Change is good, unless it isn't

Chapter 20

Her cold, nearly numb fingers fumble with her keys, trying one after another until the door is finally yanked open to show a disheveled Drea in her signature red and green Christmas pajamas. She gives a sympathetic shrug and Drea looks around her, eyes squinting to focus in the dark. "Where's Dinah?"

Normani shrugs as she slips into the warm house to head towards the kitchen. "It's almost four in the morning, Ma. I'd say she's asleep," she snaps, really not meaning to come off so harsh.

Sighing heavily, she pops off the lid of one of the last beers in the fridge and takes a big drink—Drea sleepily raising an eyebrow. "It' a little early for that, isn't it?"

"Not when you've been awake all night like I have," she says, still too wound up to even be tired. She takes another sip and then sets the bottle on the counter, slightly embarrassed as she looks up to the face of her concerned mother. "You think we can, uh, talk or something?"

It wasn't often that Normani asked for her mother's advice. And it was even rarer that she would do so at such an odd hour, so spur of the moment. Drea decides not to make a big deal out of—not become too excited at Drea letting her in—and simply nods as she leads them to the couch.

They sit—Normani worrying at her hands as she thinks of what to say, and Drea beside her simply waiting. And it's long moments, moments that Normani seriously contemplates leaving and pretending it was nothing before she finally swallows thickly and decides to buck up.

"Dinah wants to adopt a kid," she says, still not looking up from her hands. "She didn't even talk to me about it first. She just kind of dumped it on me tonight and I don't know what to do."

Drea pushes down her excitement at maybe, possibly getting her first grandchild—because that's how she would treat the child, and no one could stop her from doing so—and tilts her head, accusation heavy in her voice. "You didn't run out on her, did you?"

Let it never be said that Drea didn't know how her children reacted to things. Finally looking up, she raise her eyebrows. "I came back! And then I left again," she adds on with a mumble, remembering how defeated Dinah looked when she said she couldn't stay.

Drea reaches over, lightly patting her knee. "Normani..."

"I know, I know. But at least I was honest with her. That counts for something, right?"

Drea says nothing for once, giving Normani the chance to keep going. Get all this off her chest.

Normani sinks back in the couch cushions and rubs one hand on her face with a low groan. "I've been up all night thinking about everything and I'm just so...I don't know. She should've trusted me. I want her to trust me."

And she knows how hard it was for her to trust people after Ryan, how she thought everyone had a secret and was out to get her. No one close to her had even died and it still had messed her up, weighed her down for the longest time until finally, one day, she realized not everyone was so bad. It took time—quite a lot of it—and what Dinah went through was worse, immensely worse. So it would take her longer to realize she wasn't always going to get left—that even though Normani may leave for a few hours, it didn't mean she was leaving forever.

But regardless of knowing that, of knowing that Dinah still had a lot of healing left to do, it stung at how little Dinah had trusted her with something so...huge. Something that would change both of their lives.

She rubs her eyes, pushing until she sees white dots in an attempt to keep the tears from coming. There's no way she's about to break down in the middle of the night on her mother's couch. She finally drops her hands down to her lap and rapidly blinks away any evidence of her near crying.