A/N: This was longer than planned so have to make another chapter. This story will now we 10 chapters plus bonus. Would love to hear your thoughts on this one and how you think it's going! We still have lots of ground to cover! Anything you hope to see?

CH.7

Her skin froze in surprise as she approached parked outside her house. Once she got a good look she was duly shocked by his exceptional growth. After she asked a few pointed question and adjusted to her son's presence, she invited us in. I couldn't tell if it was obligatory or genuine. Paul was reticent, barely looking at his mother, but then suddenly gave in and accepted.

I walked next to him up a path of broken flagstone and noticed all the muscles in his neck were taut. If there was ever a time I wanted to hold his hand for comfort it was now, but I crossed my arms and folded them under my sides. It was as if the space between him and I was frozen and I just couldn't move through it to touch him.

"We don't have to do this," I proposed in a whisper before we entered Paul's childhood home. He didn't immediately respond. He just gave a cold shrug. "I want to show you my old room," he said in monotone, looking straight ahead.

"I'm Shelly," she said to me as we walked by walls plastered with pictures of Paul and his dad, as if they had never left. You would have never known that a middle aged woman lived in the small one story brick house alone. She gestured toward a small table and then moved solitary, around her kitchen.

"Lipton's?" she offered to us and we both nodded.

Shelly was nearly the opposite of Paul in appearance. Her skin was much lighter, her hair very thick compared to his buzz cut and her stomach billowed over her short frame, compared to his enormous and brawny build.

Shelly appeared aloof, and not exactly over eager to play Suzie Homemaker, but she did microwave us some Lipton's tea in mismatched cups all while extending some pleasantries. No dice. Paul's elbows remained on the table, muscles firm. He gave brief one or two word answers to her questions:

"So you came all this way to give something to Candance Miller? After all this time?"

"Yes."

And then;

"Are you still flyfishing?"

"Yes."

"Do you and dad still follow the Seahawks?"

"Not really."

He continued to refute her clear attempts to sustain some semblance of conversation. I ended up speaking with her more just to drown out the awkwardness and I hated the Seahawks.

All I knew about his mother was what he had told me earlier: that she kicked him and his dad out the summer before 9th grade and she hardly ever said she loved him. I was never big on chit chat, but Shelly was trying, and women needed to help out other women. Apparently even if that woman was a shitty mother to the guy who 45 minutes earlier called you his soulmate.

"You seem so nice," Shelly offered to me after we had a banal exchange about the weather, "how did you end up with such a bruiser, sweetie?" she said, sipping her tea, eyeing her son.

"Don't call her sweetie," he said, blankly. Wow, four words, I thought. I looked over to Paul. He was a stone cold wall. I didn't even mind the nickname coming from her, I knew she didn't want anything from me and was just trying to be nice, but Paul wasn't having it.

Shelly excused herself to the bathroom. At this, Paul got up to walk down a small dark hallway and I tacitly followed him.

"It is the same," he said after opening the ceder door. He seemingly answered an internal question he'd posed to himself. It was a small rectangular room with green walls, a desk, bookshelves full of books and a fairly tiny twin bed. I smirked thinking how Paul's manly long legs surly wouldn't fit if he laid down. Still, it looked like a child could live there. The only hint was a puffy layer of dust over the counter tops.

"Guess she doesn't come in here much," he said, feeling the dust with index and middle fingers on his right hand. I walked over close to the desk. There was a metal framed picture of him and Candace dressed up for Halloween. They looked about 8, dressed in robes with wands. Paul's delicate baby face had on glasses and a lightning bolt adorned his forehead.

"Really?" I said, showing the picture to him. "Harry Potter? I would have pegged you for Star Wars or something terrifying."

He chuckled at my assumption. "It was her idea," he said, flashing a small smile at the memory. I thought he might take it with him, but he placed it back down and out of the way. He opened a drawer in the desk and raked through some papers and pulled out a notebook.

"It's still here," he said, awash in surprise. Paused opened it to show me some drawings. Mostly shaky middle school doodles of cartoon and video game characters, but then there were pages and pages of geometric designs, all entangled together.

"I used to sit here and draw these for hours when they would fight. I could still hear them, but it got my mind off of it. Anyway, I was thinking some of this would make a pretty cool sleeve."

I looked at him in disbelief. Is that why we had to sit through 30 minutes of awkward chit chat with his mother? He had no intention of reconciliation, just rather wanted some forgotten fodder for a new tattoo?

"You're upset," he said plainly. I fixed my face. I may have been annoyed, but this wasn't about me.

"No… I think it would make a cool tattoo…"

"I mean I'd fix it up," his eyes brightened up, "maybe add some other stuff. It could go under this one. He lifted the cap of his shirt to show off a circular tribal tattoo of a wolf. My eyes narrowed.

"Jared has that tattoo," I said, confused. Jared was always half naked. He showed up to dinner half naked, he'd walk around my house half naked, I even once saw him arrive at school half naked. I was pretty sure it was some macho 'look at me' thing, but it did mean I had become very familiar with the tattoo on his right bicep. I remember thinking it weird that his parents went for a high school kid getting such a large tattoo, but there was a lot of weird stuff about Jared generally. I just threw the tattoo and nakedness under my mental checklist for reasons why Jared is odd. I knew he and Paul were close, but matching tattoos?

