienced, what I thought was going on, and what I thought they needed to do about it.
Because the last thing my ten-year-old daughter needed was to be exposed to that kind of a life.
However, stripping did afford me one thing, and that was a great deal of money. Over the years, I had saved up exponentially more than I spent. I didn’t buy lavish studio apartments like my co-workers and I didn’t go out and take myself on shopping sprees. I filled up a college account for my daughter, I paid our rent in advance, and I put back enough money to enroll myself into basic technology courses.
“You excited about work tomorrow, Mom?”
My daughter’s voice ripped me from my trance, and I smiled as I turned around. “Actually, I am.”
Cheyenne rushed over to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I’m proud of you, you know.”
My eyes watered as I hugged her back. “That means a lot.”
She peeked up at me. “Are you proud of you?”
I kissed her forehead. “I’m very proud of me, thank you for asking.”
Every time I gazed into her eyes, it was like looking straight into Tanner’s. Not only did she have his stubbornness and independence, but she had his eyes. His thinner lips. Hell, she even had his disheveled hair that couldn’t seem to be tamed no matter what I did with it.
She was her father’s child.
And it killed me that Tanner didn’t even know about her.
“Enough about me, though,” I said as I led Cheyenne into the kitchen, “we need to figure out what snacks you want for your birthday sleepover at Shana’s tonight.”
“Oh, I totally got it covered.”
I crooked an eyebrow. “Really now? Did you go shopping for the snacks?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I did something better.”
“What did you do, Cheyenne?”
She fell apart in giggles. “I told them it was a ‘bring their own snacks’ kind of situation.”
I barked with laughter. “You don’t make people bring their own food if you’re the hostess.”
“But we aren’t even having it here, Mom!”
I kissed the top of her nose. “Doesn’t matter; they’re at least expecting to eat cake. Do you want them to bring their own cake, too?”
She shrugged. “Cake’s a snack.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, you wackadoodle. Let’s go get you a cake from your favorite bakery. And make sure to grab your bag! I’ll take you to Shana’s once we’re done.”
She thrusted her fist into the air. “Yesssss!”
I shook my head as she rushed back down our small hallway and dipped into her room. Some days, I felt guilty that I was raising my beautiful little girl in a two-bedroom apartment. Some days, I wanted more than anything else to buy a home on three or four acres and give her a room she could decorate. A wall she could hang her pictures on.
One day soon. You’re so close.
“All right, Mom!” Cheyenne said as she rushed back down the hallway. “Ready when you are.”
I tossed my keys into the air and caught them. “Then, let’s head on out, princess!”
“Yeah!”
The run to the bakery didn’t take long, but the traffic getting to Shana’s was almost unbearable. It seemed as if we hit every red light and accident from here to Vegas trying to get to that damned house. But once we pulled up and I delivered the cake to Shana’s mother, all felt right with the world.
And my day only got better when my little sister—Sloane—called me while I drove home.
“Hey, hey, hey! What’s crackin’?” I asked.
Sloane giggled. “Just wanted to see how you were feeling about tomorrow, Kraken.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “I’m nervous, but it’s a good nervous.”
“I’m just glad you’re out of that strip club. The entire place is practically festering with illegal activity right now.”
“And you know that all the way out in Santa Barbara?”
“D.C. even knows, Summer. That’s how bad it is.”
I drew in a sobering breath. “Then, it’s a good thing I got the fuck out of there.”
“So, are you gonna ask me how my detective work is going?”
I grinned. “That means you have something juicy.”
“Ask, please. I’ve been dying for someone to ask.”
I giggled as I turned into my apartment complex. “All right, how’s the detective work coming along?”
“I’m so glad you asked, sister mine. As you know, I’ve started taking outside clients and bartering my skills for other necessities.”
I blinked. “Actually, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, that’s a thing now.”
I pulled into my parking space. “So, you’re like a regular Sherlock or some shit like that.”
She snorted. “Or some shit like that, yeah. Anyway, I took on this one case—I traded my detective skills for a new couch, by the way—and—”
“Wait, wait, wait, you can do that?”
“You’re not going to let me finish, are you?”
I turned off the car but kept the air running. “Sorry, sorry. Okay, hit me with it. What’s going on with this case? Oh! And I want pictures of the new couch.”
“I’ll shoot you some pictures over. Anyway, yes, I took on this case and you’ll never guess what I’ve found.”
“What did you find? What’s the case about?”
