Truth Undressed (Exposed Series, #3) Read online

  We ended up spending the rest of the weekend together. Mostly in his bed with wine or out on the town with his arms draped around my waist as his salt and pepper stubble tickled my neck.

  We stayed in touch for a while after our romantic weekend, but eventually our correspondence fell off. Which was fine. That’s the way it should be. There’s no recipe for love. It isn’t something that can be forced. Some lovers are like gourmet meals. They’re dishes that are only meant to be tasted and remembered fondly, not indulged in every day.

  But that’s what’s so wonderful about collecting lovers or experiences in general. They stay with you forever. I’ve no doubt that my life was enriched by the memory of being fed flaky pastry in bed and having my fingertips kissed by lips that tasted like fine red wine.

  After all, you can’t put a price on a memory like that, and I’ve always believed that nothing makes a person rich like experience. Maybe I only feel that way because I never had any money. But I know lots of people with loads of money who don’t feel as rich as I do.

  Don’t get me wrong. Money is important. Really important. But it’s not good to become one of those people that prioritizes money over experience. Because money comes and goes, but adventures and memories last a lifetime.

  And it’s not good to waste money on things. They lose their shininess, their novelty value, and the joy from the purchase fades away. Then you’ve no choice but to search for the next thing that will give you a surge of happiness. But people who spend their money on experiences never regret it. Because adventures- unlike material things- hold their value.

  But I digress.

  The point is, sometimes it’s uplifting to remember that sex gets better as you age. And no one can teach you that lesson better than someone who’s learned it firsthand.

  Chapter 11: Kate

  Things between Carol and I had been tense to put it nicely.

  It’s not like I had completely ignored her since I found out she wasn’t my Mom. We had exchanged grunts and the occasional pleasantry. But we definitely hadn’t talked.

  Why should we? What was there to say? We both knew now that she had deceived me for eighteen years about who she was and lied to me about where I came from. To be honest, it felt more like there was a landmine in the room than an elephant.

  And even after I had some time to cool off, I was still so confused. Because when someone referenced my Mom, I still thought of her first. I mean, she hadn’t actually given birth to me which was a pretty big disqualifier, but she had done everything else.

  She changed my diapers, cleaned my nose so I wouldn’t be a snotty kid, and was my room Mom at school until third grade. No one had kissed more bruises or applied more band-aids as I stumbled and tripped through my early years. And I can’t remember her ever missing a single one of my lacrosse games.

  If it weren’t for her I probably wouldn’t even be able to read or use a toilet. And if I add all that stuff to the fact that no one caused me more stress, anxiety, and anger in my life, it was hard to argue that she wasn’t my Mom. Besides that one not so teeny detail.

  But “Mom” was a loaded word, and the more I thought about it, the less I could convince myself that Carol didn’t have anything to do with me. Cause even though I am at least fifty percent Dawn, there’s no question who mothered me more. I mean, Carol was invested. Time, money, energy. She’d given me the most valuable assets she had.

  It made me sick to think of how many times I wished she would just fuck off and leave me alone. Especially now that I know she could’ve.

  Instead, she loved me the way my own Mother didn’t. Or couldn’t. Even when I hated myself. Which was most of the last four years. And I know I put her through hell at times. I hadn’t been easy. On the contrary, I had been deliberately difficult too many times to count. But she never gave up on me or decided I was more trouble than I was worth.

  Even when I’d overheard her talking to my Dad about sending me away, it wasn’t because that was what she really wanted. I could see that now. She was just trying to keep me from getting hurt in ways that band-aids couldn’t fix.

  But even though I wasn’t pissed at her anymore, I had been avoiding her. I feared there was a chance she would say “Right. So you’re eighteen now and you know the truth. My job is done and it’s time for you to run free.”

  And I couldn’t bear the thought of losing another Mom. Or even worse, being rejected by another one. Especially when I wasn’t really as independent as I liked to pretend. I mean, shit. Most of the time, I still felt as vulnerable as a newborn.

  Of course, I didn’t know what she was thinking. About me. About me knowing the truth. And I needed to know for better or for worse. So when she finally mustered up the courage to invite me to lunch, I said yes.

  Because I had no choice.

  Losing Dawn was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but losing Carol would mean losing everything.

  We were both pretty quiet in the car on the way to our favorite all day breakfast place. And as soon as we walked in I was glad she chose it. I always found the breakfast smells in there comforting. Homey. Maybe that’s because it was the first restaurant I ever went to as a baby, which she usually mentioned. But she didn’t this time.

  Instead we just sat down and she ordered what she always ordered. I didn’t, though, because I always ordered the most fattening, gluttonous thing on the menu. And on this occasion my priorities were different. I wanted to pay attention to what she had to say. I didn't want to spend my energy calculating how long I could wait before I had to throw up.

  So I followed her lead and got the healthy Arizona Omelet and asked if she wanted to go halves on an order or extra crispy hash browns. Which of course she did. Because that was our thing. One of our many things.

