Home?

Chapter 20: Yes, ma'am.

Declan

    By the time we get to my house it's almost 6 o'clock. My mom and dad are both home. I pull into my driveway and see through the kitchen window that my mom is making dinner.

    We stayed at the bookstore for a good hour after that whole kissing thing. Zack would give me looks and thumbs up every time he saw me. He's one of my best friends but he can be really annoying. He's the closest thing I've ever had to an actual brother. He always hated Tyler and them. He would always tell me that they were a bad influence on me. I would just say that he was being crazy, that the way I act was my choice not theirs. Little did I know, he was right.
I get out of the car without saying anything, do my usual routine. Once she's out of the car I shut the door and start to walk to the front door. She's with me now holding my hand. I look to her. I look at her up and down, not checking her out, just observing. Just taking in and absorbing all the features of Ivory Morgan. She has a new nervous tendency to play with ring on her finger when she's thinking to herself.

We get inside and when I shut the door behind me I hear my mom call for me from the kitchen for me to help her with something with noodles.

"I'm going to go upstairs and change something more comfortable. My feet are killing me," Ivory tells me, gives me kiss on the cheek and heads up to my room.

I go into the kitchen to help my mother with whatever she needs. She doesn't really look at me completely she just noticed my present in the room. She tells me to drain out the noodles while she stirs the sauce. Spaghetti night.

"Why are you making dinner so early?" I asked trying to find the drainer.

"I had a stressful day at work and instead of being lazy and feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to cook."

I just nod my head, I know better than to ask what happened because it's usually something about some guy groping her or touching her. Dad doesn't like her working there but it pays really well so he can't tell her to quit. We still are in that from Sophia's medical bills but we are still living, that's how I look at it.

"Where is Ivory?" She asks when she noticed that in the room. I was wondering how long it would take her to realize that she wasn't by my side.

"She's upstairs getting changed. We went on a date and she wore dress that she felt uncomfortable and so she changed," I say like it's not a big deal.

"You guys went on a date? Where'd you guys go?"

"We went to a place that you and Dad always go. I shouldn't have took her there because there's a lot of racist people there. And as we are finishing up Grace turned up and just started yelling at me.  Telling me that she had stuff that could break us apart but I walked away before she could speak anymore," I take a break from speaking and remember the way they looked at Ivory. "You should've seen the way they looked at her, mom. They looked at her like she was forbidden, that she was something wrong. It makes no sense to me. We are in the 21st-century and this is still going on."

"It's just the way they were raised, sweetheart," My mother's southern drawl comes out when she says that. " I was raised that way but I never followed by it. I was always hang out with the people that my friends used to judge. I was just like you but you learned a lot later than I did. You never treated her that way but your friends did. My parents never liked your father, hated the fact that he was Irish. That just made me love him even more. The fact that he was off-limits in my parents eyes made him irresistible."

"But I don't understand why people think that way."

"Why do you love Ivory?"

"Well, because I do."