Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (14 page)

I’m stuck.

“Mrs.-” I start.

“I think you’ll find this
will go a lot more quickly if you’ll keep your mouth shut and listen.”

This is Kate’s mom. I’ve
got to at least try to be nice, so I bite the inside of my cheek.

“That’s better,” she
says. “Now, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I could have done or said
to instill in you and my daughter the seriousness of the issue before us.”

“What’s that?”

“You,” she answers.
“You’re a nice fling, I’m sure, but are you really so deluded as to think that
you and my daughter have anything in common?”

I start again, “We seem
to have a great deal-”

“I know the two of you
have your dirty sex parties, but I’d hardly say that’s something you’d want to
build a relationship on top of,” she says. “What my daughter needs is someone
who’s going to be able to support her financially, aid her in her career, and
stick around when things get tough. I think that’s not you, is it?”

“How do you know? That
sounds a lot like me to me.”

“Very cute,” Kate’s mom
says, though I think that might be sarcasm. “I know your type. You think that
Kathryn’s going to make a nice notch on your bedpost, but my daughter is so
much more than you will ever know.”

“That is
not
how I see her,” I retort.

“Whatever,” she says,
waving me off. “It occurs to me that we’re in a bit of a forbidden fruit
situation here, though. The more I tell the two of you to stop seeing each
other, the more you’re going to want to, and I can’t have that. What I need you
to do is to prove me wrong. I need you to be the grownup, and I need you to end
the relationship.”

“You don’t know me,” I
tell her. “I care about your daughter a great deal, and I’m not just going to
abandon her because you got the wrong impression of me.”

“I don’t care what reason
you give, but you are going to start leaving my daughter alone, and I’ll tell
you why,” she says. “If you really do care about her so much, it might interest
you to know that she’s starting to fall behind on her schoolwork. Her work here
at the hospital has even been suffering, too. This is her life. You don’t get
to come in and tear everything up and not have some responsibility.”

“I’ve never told Kate to
drop out of school or not go to work,” I tell her, but even I know it’s not
going to be of any use.

“It’s your presence
that’s the problem,” Kate’s mom says. “As long as you’re around, you’re always
going to be a distraction. In spite of everything, I think there’s a decent guy
in you somewhere. You can’t tell me that you would rather she give up her
dreams to be with you, can you?”

“I’ve never said that,” I
tell her. “If being a doctor is what Kate wants to do, she’s got my full-”

“Do you have children?”

“What?”

“It’s not really a
thinking question,” she says. “Do you have kids, yes or no?”

“No,” I answer.

“Then how can you
possibly begin to understand what I’m talking about? When you have children,
they become more important than everything. It’s not convenient. It just
happens.”

Someone’s going for
mother of the year.

“When I see someone like
you coming into my daughter’s life and even managing to convince her that
hanging out with you, doing whatever it is the two of you do together, I just
want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you hard,” she says. “Kathryn has
the potential to be a world-class physician and a-”

“Do you ever bother
talking to your daughter?” I interrupt. “All of this pressure you’re putting on
her to be you when she grows up: she hates it.”

“You’ve got some tone for
a young man trying to convince his girlfriend’s mother to sign off on the
relationship,” she says.

“You were never going to
sign off on the relationship. You’re talking about how you only want what’s
best for Kate, but you don’t even know what’s best for her. You don’t listen to
her. Next time the two of you are alone in a room, ask her if she really wants
to be a doctor. I bet you’re going to be pretty surprised at the answer.”

“I know what she’ll say
now,” Kate’s mom responds. “She’ll say that Mr. Felony is her dreamboat and
nothing else matters. She will destroy her life for you if you don’t get out of
it.”

I’m about to jump right
back in, but there’s something about that last sentence that catches me
off-guard. It would almost be a compliment if it weren’t such a serious
warning.

“I’m sure you’re a decent
guy and everything, but you’re not going to remain one of those very long if
you don’t start looking after the people you care about,” she says.

I don’t know what to say.

She’s wrong. I know she’s
wrong, but what do I say to that?

“I doubt you think I’m
all that decent,” I tell her. “I’m just surprised you haven’t called the cops
on me again yet.”

“You can form whatever opinion
you may of me, but I will not stand idly by and let you take our daughter from
the path toward a successful future,” she says.

“Even if it makes her
miserable every step of the way?”

“Yes.”

I’m waiting for an
explanation or some kind of follow-up, but it doesn’t come.

“You’re
trying
to make her miserable?”

