Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [33]
Nadine was conscious of the fact that this was only the second time she and Zak had met without tennis as an excuse. She was also aware that Zak looked on this as a benchmark in their relationship. “Meeting relatives,” he said, grinning, when he picked her up. “Big step.”
“I suppose,” she said. She tried not to think of the two of them as “dating,” mostly because during the breakup with Scooter she’d told him she wasn’t seeing anybody, and that she specifically wasn’t seeing that “fireman dude.” If he found out she was dating him now he’d think she’d been dating him all along, and that might cause even more problems than she already had. Scooter disliked Zak for a number of reasons besides the obvious—Zak’s interest in her. To Scooter’s way of thinking, Zak’s secondary offenses were his job as a firefighter and the fact that he was older, as little sense as either made.
“He’s a control freak,” Lindsey said to her about Scooter. “Face it. He wants to control every event in your life. Everybody you see or talk to, and everywhere you go.”
Now that she’d had time to review their relationship over the past year, she realized Lindsey was right—Scooter had done his best to dictate her own life to her, disapproving of her friends, her choice of college, her love of tennis, even her belief in the Lord. Scooter had been even more demanding these past months, moody, and…well, let’s face it, horny, which posed a problem for someone bent on remaining a virgin until her wedding night. Most of their dates had ended in some sort of argument about sex. In all the time she’d spent with Zak, they had yet to argue about anything. It was nice to know relationships didn’t have to be one titanic struggle after another, or that she didn’t have to be defending her honor every time she left the house.
She was casually comfortable with Zak in a way she hadn’t been with anyone before, and she liked that. She liked it a lot. They seemed to be forming a relationship of equals, something she hadn’t seen in her own family, where her father more or less ran the show.
Today Zak was driving his van, which was full of tools and paint cans, a complete contrast with Scooter’s immaculate BMW 3 Series or her own Lexus. She remembered the day Scooter found out she’d been meeting Zak for tennis. “You’re not going out with some asshole who drives a van, are you?”
“We’re just friends. I can have friends. You can’t run everything in my life.”
“No guy is just friends with a girl who looks like you. He wants to fuck you.”
“Would you please watch your language? I know that’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true. Mark my words. Some asshole firefighter in a van. And nearly ten years older than you. Jesus Christ!” He’d been furious over the breakup and, as far as she knew, was still furious. The situation was delicate, because Scooter remained Kasey’s best friend and was in and out of the house every day.
She and Zak had been talking rather casually about each other’s families when Nadine said, “So what was your family life like after your sister died?”
“You really want to know?”
“I want to know.”
“None of us ever really got over her death. My father started drinking and scrapping with Mom over trivial stuff, and then Mom threw him out, and later they got divorced. Mom took solace in a new life that alternated between religion and prescription drugs. When she was out of meds or couldn’t talk a doctor into prescribing more, she would take up another religion. As soon as she had a fresh supply, the religion would drop away. The religion part of it pulled me into an endless series of church meetings, Sundays, Wednesdays, Thursday nights, and sometimes all day Saturday. It depended on the denomination. I figured if it was helping my mom cope, then I could put in the time. When she wasn’t praying, she would get juiced up on painkillers and diet pills. Booze was a vice she relegated to my father.”
“Sounds awful.”
“I had Stacy, and she was great. When I was fourteen, I got into bike racing. It wasn’t easy, because racing