Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)

As soon as I say it, I wince and prepare for her retort.

“Spit?” she balks. “Oh, Mariah. When are you going to start acting like a lady? I didn’t raise you like this.”

“Can we just … cut around all this and get to the chase?”

I despise the pleading tone in my voice, but I hate even more the pause that stretches between us. It’s filled with the unspoken disappointment she feels at being my mother. The silence is pregnant with how misfortunate she feels she is and an awkwardness that’s made even worse by how our relationship dictates how we should interact with one another.

There aren’t tears anymore, just a muted acceptance of the situation. I am who I am and it’s not good enough for her. But it’s good enough for me.

“My birthday is this weekend,” she says finally. “I’d like you to come have lunch with me.”

This throws me a little. “Wow, Mom. Okay. Where do you want to meet?”

“I’m having lunch brought to the house to mark the occasion. It’ll be Betsy’s first time here and I’d really like to make it special.”

“Betsy?” I ask, trying to remember which of her friends this is. I’m sure she’ll lambast me for not remembering it’s her tennis friend or the one she just took a trip to San Diego with, but I truly don’t remember.

“The baby, Mariah.”

Blinking in super-slow motion, I realize she went there. She’s usually decent enough to not openly bring up Chrissy or Eric or the pregnancy that I found out about from a mutual friend’s social media post, a baby whose name I didn’t even know until now.

Tears come, wetting the inside corners of my eyes, as I realize Chrissy has taken our grandmother’s name. A hollowness echoes in my chest, each thought bounding around an area inside of me that should be filled with a feeling other than loneliness.

For a fleeting moment, I imagine walking into my mother’s house and seeing my sister holding a baby. She never even wanted kids. I was the one who wanted a huge family and she beat me to it, just like she tried to one-up everything I ever did.

“I gotta go,” I say past the lump in my throat.

“Stop it.” Her tone is cold, brash, void of any empathy for me. “It’s time you grow up, young lady.”

“Grow up? Are you kidding me right now?”

“Eric and Chrissy are incredibly happy and they now have a beautiful little girl.”

“I … good for them,” I say in disbelief.

“Yes, good for them. You should try to emulate their happiness a little instead of spending all your time in a library.”

This snaps me out of it. “Well, Mother, I was trying to do something similar and then my sister stole my boyfriend.”

“You can’t steal a person,” she charges back. “He was in love with her. Not you. Maybe if you had been a little more interesting, fixed yourself up a little more—”

“Nope. Not doing this today. Goodbye, Mother.”

My thumb swipes the call off and holds in the power button until the screen goes black. I look at the wall. After deep breathing for a few seconds, I shove all of that garbage out of my mind.

Rummaging through my closet, I know exactly what I’m looking for. The jeans I never wear, the ones Whitney says makes my ass look great, go flying onto the bed. A soft crimson sweater that hugs my curves and I feel good in joins it. It takes more time than it should to find my nude-colored heeled boots, but they’re cozied up in the back of my closet with a pair of black pumps. Both go on the bed.

“There. That should do it for tomorrow night.”

The satisfaction is short-lived. So, I do what I always do when I can’t settle down: head to the kitchen to bake something sweet to cancel out the bitterness.

Seven

Mariah

“I should’ve worn the heels.”

Twisting around to see the back view in the full-length mirror, I decide the jeans I laid out last night look fine. The top is cute. The shoes, though, might be too relaxed. Then again, I really have no idea.

The doorbell rings as I pick up my heels. I look at my reflection. I can’t see my heart pounding out of control but I sure as hell can feel it.

“Why did you agree to this?” I whine.

The bell sounds again as if the man on the porch is reminding me I did agree to the craziness of a blind date and now I have to follow through.

Each step toward the front door seems to cover a mile. The knob is in my hand before I have time to come up with a plan. I freeze. Peering into the peephole, I determine he’s cute, but in a television doctor kind of way. Crew cut blond hair, cobalt blue eyes that match his scrubs impeccably, and a tall, lean body that screams he ran a half a mile this morning for fun, all make him appear harmless. Although, I remind myself as I open the door, that’s what all blind dates look like at first.