"Is this some sort of weird circle jerk thing? What dudes get matching tattoos besides gang members?" I winced at the notion. He laughed and touched my shoulder, running his fingers down my arm.

"It's not like that, Mal. Hard to explain, but we both just kinda felt the call toward it, so to speak." I may have had some sort of retort to that, but all I could think at the moment was ohh…warm tingly fingers. What was happening to me? I was now swooning? Toward Paul and his fingers brushing against my arm?

Before I could engage any more thoughts on the subject we heard his mother call. He tucked the notebook under his arm and we made our way back to the kitchen table. Paul made somewhat of an effort to say a few more words to his mother on stereotypical topics, but they lacked any real substance.

By the time we finished, it was nearly dark. I thanked his mother and headed for the car while he hung back a moment. I couldn't hear them but I watched as she did most of the speaking. After watching so many over the past few weeks, I clearly recognized her actions as an apology. She was finally apologizing to him.

The girls Paul apologized to had many different reactions. Some were angry and yelled and hit him, others were shocked, disgusted or even indifferent and said hardly anything. A few cried. Some like Olivia seemed ready to accept the apology and then there was Sydney who wouldn't even engage when he tried to offer one.

Paul listened intently as his mother apologized, but his face was stiff. There wouldn't be tears or screams. When she was done he gave her a small pat and said goodbye. Whatever emotions he had allowed himself to feel on the apology tour, weren't coming out now.

The first 30 minutes or so of the drive home consisted of more House music and Paul munching on an absurdly large order of fast food that we picked up. And then finally once he was fed, he dove in.

"So what do you think?" He mused, now in a perky tune as if we had just come back from the movie theater after seeing the latest Rom Com.

My neck hurt from the whip lash and I hadn't a clue what he was actually referring to. His estranged mother? Candance? The bizarre time capsule that was his childhood home? His odd bromance with Jared that they solidified with matching tattoos? His warm tingly voodoo fingers on my arm? The apology? About him? About the fact he thought I was his soulmate?

"Um...what did you think, Paul?" I had no idea how to answer. This was the real question, anyway. What did it matter what I thought about Paul's bizarro world?

"Shelly looked alright, I guess. I honestly never thought I would see her again,"

"Really?" This was quite the admission. I had never known my father who split months after I was born. But I still couldn't admit that I might never see him, even though it was likely true. An indiscernible part of me wondered what a reunion would be like, what he was like now and how often he thought about Kim and I. Of course I romanticized it, and hoped it would be positive, but a sad part of my heart knew that if it ever happened he would likely be broken. Perhaps worse, indifferent toward us.

At least Paul's mom tried. She invited us in and tried to engage with him.

He cocked his head to the side and scratched his neck. "I mean she kicked us out, Mal. She may have been cool with chitchat for an hour or so, but I don't think she ever wanted the mom gig. It took her a while to act on it, but she was checked out years before."

I had spent the last two years sitting besides Paul at lunch and knew he did not ever have a problem saying what was on his mind. Furthermore, he was reactionary. If he was really feeling something, really had something on his mind, he would have said it.

"So why did we go in there… it was so...awkward."

"I told you. I wanted to show you my room. I knew she wouldn't touch it." Seemed lame. But, maybe it was true. Maybe he just wanted to show me the last remnants of the before Paul, the Paul before the mean guy facade.

"Why would she keep everything how it was if she… if she didn't want…"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I have no idea why Shelly does what she does."

That was the second time he said it, Shelly. He called her mom to her face, but maybe that was just some courtesy for giving birth to him. In his mind she was Shelly, not mom at all.

"Same with my dad," I said to him, feeling uncomfortable at turning the conversation toward myself, but Paul's face brightened at my willingness to share information. I continued.

"Who knows why he left or never reached out to us. He split before I could walk. We don't even have a picture of him, but I look so different from Kim and she looks like my mom, I figure I look more like him," I looked at him listening intently to me. Silence. "Listen, I am not saying one of us has it better than the other. I'm just saying Shelly was trying to make an effort. It might have been small and incomparable to years of her disinterest, but she gave you an apology."

He nodded. "She did."

"And how was it? Did it help at all?"

"Inconclusive," he shrugged. We fell back into silence after that and soon I fell asleep.

I was awoken to the sound of Kim opening my front door. I closed my eyes again as Paul carried me bridal style into my house, up the stairs and laid me down on my bed. As my head hit the pillow I opened my eyes and looked up at him leaning over me, both of his arms on either side of my head. He had two hours alone to sit and think by himself and it looked like he had reach some conclusions, one way or another, although they may not have been about Shelly exactly.

"Thank you so much for today, baby. I couldn't have done it without you," he said and he kissed my forehead, his eyes sparkling at me. As his lips made contact with my skin a warm soothing sensation permeated throughout my body. I took a breath as I allowed his tenderness to envelop me. It felt warm, soft and whole all at once. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I didn't tell him not to kiss me, and I didn't tell him not to call me baby.