Kate’s mom shakes her
head. “I’m trying not to make things any more difficult than they already are,”
she says. “I’ve been through medical school. I know the pressures involved.
It’s going to be miserable to one degree or another for a while to come, but that
doesn’t mean the goal at the end is any less worth it. If anything, I think you
may find it’s
more
worth it as a
result.”

“Do you love it?”

“What?”

“What you do,” I say,
“being a doctor: do you love it?”

A suggestion of a smile
greets Kate’s mom’s lips, but it’s gone a moment later. “Yes,” she says. “It is
my calling.”

“Okay,” I answer. “That’s
great for you, but Kate doesn’t love it. She doesn’t even like it. She’s not
even all that interested in-”

“Do you know what
Kathryn’s first word was?” Kate’s mom interrupts.

I furrow my brow. “No,” I
answer.

“It was ‘appendix,’” she
answers. “Sure, there was a dropped A, but ‘pendix is still close enough,
wouldn’t you say?”

“That tells me she was
around a lot of medical talk growing up,” I tell her. “That makes sense, seeing
as how you and her father are both in the field.”

“Do you know what her
high school project was about?”

“I’m not talking about
her past, I’m talking about her present and her future,” I say.

Kate’s mom is shaking her
head. “You know all the right words, but they’re not yours, are they?” she
asks. “If you don’t know someone’s past, how can you have any
idea
what their future’s going to look
like?”

“I know Kate,” I tell
her. “I know that what you’re doing hurts her more than she’s ever going to tell
you.”

“Oh, Kathryn tells me
plenty,” Kate’s mom answers.

“Not enough,” I add.
“Also, she prefers ‘Kate’.”

She crosses her arms. “Do
you really think I’m unaware that I’m the bad guy to Kathryn?” she asks. “Do
you really think I don’t know if she were to come in here right now and make a
choice regarding who she’d like to live with that I’d probably be on the losing
side of the conversation? Why do you think I’m talking to you?”

“My guess is that-” I
wasn’t really expecting to get through the answer.

“I’m trying to help you
see reason and do what’s best for Kathryn, no matter what that may mean for
you,” she says.

“That’s what I’m trying
to do-” I start.

“But it’s not what’s
happening,” she retorts. “What’s happening is she’s off at recess with you
while everything she’s spent her life building is crumbling down around her.
She doesn’t see it. I’m here talking to you because I’m not stupid. She’s not
going to listen to me right now. She will eventually, make no mistake about
that. Right now, though, you’re the one she’s going to listen to and I need you
to do the right thing for my daughter.”

“Don’t you think it’s
her
call-” I start.

“Eli,” Kate’s mom
interrupts. “She is my daughter. You can do the right thing or not, but if you
think I’m going to just give up and let her follow
your
life instead of her own, you’re out of your grease-brained
senses.”

I try one last time to
get through, saying, “I’m not telling you to-”

“Leave her alone,” Kate’s
mom interrupts. “If you care about her life and her future at all, you’ll walk
out of this room and you won’t stop to talk to her on your way out. If you care
about her, you will leave.”

There’s not much to say
after that.

Chapter
Thirteen

Eight Days’ Turnaround

Kate

Eli won’t talk to me.

After I found out that Mom
had convinced the head of security to let her know if Eli came by the hospital,
I tried to get him out of there. I don’t know what happened, Mom certainly
won’t tell me, but I can only guess that he didn’t make it out of there in
time.

At first, he was
responding to text messages—only a word or two at a time, but they were still
responses. Now there’s nothing.

He’s trying to drop the
relationship. I need to know why.

First, though, I’ve got
to get out of this hospital.

There’s no way to know
for sure whether my mom said anything to security about me leaving early, but
with Eli absent, the rest of my life sort of filled back up and I’m tired of
waiting.

I meet up with Paz at the
ER Nurse’s station.

“Hey, you’ve been kinda
quiet the last few days. Everything all right?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I just
want to know what’s going on, but mom’s been watching me close. Every time I
leave the house, she asks where I’m going, and I know she’s got my dad keeping
track of when I leave and come back. I feel like a prisoner in my own life.”

“That sucks,” Paz says,
looking over some paperwork.

“Yeah,” I say, deflated.
“That sucks.”

She looks up at me. “Oh,
sorry,” she says. “What are we talking about?”

“I need to get out of
here,” I tell her. “I need to get out without my mother ever knowing. Got any
brilliant ideas for me?”

She just shakes her head.
“They’ve got us running so understaffed down here, it’s a wonder the hospital’s
still standing.”

“Does that mean you’ll
help me or not?”

“What it means is I got
patients,” Paz tells me.

“What did you and Eli
talk about when he was leaving the hospital last week?”

