I hit the callback button.
It barely rang before she picked up. “Kayla! Honey, can you come over for dinner?”
“Uh, this is why you called me six times?”
“Well.” There was an uncomfortable silence. “You can bring Landon.”
My obnoxious roomie? “Why would I bring Landon?”
“He has to eat, especially after working construction all day.”
“I’m sure he has other plans, Mom.” And I was sure they involved a woman. He always goaded me with vague references to his endless cavalcade of dates.
“Ask him, OK?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “OK.” My mom had this idea that Landon and I had some kind of secret crush going on, when it was more like the relationship between a cat and a dog. I tried hard to ignore him, so I guess I was the cat.
It’s not that he wasn’t attractive, because he was — broad-shouldered with short, dark hair, a killer smile I called the Fireworks, and the kind of twinkly brown eyes that slayed women left and right. I could see how a guy with Landon’s looks could make my mom fantasize that he was some sort of handsome prince who would be perfect for her daughter.
But I didn’t know why she was so eager to push me into a relationship when, to my knowledge, she hadn’t had male company in years. Maybe not since she had me, and I was still waiting to find out who the Sperm Donor was. She’d been burned worse than I had.
“Six o’clock at your Aunt Ginny’s house,” she said.
“Wait, what? I thought you were hosting dinner.”
“You know our kitchen isn’t big enough for everyone, and I only want to say this once.”
Uh-oh.“Say what?”
“Just be there, OK?”
* * *
It’s kind ofcool growing up in a house full of women. First it was just me and my mom in Bohemia, and then we lived with Grandma in Cocoa Beach, and then all three of us moved in with Aunt Ginny in Bohemia Beach after Ginny got divorced. My cousin Gary lived there, too — Aunt Ginny’s son — but he was usually surfing or bicycling or hanging around the art lab at Bohemia High.
I worked it out so I could keep going to high school up the road in Cocoa Beach, because that’s where all my friends were. But at the end of every day, there was this welcoming nest of love and understanding at the huge beach house that fooled me into thinking the world was a nice place where I could actually realize my dreams.
Ha.
Now the beach house was owned by the Bohemia School of Art and Design, and Ginny was married to Jay, a kind accountant she’d met through her work with the art museum. He gave her the respect and love her shitty, cheating ex didn’t. Aunt Ginny and Jay had a pretty, new house in Bohemia Beach that had been built on one of the few vacant lots left in a neighborhood that dated from the 1960s, and Mom rented their charmingly dated bungalow next door.
The driveway at Aunt Ginny’s was full of cars under the palm trees, so I parked my seasoned sedan at Mom’s house and strolled over to the modern pile of cream-white stucco with the light green metal roof, wondering what Mom wanted to talk about.
“Oh, shit.” Next to Gary’s beater van was a pickup truck I knew well, loaded with ladders and tools and stuff, the Putter Homes logo on the side. It showed a guy wearing a hard hat, golfing with a hammer.
Landon.
My mom had done an end-run around me. I was fully prepared with a story about Landon being too busy to come. Truth was, I’d called him — at his office number, where I knew he wouldn’t be — so I could say I tried.
OK, I was a bad person. A failureanda bad person.
But I shouldn’t have to put up with my roommate outside of time actually spent at my Bohemia apartment, especially when sharing the rent with Landon was a symbol of just how far I’d let my life slide in the past year.
I knocked at the door for form’s sake and then pushed it open to the cacophony that was my family. Their noise level had gone up a notch since Gary had gotten involved with Ez Falcon, a songwriter who played wicked piano with a rock band, Ez and the Emeralds. At least it was good noise, though the music coming from the living room seemed to bounce off the tiled floors and ricochet around the cathedral ceilings.
I wandered into the room, which had comfortable, modern furniture and big, bright art on the walls. Ez was wailing on the keys to “Come Sail Away,” the old Styx power ballad, her short, dark hair flopping around, and Gary was playing — bongos? He was a potter most of the time and did some foam sculpting on fancy trim work on McMansions, but he also had a thing for music, especially drums. And he was the nicest guy around.
Gary and Ez belted out the lyrics, and to my surprise, Jay played along on electric guitar. Or maybe I should say he just tried to keep up. The overhead lights glinted off the silver in his brown hair.
