A Little Less than Famous (26 page)

It was about a week after the Laker game that it happened
. Luke and I were sitting in the diner, cleaning up after a busy day. I was counting my tips at the counter and Luke was mopping underneath the stools when someone walked in. I turned to tell them we were closed and choked on my words. I stared, completely at a loss for words.

She looked different. She was skinnier than I remember, more harsh angles than the softness she had when I was younger. Her hair was still reddish blonde, cut into a short pageboy, very different from the long hair I remembered and there were wrinkles that definitely hadn’t been there before. She looked older, definitely older. But it was her. Despite all the time, and all the changes, I knew it was her.

Chapter Ten

Before I could say anything, Luke dropped the mop and turned to her, his eyes wide.

“Corinna
?”

My mom looked at the both of us, her own eyes wide. As I was noticing the differences in her, especially how much older she looked, I wondered how we looked
to her. Luke had been twenty-three
when she left and I was five
. I was now the age that Luke was when she left
. “Luke, hi. And McKinley…”

“What are you doing here?” Luke interrupted sharply, staring at my mom as if he’d never seen her before in his life, as if she wasn’t real.

She looked a little taken back by Luke’s tone of voice. “I came back. To see you. Both of you.”

Luke looked over his shoulder at me, gauging
my reaction. I didn’t have one;
I couldn’t have one. My hands were frozen in the middle of counting my tips. “You came back to see
us
?” he asked, his voice dripping with disbelief.

“Is that so hard to believe, Luke?” she said, her voice even but hinted with a bit of annoyance. This was more like the mom I remembered. She looked over at me. “I wanted to see my daughter.”

“She’s not your daughter anymore,” Luke said, anger seeping into his voice.
“And you should know that I want nothing to do with you.”

“Luke,” I said, finally managing some speech.

“Who is the one who left her here twenty years ago? Who is the one who just disappeared and left her behind?” Luke spat out. My mom stared at him, unable to answer. My head swiveled between the two of them.
“Who decided that it was fine to leave a five-year-old girl with her twenty-three year old boyfriend who knew absolutely nothing about
raising a child
?”

I winced. Luke had obviously been holding a lot of this in over the years. We didn’t talk about my mom often and the few times we did, it was all about me, and my feelings. We had never talked about how Luke had felt about my mom leaving. Despite everything my mom was, he had loved her and I know he had felt something when she had left, especially since she had left a daily reminder of her abandonment: me.

“I made a mistake,” she answered, calmly, placing her hand on the counter, only a couple feet away from my own hands. I stared at that hand for too long, amazed at how close she was. “I never should have left.”

Luke snorted. “So you just came back? You just walk in, expecting to just see McKinley and have eve
rything fixed? She’s twenty-three years old, Corinna
; the last time you saw her, she couldn’t even tie her shoes. You just expect her to still be here, waiting at the counter where you left her?”

“Luke!” I said, my hand flying up to my mouth.

“Of course not! But I wanted to see her, I wanted to apologize!” My mom’s hair, so unlike mine, stayed perfectly still as she shook her head in anger.

“It doesn’t w
ork like that! It’s been nearly twenty years, Corinna
!”

“So you’re not even going to give me a chance to see my daughter, to talk to her?”

“She’s my daughter! She’s mine!”

“Hey!” I yelled. They both turned to look at me, as if surprised that I was still there. “Yeah, I’m standing right
here. And yeah, I’m twenty-three
years old, an adult, so can you both stop talking about me as if I’m a child?”

“McKinley,” they both said at the same time. They glared at each other.

Luke spoke first. “You’re right; I’m sorry.”

“Yes, I’m sorry too,” my mom said softly. “It
’
s so weird to think of you as an adult. You’ve grown up so much.”

“Okay, wow, you can just stop that right there,” I said, my voice shaking. “I can’t…I can’t have you talking about all the time that has passed as if it was just a weekend getaway. You left. You left me here.”

“I know, McKinley, I…”

“No, just…just no,” I said, cradling my head in my hands and sinking onto a stool. “I can’t do this.”

“You should leave,” Luke said, taking a hold of her arm and steering her towards the door.

“Let go of me,” my mom spoke firmly, pulling away from him. “All I want to do is see McKinley…to talk to her.”

“You can’t.”

“That’s my decision, isn’t it?” I spoke up, still staring at the ground, trying to process what the hell was going on.

My mom looked up at me hopeful. Luke stared at me in disbelief but let go of her arm. “Oh thank…”

I held up my hand to stop her. “Don’t get carried away here,
Mom.
I want you to answer a few questions first. Honestly.”

