Dad takes a drink of ice water before forking a chunk of pot roast. “Last I heard, she was practicing law downtown.”
“Oh, you’re kidding me.” Mom sounds a little too delighted, which breaks my heart. “Good for her. You know, I was worried about her for a while. She always seemed so lost. She wanted to be a part of our family so badly. Her home life wasn’t the greatest.”
My father nods. “The odds were definitely stacked against her.”
“We should reach out to her,” I say. “Maybe have her over for dinner sometime? Catch up a bit?”
Dad shoots me a curious look. “Where’s this coming from, kiddo? You haven’t mentioned her name in a decade and now you want to have her over for dinner?”
He chuckles, shaking his head like he finds this amusing.
I lift a shoulder. “Guess I just … randomly started thinking about her the other day.”
I’m lying to a liar. Oh, the irony. At least this time I don’t feel bad about it.
The tension between us is ripe.
Mom doesn’t notice.
“Is that so?” He’s playing dumb.
“Maybe I saw her face on a billboard or something.” I keep my attention trained on him, searching for a nuanced expression or twitch of his brow, something to show he’s uncomfortable.
But I get nothing.
Is this a skill he’s honed over the years? Is this not the first time he’s lived some sort of double life?
I shove my food around my plate, willing myself to take a bite. But I can’t. My stomach is rock hard and my appetite is gone.
“Thanks for dinner, Mama.” I rise and kiss her forehead before taking my plate to the sink. She doesn’t often cook. Usually it’s frozen pizza or something easy enough to throw together without much effort, but once a week she scrounges up enough stamina to prepare a Crock Pot meal. I hate that I couldn’t finish it.
I hole up in my room and check my phone to find a handful of miscellaneous texts from Adriana … and one from August.
It’s been a couple of days since we had sex. And while I left that slip of paper by his pillow, I haven’t had the nerve to reach out to him first to follow up. I needed to put some space between us. Take some time to breathe, to process what happened.
It was all so … perfect.
And then, for some unknown reason, he went cold.
Dragging in a breath, I tap on his message.
ENEMY DEAREST – Mona Gillespie is your home nurse. I’ll forward you her contact info. She starts Monday.
I rub my eyes and read it again.
He did it.
After I didn’t hear from him right away, part of me didn’t think he would follow through with his promise … part of me was convinced I’d been played.
ME: Thank you.
He follows up with a screenshot of Mona’s phone number, and I stare at my screen a little longer, waiting for him to say something else.
Something more.
Then again, what is there to say?
I place my phone aside and grab a nearby magazine from a stack that Adriana gave me. Her dad works in sales for some publisher, so she gets just about every magazine she could ever want for free.
Flicking through the neon pink copy of Cosmo from three months back, I skip the articles about “How to Get Your Biggest O” and “How to Give Him a Night He’ll Never Forget” and go straight for the quiz in the back titled “Is He Into You?”
Does he text you out of the blue?
Does he call you by any nicknames?
Has he tried to make a move?
Does he ask your friends about you?
Has he tried to get you alone?
Does he flirt with you?
Ten yes-or-no questions later I score a solid eight (because he’s never sent me flowers or written me poetry). And according to the test writer, that’s a solid, “He’s definitely into you, so make your move, girlfriend. What are you waiting for?”
I sniff and toss the magazine aside.
This is a waste of time.
I don’t want nor do I need him to like me.
It shouldn’t matter.
And I shouldn’t care.
Digging my headphones out of my nightstand, I plug them into my phone and pull up my favorite melancholy playlist because apparently I’m in a mood. It’s halfway into the third song when the chime of a new text comes through.
ENEMY DEAREST: Want to come over?
Chapter Twenty-Three
August
* * *
I thought it’d be a harder sell. I really did. I’m honestly shocked she’s here, which makes this moment as surreal as it is satisfying.
Pacing my room, finger combing her hair into a messy ponytail, she vents about her dad, how much she hates being lied to, and how she can’t understand how he could be so two-faced to his own family.
I let her ramble on, let her get it all out so we can get on with this. My advice would do no good here anyway. I learned long ago not to go around placing expectations on people. It only sets you up for disappointment. This is the sort of lesson a person has to learn on their own.