Paz picks up a file and
starts leafing through it, saying, “How am I supposed to remember something
like that?”

“Because you remember
everything,” I tell her, hoping a sort-of compliment is going to be enough to
melt the wall of silence.

It doesn’t.

“Listen,” she says, “I
don’t know what’s going on, and it’s none of my business. What I can tell you
is that that mom of yours ain’t just watching out for him.”

I was afraid of that.
“She’s keeping an eye on me?”

“I don’t know if she’s
keeping an eye on you or not, but I know I’m not jumping in the middle of a
family thing,” Paz says. “People lose an eye doing that.”

“She’s gotten to you,
too, then?”

“Call it what you want,”
she says. “I can’t help you.”

I’d like to move out of
my house now, please.

She leans toward me,
saying, “Not for nothing, but I hear the guy on the cameras right now loves his
coffee breaks—takes one at the bottom of every hour. You wanna get outta here
without your mom finding out, that’d be my bet.” She leans back and shakes her
head. Then, in a much louder voice, she says, “Wish I could help you. I gotta
get back to work.”

Paz walks off and I look
at the clock.

It’s 2:20. I only have
ten minutes before the guard is supposed to be off taking his coffee break.

The next ten minutes seem
like ten days.

Finally, at exactly 2:33,
I make my move. Okay, it’s less of a move and more me just finding the nearest
exit and trying not to be seen by too many people on my way out of the
hospital.

As I’m getting into my
car, I try calling Eli again for good measure, but he’s still not picking up.

The difficult thing about
the drive is keeping my speed within the limit.

I get to the shop and
instead of parking out in the lot, I pull up to one of the bay doors. Eli comes
around the corner, sees my car, and then turns around, but that’s not going to
fly with me.

Leaving my car door open,
I get out of the car and follow Eli into the shop. “We’ve got to talk about
this sometime.”

“I’m not off for another
couple hours,” he says, heading toward his workbench. “If you want, you can
come back and we can talk then.”

I stomp my foot hard
against the concrete of the carless shop, sending a hot wave of pain up my leg.
“We can talk now,” I tell Eli.

He stops, turns around.

“What is going on?” I
ask. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

“You know, Kate,” he
says, “I think you and I are just too different. You’re really into
intellectual stuff, and I’m more a work-with-my-hands kind of guy. It’s not
right of me to hold you back.”

“Oh, hi, Mom,” I say,
waving at Eli. “You look different with the stubble.”

Eli scoffs and shakes his
head. “She’s right, though, isn’t she? Before you met me, you had a very
different life planned out, and I can’t be the reason you give all that up.”

“Is that what she told
you?” I ask.

“It’s the truth, isn’t
it?”

“If you’re so convinced
of that, why do you keep saying the words as a question? If that’s how you
feel, why don’t you just tell me?”

“Okay,” he says, “honestly,
do you think that I’ve been a positive force in your life? I’m not just talking
about the sex or the driving—I mean, has there been anything about our
relationship that’s helped your life move forward instead of pushing it back?”

“More than you even
know,” I tell him. “Do you really think I’m just in this because I like fast
cars?”

He doesn’t answer.

“It’s not about the cars
or the racing. It’s not even about the sex, though at least there, we’re
getting a little closer to the ballpark,” I tell him. “What it’s about is that
I like you. I feel freer when I’m with you, and I’m not ready to give that up
just because Mom’s got a problem with it. I’m not a teenager anymore. If you
think she’s right, though, maybe it is best if we don’t see each other again.”

“That’s not fair,” he
says. “I didn’t ask for her to trick me into meeting her in that room.”

I knew she’d talked to
him, but only because that was the only thing that would fit. “What room?” I
ask.

“In the hospital,” he
says. “When I was on my way out the last time I saw you, I ran into your friend
and she told me to head up to the third floor. She said that someone wanted to
talk to me. I thought she meant you.”

“Mom was waiting for
you,” I observe.

“Yeah,” he says with a
sigh. “I may not agree with everything she said, but Kate, she had some good
points.”

It’s no longer a want: I
need
to
move out of that house and it needs to happen soon.

“Like what?” I ask, but
before he can answer, my patience runs out. “She thinks anything I do that she
hasn’t specifically told me to do is a mistake,” I start. “For my mom, there is
only one path through life, and it just so happens to be the one that both she
and my dad took.”

“Do you want to be a
doctor?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
him. “I’ve been trying to be one for so long I guess I never really stopped to
figure that part out. What I do know, though, is that I don’t want this
relationship to end. Of course, if I’m going to end up dating my mother, maybe
you’re both right and this is a huge mistake.”

He chuckles.