She looked a little nervous at that but nodded. “That seems fair enough.”

“Why d
id you leave? Why did you leave
me?” I said, spitting out the words, refusing to look at her. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t even accept that she was there, standing in front of me.

“Oh McKinley.” She sank into a stool next to me. She reached out to me, as if to touch me but I turned away and her hand pulled back. “It had nothing to do with you. I was so young. I was twenty
-one
years old and I had a five-year-old child and I was just so tired. I wasn’t ready to be a mother.  I needed to get away; I needed to have some time to myself. I didn’t intend to leave for good.”

I swallowed hard. “Why are you here? Really?”

“I wanted t
o see you.”

“And t
hat’s the truth?”

“Of course it is.”

“How did you know I was here?”

She didn’t speak right away. When she did, she took a deep breath and said, “Well, I didn’t. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I didn’t think you’d still be here, with Luke. I thought you would’ve been…well, I didn’t know. I thought you would’ve been in the foster system…and then living on your own.”

“I would never let her go into the foster system,” Luke said, his voice fierce.

“Luke,” I said softly, shaking my head at him. I turned to my mom, my voice steady. “So yo
u came back to the diner? What, did you expect me to still be sitting at the end of the counter, coloring in my coloring books?”

“I thought maybe Luke would know where you were.”

“That’s a lie.”

She looked taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t come to Luke’s, hoping that he would know where I was. You knew I was here.” Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. “And I know how you knew. So
let’s try this again;
how did you know I was here?”

She looked down at the ground, then back up at me, to Luke and then back to me.
She knew she was caught.
“I saw you on T.V.”

I sat back, the realization hitting me. “You saw me on T.V. and decided to come back and see me?”

“No!” she answered, frantically. “I mean, well, yes. I mean…I wanted to see you. I had wanted to see you for so long. And then one day, I turned on the TV and there you were, my baby girl, on
Entertainment Tonight
, in the arms of a movie star. They showed you coming out of Luke’s and…and I knew where to find you.”

“Of course,” I said, flatly. “Perfect. Just perfect.
Eighteen years
have passed, Mom! It’s been
almost
twenty years and you finally make your appearance after I start dating a famous celebrity and I’m on television? I don’t know why I’m surprised at that.” I stood up, my tip money blowing off the counter and onto the ground. I stared at it for a moment. “If you’re looking for money or something, there it is right there. I don’t have anything else. And I can’t get any from Jake either.” I turned to walk away from her. 

“I don’t want anything from you!” my mom began to protest.

“No, please, just leave me alone,” I said, turning my back to her and running up the stairs, trying as hard as I could to keep her from seeing the tears running down my face.

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I was left alone in my room for a couple hours before someone knocked on my door. I ignored it, until it sounded again. Assuming that it was either Luke or my mom, or both, I yelled, “Go away.”

“I’m not going away, McKinley Evans, so you better let me in.”

I bolted up into a sitting position, surprised at the voice that had come from the other side of my bedroom door. I threw off my bed covers and crossed the room, opening the door slowly and peeking out. “Amanda?”

“Of course it’s me, let me in already, would you?” she said, shaking her head, a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, my favorite, in her hands.

I stepped back, letting her pass. She came into my room, setting the six-pack on my desk, and sitting down in the chair, easily, as if it hadn’t been months since she had done so. She pulled two bottles out of the pack, popped them open and held one out to me. I stared at her for a moment.

“Well, aren’t you going to take one?” she asked, rolling her eyes, and tossing her blond hair over one shoulder.

I reached forward and took the drink from her. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Amanda said, staring at me in
disbelief. “I heard your mom was
back in town and I came straight over. Well, after I grabbed us a six pack, of course.”

“But…you’re mad at me. You’ve been mad at me for months…” I sputtered.

Amanda looked a little embarrassed at that. “Yeah, well, I
was
mad. But I was also stupid. I mean, come on, McKinley, I couldn’t let a boy get in the way of our friendship.”

I sat down on the bed, taking a healthy sip of my drink. “
You had every right to be mad though.
I
wasn’t exactly innocent.
”

She shrugged. “No, you weren’t. But I was irrational and unreasonable. Mike has been showing me that.”

“Mike? Who is Mike?” I asked, confused.

Amanda blushed, taking a drink from her bottle to hide her smile. “Well, he’s my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend?” I said, surprised and happy at the same time. “When did this happen?”

“Never mind that right now,” Amanda said, waving me off. “We’ll talk about Mike later. What about your mom?”

I sighed, turning away from her and tipping the bottle back as I took a drink. “I didn’t even know how to react, you know? So I just yelled at her. I was a bitch.”