26. Had A Crush

"Are you ready to go?" Sage asked on Monday afternoon. She'd gotten out of work at noon and was packed up. Trace and Violet had left a few hours ago. Violet was taking today off, but they were coming back on Christmas afternoon.

Maybe she and Knox would too, but they had the hotel room for another day if they wanted to stay.

"I am," he said. "Are you sure you don't mind me driving your car?"

"Nope," she said. "I know you're probably comfortable in your truck, but for a longer drive, I thought it might be easier in my SUV navigating traffic."

"It will be," he said. "I love my truck and can get through anything with it, but I really should get another car to have at times."

"Why?" she asked. "It's kind of wasteful unless you don't want too many miles on your truck. Plus it's good advertising."

"There is that," he said. "But it's not always practical. I guess I never did much to worry about it."

"And now you're going on holiday trips to spend with family."

"I am," he said, smiling at her. It didn't seem as if he was bothered by that so that was good at least.

She turned to look at him when he pulled out of his driveway. "Did you talk to Blaze? What is he doing for the holiday?"

She knew that Knox hadn't talked to his mother but was keeping in more contact with Blaze.

"He's leaving the twenty-sixth to spend a few weeks with his father," he said. "As much as he would have liked to go sooner, I think he felt like he couldn't do that to our mother."

"Has your mother ever asked you to come home for the holidays? Or in the past few years since you've been alone?"

"No," he said.

That just broke her heart. How could a parent not do that? "You spent the last few years alone?"

He let out a sigh. "It's just a day."

"No," she said. "It's not."

"When my father was alive, it was only the two of us. Both of his parents had passed. We never did much anyway."

"What did you do?" she asked. "Do you have any childhood memories that are nice that you want to share? Or would you rather just end this conversation?"

"No," he said. "We can talk about it. Not everything in my life was horrible. But I'll be honest and say my father was disconnected. I thought about what you said and that maybe my father distanced himself when he suspected things and I just got caught up in the tide and left to float on my own."

"That was wrong of them both," she said.

"Nothing I can do about it. It makes me wonder if that is why my father was so accepting of my attitude for years toward him. I had so much resentment over everything. I was leaving my friends, however few they were. I was leaving you."

"Come on," she said. "Be serious."

"I am being serious, Sage. I considered you one of my friends. I had a crush on you, but I still thought of you as a friend. You were a friendly face that was nice to me. I had to move to a new state. New school. Make friends and try to act like there wasn't a shit storm in my house and I was ducking for cover at every opportunity."

She'd never thought of any of that.

"You had no one to talk to?" she asked.

"Who?" he asked. "New friends don't want to hear that drama. I kept most of it quiet. I never said a word about what my mother did. Just that my parents were separated. No one questioned anything. Lots of kids' parents are divorced and have other kids with someone else."

"Good point," she said.

"I went to school, I kept to myself, and then I went home and stayed in my room. My mother had a newborn. She was living with Zach and they were trying to get into a routine. I mean they'd been together over a year, but no one knew. It's not like they lived together or knew how they'd be. Blaze is a laid back guy but wasn't an easy baby. No one paid attention to me."

She felt her eyes fill with tears. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. How often did you see your father?"

"Not that much. We were too far away for weekend visits. I'd go there when I had a week off from school. We were in Wilmington, Delaware, which was about three and a half hours from New Haven where my father lived."

"Then holidays were with him," she said.

"Pretty much," he said. "I think it was better than being with my mother. Sometimes I'd spend Christmas with her and then go to his house after. They always met in the middle for a drop off."

"A drop off," she said.

"Yeah. It was too much to drive six hours in one day for one of them, so the courts said to meet in the middle. It was normally a gas station or fast food joint."

Good lord that sounded horrible to her.

"When you got to your father's how was your holiday?"

"Not horrible but not that memorable either," he said. "Nothing like Thanksgiving was with your family. Or how I think the next few days are going to be."

"I have such good memories with my family. I hope you get to share that."

"I will," he said. "For years it was hard with my father. We just didn't talk much, but my grandmother was great. This is crazy, but when I knocked on your door and smelled the chocolate chip cookies, I thought of her immediately. She always had cookies made when I visited. She'd drop them off at my father's."

"That's kind of sweet," she said. "Always chocolate chip?"

"Nope," he said. "She'd make different ones. Peanut butter or sugar cookies. Sometimes brownies. It was nice. My father and I would eat it all in two days and then we'd both have a gut ache. But he said it was the only time he got the sweets from her too. Normally he bought them from the store weekly."

"That's a great memory to have with him," she said. And she was going to try to make more cookies for him too. She just realized she'd only done it that one time since they'd been dating.

