The guilty shuffle of Eric’s feet tells me what he’s about to say before the words come out of his mouth. “I accidentally told her. She heard his voice”—he gestures to Wes—“and wanted to know who was at the garage with me this early. It just came out.”
“Eric!”
“No one says you have to go.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “You can just ignore her drama, you know. Sam and I do it all the time.”
“Yeah, I’m well aware.” My eyes dart toward Wes before settling back on my brother. “Seriously, you and Sam can’t just figure it out?”
As if on cue, my phone lights up with an incoming call. Mom. Great. I decline the call and start to shove my phone in my pocket, but it just starts ringing again.
“I hate you right now,” I tell Eric, wishing I had never opened my big mouth and had just left Wes on the side of the road.
“Tell her you’re busy.”
“Like that will stop her from calling me for the next twodays nonstop.” I take a deep breath and accept the third call, striving for a neutral voice. “Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, so you do know how to answer your phone,” she says by way of greeting. “The lengths I have to go to for my only daughter to speak to me.”
“It’s storm season.”
“Well, Eric says you’re in town. I’m sure you can spare your mother some of your precious time.” She sniffs, the crocodile tears always waiting in the wings for another performance.
“Mom, I really don’t—”
“If you’re already at your brother’s garage, you can drive ten minutes more to my house before you run off again.”
She hangs up without another word, leaving me fuming and embarrassed.
“I’m sure it won’t take long to help your mom out.” Wes slides his hands into his pockets and shrugs like it’s no big deal that he’s getting such an unflattering glimpse into my shit show family life. “Moms like me.”
Oh, my mom will definitely like Wes. That’s the problem.
I resist the urge to scream and stamp my feet like the child I was never allowed to be. “Did she say what she needed when you did your Benedict Arnold routine?” I choke out, still glaring daggers at my brother.
Eric shrugs. “Something about a lamp.”
“A lamp? You and Sam can’t handle alamp?”
“I’m busy with the garage,” he says with a pointed look at Wes’s SUV. “Sam went to the mountains with his girlfriend’s family for the weekend.”
“And you couldn’t tell Mom you’d just come by after you close up?”
“You and I both know it’s not even going to be about whatever lamp she claims she can’t plug in herself. This is just her way of getting attention. If you would stop playing into it, she’d leave you alone. She never calls me or Sam with this crap other than when you’re gone every spring.”
Familiar irritation floods my veins. I don’t ask much of my brothers. “She’s our mother.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
I wave a hand to cut him off and avoid Wes’s questioning look. “I’ll just go. It’s easier than fighting with her. But you owe me.”
Not like that means anything. The favors my brothers owe me stack higher than any of the Colorado Fourteeners, not that they ever seem to try to make a dent in the pile. I’m sure Eric will claim that fixing Wes’s windowsisa favor to me, despite the fact that he’s going to make a tidy little sum off the work. If anything, I’m the one doinghima favor.
Just like that, my decision is made. I’m not staying in town for another night, never mind until Monday. And if that means I have to chase with Wes, so be it.
“Does your momlive close by?”
I use the excuse of pulling out onto the busy street to give myself a few more seconds to decide how to play this. Exposing the full extent of my family’s dysfunction to Wes is not on today’s bingo card.
“I’m going to bring you back to my place before I go over there,” I explain, internally wincing at the waste of more thanan hour driving in circles. “Trust me, you don’t want to be part of this.”
