Page 86 of Lost & Found

To learn that both of us had been hiding our feelings just makes this whole situation seem so fucked up and I ache for Hollis' journey in that way. I do worry that I might have dropped a bomb on her when I admitted how serious my feelings were, but I wasn’t going to start off this fresh start by hiding anything else. We never lied to each other before—until we did—and I don’t think we should start again now.

I’m finishing up a client’s car who should be here within the hour to pick it up, when my phone rings on the tool desk.

Normally, I’d ignore it. But my whipped ass brain goes straight to Hollis and I don’t want to miss her call seeing as I haven’t heard from her all day.

But it’s not Hollis. It’s my mom. I ignored her the other night and haven’t called her back. And I know I’ll see her tomorrow—honestly, the only reason why I agreed to family dinner is because we’ll have more company surrounding us as a buffer—but I swipe to accept the call anyways.

“What’s up, Mom? I’m kind of busy.” I sigh as I wipe my hand against my forehead.

“What’s going on with you? We haven’t really talked since-”

“Since you asked me for money and didn’t really even say thank you?” I finish her statement. I already regret answering this call.

I’ve tried to avoid her for as long as I could since giving her the money for whatever it was she needed it for. I realized that I did it for all the wrong reasons and I didn’t want to enable her to ask me for more.

“You know it wasn’t like that, Jax. I was very grateful for that and it did really help but-”

“Let me guess, you need more?” I interrupt her again.

Her voice sounds fragile, and I don’t understand why but honestly, I’m not giving the energy to even care.

When she doesn’t answer my assumption, I know that I’m not wrong.

“Listen, I really hope that everything is okay and that whatever you’re going through is something you can fix but I won’t be giving you anymore money. Maybe you could sell the house or find a new job that allows you to work from home.” I recognize that I might not know what her situation is, but I damn sure as hell know that I also won’t be feeding into the mooching.

“Wow. Real classy, Jax. Coming from the kid who dropped out of college and worked at a car dealership.” Well, that turned snippy really quick.

“A dealership that paid you a ten-thousand check, mind you. And your college education really seems to be doing you a ton of good right now, wouldn’t you say, Mom?” I don’t mean to sound annoyed or to be so disrespectful, but I won’t allow anyone to treat me like I’m less than, blood relative or not.

“Jax, when did we turn into this? Us not getting along and fighting with each other. I’m your mother,” she says, her voice is softer than it was when she was insulting me.

“When you decided that I wasn’t going to amount to anything at the age of eighteen. When you told me that moving in with my dad would, and I quote,put me on a path to nowhere. When you called me up twice for money and didn't even think to sayhelloor to get to know me and my life again before doing it.” I defend myself, feeling really heated at the fact that I even have to.

“That’s not fair, Jax. You know that’s not true.” I can hear the crack in her voice. But not because she’s sad, but because she’s trying to keep her composure together while she lies to me, at least that’s how I take it.

“I don’t think you have a monopoly on what is fair,” I respond.

I’ve wasted so much time standing here talking to her, that my client has already shown up for his car and I still have a mess everywhere.

“I’ve got to go, we can finish this conversation tomorrow at dinner,” I tell her before hanging up. I’m not going to allow her any more time to respond or argue back.

I put my phone down and head back to work, hating that the only person I know will make this better isn’t here.

It’s three in the afternoon when I find myself at the bar on a freaking Sunday. I don’t know how I wound up here, but I can guess that it started after the phone call with my mom yesterday, then going to bed after not hearing from Hollis all day, and lastly, by texting her again this morning. Which she hasn’t responded to. So I’d say my trip to the bar is warranted.

I started thinking about how she might be having second thoughts already. I thought things were going fine between us but I guess I was wrong since she seems to be ghosting me already. And honestly, despite our history, the good and the bad, we still have so much ground to make up and I know that the issues that have nudged their way between us won’t go away overnight, no matter how much we talk it out and suggest that we can move on.

I had tried to busy myself by taking a shower, cleaning the garage, doing my laundry, anything I could to take my mind off the thought that she was ignoring me and rewiring my thoughts to think that maybe she was super busy.

But it’s three in the afternoon and she still hasn’t responded, so here I find myself…at the bar.

One beer.

Then, my mom’s conversation starts to replay in my mind. I started thinking about how stupid I am for having given her any amount of money to begin with. I enabled what is going to be a trickle effect of her asking her least favorite son for cash security because that’s all he's good for.

I hate that I can’t even give her a chance to be somewhat considerate and decent because she just jumps straight into the shade of her shadows in order to communicate with me. Like I’m not good enough to get her bright side.

I ended up calling Kylan last night to talk to him about it. Again, we don’t have major issues with each other, we simply keep our distance because we never had the closest relationship growing up—Delanie’s doing. But he was too busy to talk so I asked him to meet me here today.

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