“Mom, we’ve been over this. I can’t keep bailing you out. You need help, not more money to gamble away,” I replied, my tone sounding anything but firm.
I could picture my fifty-five-year-old mother hunched over the cluttered round table in her living room, cards and betting slips strewn about. While it pained me to refuse, I also knew the cycle too well. The temporary relief, followed by more calls, more debts, more lies.
“Just a little to get by, you know?” she asked.
My heart ached.
I wanted to help my mother, but I was also struggling to provide a stable life for Evie and me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Evie playing with her train set. If I let the call drag on, I would never get her to bed on time.
“Please, just this once. I promise I’ll pay you back,” Mom pleaded, her voice more desperate.
Despite my better judgment, I found myself caving.
“Fine, I’ll send something. But please, Mom, get help.”
My hand shook as I scribbled down the amount she wanted. Four hundred dollars. I couldn’t manage even half of that right now, but I could find a way to borrow something to make up the rest.
When I hung up the call, I put a grumpy and cranky Evie to bed, shutting out the lights and making my way back to my bed.
I’ll be a better mother tomorrow, I promised myself as I went to bed. I’d be a better mother, and I’d start standing up for myself with jerks like Jonah too.
40
JONAH
An hour after the awards ceremony, at eight p.m., I sat in my office, staring at my computer screen. I wasn’t even slightly unsettled or restless, despite Lexi and our ongoing fight.
The image of her walking away from the conference room? It didn’t affect me one bit.
Thank goodness she’d walked away. I could enjoy the rest of my evening without her presence gnawing at me.
Lexi made me all twisted up inside. Why couldn’t it be easy with her? It was supposed to be just sex. Nothing more. But before I knew it, we had moved on to something more than just sex. In the past few weeks, she’d unraveled me and my personal life like no one had before.
I hated it.
Why did it matter that Jill and I had been fuck buddies in the past? Did I want to revisit things with Jill again? Heck, no.
But now that I’d met Lexi and Evie, I knew I was getting too close. I was getting personal, and I never let myself get personal with anyone I slept with. Jill knew that. If I revisited things with her, she wouldn’t pry into my personal life like Lexi did. Shewouldn’t ask me about other women I’d slept with in the past … or might in the future.
And yet, Lexi didn’t trust me. She didn’t trust that I could be around Jill without crossing some imaginary line.
I wasn’t the guy who would let a past fling mean more in the present. And I certainly wasn’t the guy who would betray the fragile connection I had begun to build with her.
A damn connection.
I closed my eyes briefly, realizing that her words had stung precisely because her request was valid. I hadn’t clearly stated what we were to each other.
Fuck buddies? No, that seemed too lame a word for how I felt around her.
There was a knock at my door, and I looked up, hoping against hope. I’d left the party not too long after Lexi had left. I’d barely registered the hollow feeling in my chest when I looked up to find her seat empty. After a few minutes of scouring the room for any sign of her, I’d spotted her hugging her male teammate, who I remembered as Brian, on her way out. It had made me curl my hands into fists.
I’d left the party but gone straight to my office. I had wanted to be alone, perhaps to research an even more dangerous sport to partake in that weekend.
When I heard the knock, I looked up expectantly. But the woman who walked in wasn’t the one I had expected to see.
Jill walked in, and I must have let my face give me away. “I know that look,” she said, stopping in front of my desk.