"It is," he said. "Things got better when I was older. I was living in Groton and he was in New Haven, but he'd come on the weekends. We'd hang out and talk. Cook meals. I know he was nervous about coming each weekend, but I told him it was his house. He shouldn't feel that way. It's like we tiptoed around each other rather than being father and son."

"Sounded like he wanted you to have a place to call your own that maybe he couldn't give you before."

"I think so," he said. "But little by little we spent more time together. Sometimes he'd come and just work and we were in the house together, but we still talked some. We'd eat together. I'd come and go and he would too, but I don't know. I can't explain it."

"It's like any adult living with a parent. You respect the other's space and privacy but yet still have them there if you need them."

"Yeah," he said. "Then he was just gone. I was going to New Haven to meet him for dinner. That was the plan that night. I had a job not that far away and reached out to ask if he wanted to meet."

"You said he had a seizure and hit his head. Did he have a history of them?" she asked.

"No," he said. "I think he would have told me. But I had them do an autopsy. I just needed answers. It didn't make sense to me he'd hit his head and died so suddenly."

"Did you think there was foul play?" she asked.

"I did," he said.

This was the first she'd heard of it. "Why though?"

"No clue," he said. "But nothing made sense to me at all. If he'd been attacked I'd want to know. But they said he'd had a seizure. That is what most likely caused him to hit his head. Then they said his blood sugar was really high. I guess he might have had type two diabetes but didn't know. He wasn't overweight, but again...those sweets he'd indulge in. Maybe he ate them a lot, but I had no idea. He was a big guy. Not heavy, as I said, but he did eat a lot of pastas and carb-based foods. I'm not sure if he knew he had it or not. We didn't talk about doctors" appointments or anything."

"My mother watches my father like a hawk. Makes sure he goes to the doctor yearly and gets his blood pressure and cholesterol checked. He's on some meds."

"My father wasn't on anything. I'd know living with him at times. I never saw anything. I don't even know if he went to the doctor. I hate to say there was a simple explanation to what happened, but it doesn't feel that way."

Her hand landed on his resting on the seat. "No," she said. "And I'm sorry if talking about this is making you sad."

"It's not," he said. "Or I don't think so. I've never talked about it before with anyone. I'm glad I've got you to do it with though."

"Me too," she said.

It was time to change the subject though.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Is Kate going to be there?"

"She is," she said. "We are her family now. She feels as if she has no one. She isn't talking to her parents at all the last I knew."

"I know that feeling," he said.

"Does your mother know we are dating?" she asked suddenly.

He sighed. "No. I've talked to her twice since we've been dating. The first time when she tried to say Blaze needed money when he didn't and then last week when she was screaming at me."

"Which was wrong of her."

"My mother never thinks she does anything wrong. I'll tell her at some point. Maybe. Does that bother you?" He turned to look at her.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't tell you how to handle your family. Blaze knows about me so you aren't keeping me a secret."

"No secret," he said. "I sent him a bunch of gift cards for Christmas. Mark's parents had this huge gift basket sent two days ago."

"They did?" she asked. She hadn't been to his house since last weekend and only stopped to get him so they could get on the road today. She hadn't missed that he'd changed the subject some too and would go along with it.

"Yeah. It was full of meats and cheeses, crackers and chocolates. It was nice. They didn't need to do that."

"I'm sure they were relieved by what you did."

Even if Knox's mother didn't appreciate it.

"They were. I told Blaze to let Mark know he's welcome any time."

"I bet Blaze might come up this summer," she said. "To work for you."

"Do you think?" he asked. "I bet he goes with his father."

"If he can't go with his father, he will with you. Do you think maybe he wants that in his life too?"

She'd noticed that at times it seemed to her that Blaze almost looked up to Knox, but she didn't know if he saw it or not.

"No clue," he said. "What am I missing?"

"You didn't catch how many times he said your house was cool. That he wanted to be his own boss. That you were doing everything he'd want to have."

"I did, but I figured it was just him talking."

"I think there is more to it," she said. "But I don't know him like you do."

"I don't know how well I know him," he said.

"Better than you think," she said. "Remember that. You wouldn't have made that offer if you didn't want to spend more time with him."

"You're right," he said. "I think we were both left floating and handled it in different ways."

"A common bond that you've got. The age difference is there, but only if you make that be part of it."

"We'll see what happens in a few months," he said. "Change of subject. Does your nonna really make seven fishes?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "You're in for a real treat."

That was enough of a subtle move for her to know the talk of their pasts was over with.

She got more out of him than she thought she would.

The last thing he'd want was for her to feel sorry for him so she'd keep that to herself.