She started talking a million miles a second. “Well, this woman came to me—her husband owns a furniture store—and she wanted me to do some looking into some things because she thought her husband was cheating on her. So, I took the job, did some simple surveillance in my off-time, and you’ll never guess what I found.”
I smiled brightly. “You’re like one of those television shows.”
“Ask me what I found, Summer!”
I mocked her tone of voice. “What did you find, Sloane!?”
She cackled with laughter. “This man isn’t cheating on his wife. He’s going after work and eating at all of the places she hates to go eat.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
She howled in my ear. “The fucking woman is a picky-ass eater, and her husband is eating dinner without her so he can have good food for once!”
I roared with laughter as I sat in the car, grateful to be talking with my sister. We didn’t always get to have conversations like this, so I always took them to heart when we did. I wiped at my tears before I gathered my things and started toward my apartment.
And this was one of those moments where I was thankful I didn’t have to stumble my ass up some steps in heels.
“Oh, oh my God. Thank you. I had to tell someone, this shit’s been a riot,” Sloane said through her breathless giggles.
I finally got myself into my apartment. “Oh, fuck. My stomach. It actually physically hurts.”
“Ask me what he was eating the other night.”
I paused. “Oh, God. I’m gonna die from laughter, aren’t I?”
She snickered. “Just ask me.”
I drew in a deep breath and rolled my shoulders back. “What was he eating?”
“FUCKING. ALFREDO. PASTA!”
I collapsed to the floor and clutched my heart as we laughed again. I mean, the woman thought her man was cheating. Cheating, of all things! And all he’s doing is trying to escape her bland eating habits?
By eating regular alfredo pasta!?
“They’re white, aren’t they?” I asked through my bellowing laughter.
“The whitest!” she said through her wheezing.
For the first time in my life, I honestly thought I was going to pass out. I couldn’t catch my breath and I actually had to start howling just to force my lungs to take in air. I wiped at the tears streaming down my cheeks. I straightened my back, giving my lungs space to blossom open as breathing came easier.
“Oh, holy shit. I needed that laugh so bad,” I said as I wiped the last of my tears away.
“Girl, I figured it out a couple of days ago and I knew the first phone call I had to place was to you. I knew you were the only one who’d get why I was so tickled by it.”
I laid down on the cool linoleum floor of my kitchen while Sloane rattled off more about these cases she took on in her spare time, and I found myself entranced by the sound of her voice. My little sister was the only family member I talked to anymore, and when Sloane stopped talking to them as well, it bonded us even more. I had beef with our parents after I figured out I was pregnant just before my seventeenth birthday. They kicked me out of their house, and I had to do my last year of high school without them, without Tanner, and without my dignity.
But I managed to get my GED after I gave birth to Cheyenne.
As soon as I graduated, though, I left. I packed up my one-year-old little girl, piled everything I could into a beat-up rust bucket I managed to purchase with money I snuck in and stole from my parents one night, and I never looked back.
I drove out to Santa Barbara to try and make a life for myself. And when my sister graduated, she came out to be with me for a little while.
Until I got the job with The Body Shop and moved back.
“Summer?”
I drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just listening to you talk. I like it when you talk.”
She sighed. “You know there’s always space for you and Cheyenne if you choose to come back to Santa Barbara, right?”
I licked my lips. “You know when Dad practically disowned you for wanting to go into law enforcement?”
She scoffed. “How could I forget? It’s why I went to find you in Santa Barbara.”
I nodded mindlessly. “I think that department—and your clients—are very lucky to have you.”
She sighed. “I miss you so much. Is there anything I can do to convince you to come back?”
I smiled softly. “I really appreciate it, but this place is home, whether I like it or not. And I’m not stripping any longer, so you don’t have to worry about that, either.”
“Thank fuck.”
I picked myself up off the floor. “But should something happen with this new job, or even with Cheyenne, and we need a place to go? Trust me, we’ll be on your doorstep.”
“Good. As long as you know you guys are welcome here anytime, for as long as you’d like, then that’s enough for me.”
“I love you, Sloane.”
“I love you too, Summer.”
And as we said our goodbyes before hanging up the phone, the smallest part of me wondered about going back to Santa Barbara. Specifically, if going back would benefit Cheyenne more than being here. Because now that I had proof that not only was Tanner still in town, but that he still wanted nothing to do with me? I almost had no reason to stay.
In fact, I had no reason to stay at all.
And the thought of going back to Santa Barbara stuck with me for the rest of the damned day.