  “So?” she asked after we placed our order.

  “So.”

  “How have you been doing?”

  I sighed.

  “I know we haven’t had much time to talk and that you said you needed space bu-”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I did need space. I still do.” I looked down and smoothed my paper napkin across my lap. “But you know I can’t resist this place.”

  She smiled. “I know you’ve been going through a lot.” She folded her hands on the edge of the table. “Even before you found out about our little situation.”

  “Our little situation?”

  “What do you want to call it?”

  “I don’t know.” Fuck. “My Mommy issues?”

  She smiled. “I hope you know we were all doing what we thought was best. And none of this changes how your fath-”

  I raised my eyes to meet hers.

  “How Fred and I feel.” She swallowed. “And Dawn always loved you, too. She really did.” She looked at me through watery eyes. “She just couldn’t show it in the traditional sense like we could.”

  “I understand the words,” I said, “But I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the feelings, ya know? The ones that made her give me up?”

  Carol nodded.

  “It’s not like I don’t know I lucked out with you guys. I mean, no one could deny that you’ve taken good care of me.”

  She laughed and shook her hands towards the sky like she’d been waiting her whole life for me to say she’d done something right.

  “But I still don’t know how you could give away your own baby.” I leaned back in the booth. “I just can’t imagine being in that situation.”

  “I hope you never understand it, honey.” She took a sip of her ice water. “And I know you must feel kind of messed up inside.”

  I nodded.

  “But I think that will go away in time.” She pursed her lips. “You see… the whole thing when it happened… It felt so serendipitous.”

  “Serendipitous?”

  “Yeah.” She tilted her head and smiled. “Dawn really wanted to have you, but she just wasn’t in a position to take care of you. And she didn’t want you to go live with a
strange couple she didn’t know. Especially after she interviewed so many of them.”

  “She did?”

  Carol nodded. “I was so angry with her at the time. Especially because she knew how much we wanted you.”

  “She interviewed other couples? Seriously?”

  “At least a dozen,” she said. “And they’re only the ones I know about.”

  “Wow.”

  “She wasn’t trying to slough you off on someone.”

  “I guess not.”

  Carol’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Honestly, I think at that point she felt like she’d screwed up so many times in her life that she was terrified she’d screw you up, too-” She blinked at the ceiling and took a deep breath through her nose. “She really wanted you to get a good start.”

  “And she couldn’t give it to me.”

  “She thought about it a lot- how she might make it work. But she was spending a lot of time with a pretty wild bunch back then, the kind of people you wouldn’t want your baby around.”

  I folded my arms.

  “There was no stability in her life to speak of.” She shrugged. “I think she would’ve kept you if she’d seen any way to make it work.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “When did you find out she picked you guys?”

  Her face lifted and her eyes smiled. “I remember exactly,” she said. “Dawn was in the seventh month of her pregnancy, and I’d been by her side since the beginning. Because she was my sister, and I didn’t think any of her friends could look after her as well as I could.”

  “Shocker.”

  Carol rolled her eyes. “Anyway, she had this crazy craving for Dairy Queen ice cream cones when she was pregnant-”

  “The chocolate dipped ones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We went for one recently,” I said. “Just before she died.”

  Carol smiled. “Well that’s what we were doing when she told me. We were eating chocolate dipped cones at the picnic table outside the DQ, and the bottom of her cone sprang a leak and started dripping all over the place.”

  I nodded.

  “At first I laughed at her, especially when she held the cone up and tried to plug the bottom with her mouth.”

  I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table.

  “But then I pulled some napkins out of my bag and made her switch cones with me. And she started eating mine, while I wrapped the napkins around the bottom of hers so I could finish it without getting sticky.”

  I rested my chin in my hands.

  “And I’ll never forget it.”

  I swallowed.

  “She said I think you’ll be a good Mom, Carol. And I said thanks.” She took a deep breath. “And then she said, you will be won’t you? And she put her hand on her tummy and her eyes filled with tears, and when I realized what she was saying my eyes filled with tears, too.”

  I smiled. “That must have been a sight. Two grown women crying into their ice cream cones.”

  “I think we probably got some looks alright,” she said. “Of course, Fred and I were ecstatic. We’d been trying to have a baby for two years, for as long as we’d been married at the time. All we ever wanted was a family of our own. So you were a dream come true for us, Kate. You really were.”

  I watched Carol try to keep it together on the other side of the table. I didn’t know what to say. All this time I had been thinking I was an accident, a reject, that nobody wanted me. But that wasn’t the case at all. I was wanted. Desperately. Just not by the woman who gave birth to me.

  “After that I continued to spend every second with Dawn. We hadn’t spent that much time together since we were kids.”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t want to miss a kick, a cramp, a bout of morning sickness.”

  “Cause you wished you were pregnant.”

  She shrugged. “That’s part of it, I suppose. But I was also so eager to know you. I didn’t want to wait until you came out.”

