Piece By Piece (Book #2)

Chapter Five

Tyler dropped me off and I went inside. Dad was home and it smelled like Pizza. He wasn't a chef so I knew takeout was going to be on the table. At least he knew my favorite, garlic sauce with bacon and spinach.

I heard him come down the hall as I was heating up my pizza slices.

"Hey kiddo, you're home late."

I nodded, "Yeah, one of my friends was teaching me about parallel parking and letting me practice in a vacant lot." I figured if I just kept to parking he wouldn't get mad that I was operating a motor vehicle with out a license.

"I guess you're wanting to start that process huh?"

"Well in Texas I could have started it when I was fifteen."

"Well, it's sixteen here. It takes about twenty months to get all the way done with it."

My eyes grew a little with that answer. "So do I need to take a Driver's Ed class?"

"If you want to get through the first part of the program faster, you do. Why don't we sit down this weekend and will start talking about classes?"

"Thanks, Daddy!" I hugged him around the neck and then took my pizza upstairs so that I could start homework.

It was an hour behind in Dallas so when I got done with my work, I decided to FaceTime my sister Elyse.

She shrieked when she answered, "Hello, Beautiful! How was my baby sister's first day of school?"

I smiled, "Good. Most of it was just syllabus work. Had one teacher act like it was a graduate school class that had to start on day one. So that sucked."

Elyse crinkled her nose, "Ew. Gross."

"Yeah I am counting down my time until Friday."

"What's Friday?"

I blushed, "I'm going on my first date with Tyler."

That invoked another shriek. "Finally! I will have to tell Mom when I see her this weekend."

"Lord, don't tell Patrick. He will give me such shit."

She got quiet for a moment before saying, "I actually meant, Amanda, sorry."

I sat there dumbfounded. She was referring to our birth mother. The one she knew I never talk to.

"You're hanging out with Amanda?"

I hadn't had even a text conversation with my birth mother in over a year. I had refused. She had opted not to seek custody to keep me in the country when Dad had wanted to move me to Toronto last year. Even our stepmother, Jordan, had tried to keep me stateside.

Elyse looked guilty. "Sorry Lex, I know you and her are in a rocky patch, but she is our Mom."

"No. She's your mom if you want to call her that. She's just some bitch who pushed me out of her vagina to me." Oh I could start on a rant but chose not to. Instead I just hurried off the phone.

That made me want to call Momma Jordan.

On the second ring, Jordan's smiling face filled my screen. "Hi honey! What's up? Is everything okay? How was your first day back to school?"

I decided to skip over the pleasantries, "Did you know Elyse is hanging out with Amanda?"

Her brow furrowed. "Oh Lord, don't get me started. That started up a few months ago. Elyse reached out to her and I guess Amanda felt guilty enough to respond. I think she's the only one of the older four kids to even talk to her."

I had a half brother and sister that I never talked to. The sister was two years older and the brother was only a year older than Elyse. Apparently Elyse was the reason Amanda had left their dad for our dad. I think Elyse still talked to them. I was five years younger than Elyse and wanted nothing to do with anything that had to do with Amanda. That also included her two other sons with her current husband. I did not keep up with their ages, their birthdays, hell I barely knew their names. The only sibling I usually claimed was Elyse. Dad never made me do anything different. I gave him credit for that. He knew when not to push my buttons.