Jock Romeo (Jock Hard 6)

Mom seriously needs to cut the cord.

She’s acting like I flew back over the ocean, never to be seen again, when in actuality it will only take me twenty minutes to drive home when she wants to see me and twenty minutes for them to visit.

I knew I should have applied to NYU…

I’m internally grumbling, letting the silence stretch.

“Roman, are you still there?” Mom taps on the phone as if testing out a microphone. “Hello?”

“I’m here. I was just thinking.”

“About what? Tell your mother.”

She’s always saying that: tell your mother—as if those words are going to make me spill my guts and confess all of my sins.

Sins. Ha!

The list would be embarrassingly short, not that I’m perfect. It’s just that I’m…boring.

I’d have to leave my desk chair to commit a sin, and I haven’t done that in years, which brings me to my new digs.

Freedom to make some bad choices.

“About…” How excited I am to be living on my own! “Your garlic bread.”

“Oh stop. It’s so easy I can practically make it in my sleep. It’s no big deal.”

I roll my eyes at her false modesty.

“Have you met anyone yet?”

Met anyone? “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Mom hedges. “Girls.”

“Mom, I have lived here exactly—” I check the watch circling my left wrist. “Five hours.”

“Well how would I know the house isn’t filled with people? You didn’t let us come help move you in,” she points out again. I have a feeling I’ll be hearing about this a lot; my mother is not one to let things go.

“I told you—I live with two people, Jack and Eliza. Jack is from Britain—I got his number from his brother Ashley, whom I met a few times while I lived there. Eliza is his girlfriend.”

Mom is quiet. “I just don’t know how I feel about you living with a couple. It feels weird. It’s not that I mind you living with a girl. It’s just…I don’t want you to feel left out because they’re together. And God forbid they have sex in the living room. What if you hear them?”

My face flushes as she goes on talking about sex and thin walls and how when she was in college, her freshman roommate Nicole used to have sex with her boyfriend in the bottom bunk while she lay in the top bunk. I try to remind her this isn’t the dorms and we’re adults and both Jack and Eliza seem very respectful—at least they did when I met them so they could interview me and I them for this roommate position.

“It’ll be okay, Mom. I’m not worried they’re going to have sex where I eat breakfast.”

She needs to stop worrying and stop fabricating excuses for me not to live here—I should have moved out when I started school, but I didn’t, and now there is no looking back. There is no Alex busting through this door. There is no rushing around to pick up Aunt Myrtle from an appointment or set an extra space at the table for one of her boyfriends. Or listen to her telling me about her singles over seventy dating app.

Mom makes no comment on my sex-for-breakfast quip and instead brings up Sunday supper once more. “Say you’ll come on Sunday.”

“I thought I did like three times?”

“Just making sure.” Mom laughs.

“I’m not going to ghost you, Mom. I’m only living twenty minutes away—I’ve been taking classes here for two years.” Two and a half if you count the semester last year before studying abroad.

“I know, I know, I just worry.”

“Worry about what? That I’m going to run out of gas on my way home? Or that I can’t manage on my own? I know how to do laundry and make my own dinner, for crying out loud—you taught me how to do all those things, Mom. You don’t have to worry that I’m not going to survive. Were you this worried when I lived in England?” Because she nagged me way less than she’s nagging me now.

“Of course I was worried. But I knew you were coming home.”

That makes sense—she wasn’t as freaked out because she knew I was going to be back in her house and down the hall, but instead I came home, packed up my things, and moved into a new house entirely, and that has her reeling.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring your roommates along with you? They might really enjoy a home-cooked meal.”

My mother makes one last semi-desperate attempt to get me to bring my new friends home—probably so she can cross-examine them and do background checks and give them the third degree. God, I can’t even imagine what that would be like.

Who knew she was going to be this overprotective?

I kind of feel bad for Alex; he’s going to be taking the brunt of her missing me. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that within a few months, she will have completely redecorated my bedroom and turned it into either a guestroom or a hangout lounge for my brother. Or possibly even a craft room for herself—lately she has begun knitting, and that might be a sweet spot for her to have some peace and quiet.