  “Wow.”

  “But I did my best to look after her, especially after Scott left?”

  “Scott?”

  “Your biological father.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Before you were born.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly. I know it was around the time Dawn couldn’t hide the fact that she was pregnant anymore.”

  “What a jerk.”

  Carol shrugged. “He had other nice qualities-”

  “Like?”

  “Like he was really handsome. And funny. A great conversationalist, too. Dawn used to say she could take him anywhere and he could get along with anyone.”

  “But he didn’t want to get along with me.”

  “It wasn’t that,” she said. “He was just too young and selfish. He wouldn’t have been a good dad.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he didn’t want to be one.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s hard work taking care of a baby. Your heart really has to be in it.” She took a deep breath. “If you want to do a good job anyway.”

  “And he never wanted to see me after I was born?”

  She locked her eyes on mine and didn’t say anything for a moment.

  I could see it was hurting her to tell me this stuff, but keeping secrets is like building a damn. Once the damn is broken, the secrets just come flooding out.

  “Honestly?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Never. He might as well have been a sperm donor.”

  I nodded.

  “And in case you’re wondering, he definitely wouldn’t have played tennis with you at the park, built you a princess fort, or let you watch The Simpsons behind my back.”

  I smiled.

  “Okay. Maybe he would’ve done that last one, but he wouldn’t have tucked you in afterwards. And if he did he probably would’ve been drunk or high on drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Yeah. Honestly, the guy was fit enough to be your dad, but not worthy of being your father.”

  “And Dawn loved him?”

  Carol nodded. “She did. Maybe too much. Or at least, when he left… Well, I’d never seen her so upset.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think she ever fully got over it, but I don’t know. That’s probably unfair for me to say. It’s just speculation.”

  “Thanks for telling me anyway.”

  “I’m sorry for all the secrets, Kate. I am. It’s just that there’s never a good time to tell a truth that’s been buried so deep for so long.”

  “So why now?”

  Carol pursed her lips. “Well you’re eighteen. So legally you have a right to know. And Dawn wanted you to know now. She didn’t want it to be later when you forgot about her and the time you spent together recently. It meant a lot to her to get to know you. Especially because you’ve become such a lovely young lady.”

  “And a head case.”

  She smiled. “But you hide that pretty well.”

  “I’m glad I got to get to know her, too.” I shrugged. “Despite the shitty circumstances that brought us together.”

  “Good.” Carol nodded so the waitress would top up her coffee and waited for her to walk away before turning back to me. “You have nothing but time to make sense of all this. And I know it’s a lot to deal with, but there’s one thing I want to make very clear.”

  “What’s that?”

  “As far as Fred and I are concerned, you’re still our daughter. Always have been, always will be. We have loved you since before you were born and every day since, and as long as you want us in your life, we will be there for you. Because we’re a family. Your family. And I know you didn’t get to choose us the first time around, but now that you are old enough to choose, I hope you’ll stick with us. I really do.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And I don’t think I’d ever meant the word more.

  Chapter 12: Dawn
/>   Lover #4: The Wild Card

  Back in the day, living a successful life was all about staying in the safe zone. The average person’s happiness was directly correlated to how well they were able to follow other people's rules and in other people’s footsteps.

  But life isn’t like that anymore. The most successful people in the modern world are those that can adapt, evolve, and change. Leaving your comfort zone isn’t crazy anymore. It’s crazy not to. This goes for business, travel, knowledge, and even sex.

  If you never leave your comfort zone you will become one of those people no one wants to sit next to at weddings. Because you won’t have anything interesting to talk about. And if you don’t make an effort to become a more interesting, less ignorant person, not only will you lousy company for other people, you’ll be lousy company for yourself.

  Therefore, it's never been more important to expose yourself to different music, books, ideas, places, and people.

  Of course, as far as sex goes, I'm not implying you should do people or things you aren’t comfortable with. Rather, I simply mean that it’s important to keep an open mind.

  And nothing forces you to open your mind like a wild card lover.

  What’s a wild card lover?

  It’s just someone you never considered before.

  For example, I believe that sexual preference is a continuum. On one side, you have people that are homosexual and have always known they prefer their own gender. On the other side, you have people that have never had a homosexual thought in their life.

  Personally, I believe we’re all a little bit gay. Fifty Shades of Gay, if you will.

  Now maybe you have a clear place on the scale. Then again, maybe you’re in a gray area. There’s nothing wrong with that.

  Like many women, I absolutely adore male company and the funny quirks of the male physique. However, that didn’t make me resistant to a beautiful woman’s seduction when the opportunity presented itself.

  Turns out I’m somewhere on the continuum where I wouldn’t necessarily seek out the sexual company of a woman, but if the right woman comes along, I wouldn’t say no either. Also, I might occasionally touch myself and think about Sienna Miller. So what? I’m not sorry. I like to think she’d be flattered; Maybe she’d even give me a proper British snog if she knew.