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looked at his phone to check the time. His phone dinged with a message.
    When will you be back tomorrow?
    It was from Millie. He messaged back.
    Around 5
    “Hey, Trev, how about spaghetti and salad for dinner?”
    “I don’t want fucking salad,” Trevor answered.
    Patrick’s eyes snapped up to meet Trevor’s. “Enough with the cussing.” Patrick guessed he shouldn’t have allowed any cussing; good thing he didn’t want to be a parent, since he was pretty sure he sucked at the whole role model thing.
    He was watching Trevor while his mother was enjoying the spa appointment he’d gotten her. She cried when he’d given her the certificate, which made him grief-stricken and desolate, all the emotions he sought to avoid. He’d shut all emotion off the day he’d learned his brother would never get better. He’d been pretty successful at avoiding emotion until El moved into his house and wrecked through his entire pristine existence. She’d made him feel things he didn’t want to admit to anyone.
    His mother had cried every day for a year after Trevor was shot. Having a child like this, suspended in childhood, was more difficult than death. With death, you mourned for a while, but had closure. With his brother this way, it was like his mother mourned every fucking day. He didn’t know how she managed.

Chapter Four
    GRIZZLY BEAR
    About a month later, Patrick held Millie’s hand with his right hand and pulled his suitcase with the other. They’d just landed at Phoenix airport and he was going to meet her parents. Millie was uncharacteristically quiet since they got on the plane.
    “Millie, you okay?”
    “Huh?” Millie looked at him with a confused glance.
    “You’ve been quiet. You nervous about something?” Patrick grinned.
    He knew this trip made her nervous; she didn’t know how her dad would react to her bringing a man home. Patrick was a little older than her and he was half black. She hadn’t told him that was an issue, but she hadn’t told him it wasn’t and she was acting weirder than usual.
    “Me?” She smiled weakly. “No.”
    “Babe, it’s okay to be nervous about your parents meeting me.” Patrick raised their hands to his mouth and kissed her hand. “Parents love me. I’m very charming.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
    “You won’t charm my daddy. You’ll touch me and he’ll growl at you,” she said anxiously.
    “He’ll be eating out of the palm of my hand by Sunday,” Patrick boasted, not really believing his own words.
    They stepped outside in the blistering heat. Patrick stopped and pulled his sunglasses out of his bag.
    “Oh, shit,” Millie said to herself, looking in the direction of a Cadillac SUV.
    Patrick followed Millie’s gaze and saw a woman in a very tight dress get out of the car and wobble on high heels to the back of the vehicle. Her bleached blonde hair was down her back, her boobs purchased, and her face unmoving, showing no emotion.
    “No the fuck he didn’t send her to come get me,” Millie seethed.
    Patrick stopped Millie in her tracks and pulled her to him. “Who is that?”
    “My stepmother.” She looked over her shoulder at the woman who married her father a few years ago and was only five years older than she was.
    He laughed. “She can hardly walk.”
    “That’s her sexy wobble.”
    Patrick laughed again as they walked slowly to the vehicle, hoping he got it all out of his system before this Barbie spoke. “There is no such thing as a ‘sexy wobble.’”
    “This is why I love you,” Millie said as she waved at her stepmother.
    “Camille, why are you so late? I’ve been waiting forever,” Stepmother said, looking directly at Patrick, who shifted uncomfortably. “And who is this?”
    “Well, I didn’t fly the plane myself, Michelle.”
    Stepmother looked Patrick up and down and turned around, walking to the driver’s side of the car.
    “Well, that was pleasant,” he whispered. “I think meeting your father is going to be