“What are we going to
do?” I ask. “She’s not going to let up. We both know that. I’m not willing to
back down, either, but there’s got to be a better way to do it.”

“I’m not going to tell
you what to do,” Eli says, “but if something’s making you miserable, doesn’t it
make sense to find out why?”

“Absolutely,” I tell him.
“I was miserable when you just abandoned me without a word, so I came here to
find out why.”

“Look, I don’t want to
ruin your life,” he says. “I want to
help
,
but it doesn’t seem like I’m doing a very good job of it.”

“Do you really think I’d
let you ruin my life? Do you really think I’d give that kind of power to
anyone?”

He opens his mouth to
speak, but I know exactly what he’s going to say.

“My parents lord over me
because they’re insecure and they’re my parents,” I say. “I didn’t give them
that power, and I can tell you right now, they’re not going to have it very
much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

I want to move out of my
parents’ house, but there are a couple of problems. If I move out, the parents
stop paying for school, for my car, for everything. Not having a job that pays
is going to make bills and rent a lot more difficult to cover.

There’s another obvious
option, but Eli and I are way too early in this to even talk about moving in together.

“I just want to get out
of there,” I tell him. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I’ve got
to move out of that house and get into my own place. I’m never going to be able
to think straight, much less figure out what I actually
do
want to do with my life if I can’t get out from under them.”

“You know,” he says, “a
guy I know has been looking to sublet his apartment to someone. If you want, I
can look into it for you.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “I don’t
have any money, though. I’m going to have to get another job first.”

“Don’t quit your job
yet,” Eli says. “I’ve got to see if I can get a hold of him. It’s been a little
while since we talked.”

“But the two of you are
friends, right?” I ask. “Do you think he might consider something like that?”

“I’m sure he could use
the money,” Eli says. “More than that, I’m sure he could use a warm body in the
place so the landlord doesn’t try to rent it out from under him.”

“Where is he anyway?”

Eli hesitates.

“He’s in jail, isn’t he?”
I ask.

“You might say he’s looking
for a longer-term lease if you know what I’m saying,” Eli tells me. I’m not
sure how I could misunderstand. “Don’t worry about rent. We’ll figure that out
soon enough. I do want to tell you, though, the apartment’s nice enough, but
the neighborhood’s a little rough. Is that a deal-breaker?”

“Do you mean rough as in
impolite, or do you mean rough as in I walk out of my apartment at the wrong
time, I could catch a stray bullet?”

His hesitation isn’t
comforting.

“It’s probably somewhere
in between,” he says. “I don’t think you’d actually get shot, but you’d
probably see some things you wouldn’t in the neighborhood where you live now.”

I can’t help but cringe.
“Why don’t we put a pin in that one for now,” I tell him. “What I’m more
interested in at the moment is whether or not you actually want to make a go of
this or if I’m just wasting my time.”

“I don’t want to break
up,” he says. “I like you—a lot, really. I’d just rather not be the reason why
you gave up on your dreams.”

“You have a frighteningly
high opinion of yourself,” I tell him. “Look, if you’re in this, I need you to
be in this. No more dodging calls and texts. If we’re going to give us a shot,
you’re going to have to talk to me, even when you’re not sure how it’ll go. If
there’s a problem, or if you’ve done something, I may get upset. But if you
just ignore me, we’re going to have some problems. That’s just part of being in
a relationship.” At least, that’s my understanding. “Are you in or out?”

He smiles.

“Yeah, I’m going to need
a yes or a no here,” I tell him.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m in.”

“Good,” I tell him.

“Your mom’s gonna be
pissed,” he says.

I shrug. “She’s usually
mad about something,” I tell him.

A car horn honks outside
the shop and Eli and I both head for the bay door. There’s a customer waiting
behind my parked car.

“I’ll move it,” I tell
Eli before he has a chance to ask, and I get in and pull my car through the
shop and out the open bay door on the other side.

Walking back into the
shop, Eli waves me over while the customer’s getting out of his vehicle.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m
going to have to help this guy, but I think Mick’s kicking around here
somewhere. Tell you what. While I’m doing this, ask Mick if he’ll ride along
with you for a driving lesson. He may not have the reflexes, but he’s got all
the knowledge.”

“Okay,” I tell him.
“Maybe that’ll be a good opportunity to bond with your friend. Now that I know
you want to be my boyfriend, I think I can handle something like that.”

He bends down and gives
me a quick kiss on the lips.

While he heads over to
talk to the customer, I turn into the office.

Mick’s inside, watching a
soap opera and laughing himself silly. By the time he notices I’m in the room,
he’s wiping tears from his eyes.