Page 12 of Fire in You

I grinned. “I am. I’m a little nervous. I’m trying to figure out what to wear.”

“Honey, it’s a training facility. You could probably wear jeans.”

“I cannot!” I shook my head as I rummaged through the stacks of black work pants and then eyed the skirts and dresses I never wore. “The staff in Philly don’t wear jeans. Unless that’s changed?”

“Your father owns the company. You can wear whatever you want,” she replied dryly.

That was not true, not even remotely. The fact that my father owned the company and the assistant-manager job had been created out of thin air was probably going to be an issue with some of the staff at Martinsburg, but I was trying not to dwell on it.

“So, how did your date with your friends go?” Mom asked, changing the subject.

“It was good.” I plucked out a pair of pants and held them to my chest. “Speaking of my date, you’ll never guess who I ran into.”

“Santa?”

I rolled my eyes. My mom was weird. Loved her, but she was so weird. “Um no. I ran into Brock.”

Mom was silent.

My earlier suspicion blossomed. “You didn’t happen to talk to him recently?”

There was a pause. “I talked to him about a week ago.”

I turned as Rhage darted in front of the closet door, chasing what I hoped was some invisible insect. “Did you tell him where I was Friday night?”

“No,” Mom said immediately. “I know how you feel about him. I wouldn’t tell him where to find you.”

That was a weird way of answering the question, but then Mom asked carefully, “Did you talk him?”

Walking out of the closet, I placed the pants on the chair by the door. “Yes. For a couple of minutes.”

“And . . . and how did that go?”

“It was okay,” I answered hesitantly, not wanting to give her any false hope that Brock and I were suddenly going to reconnect and become best friends forever. “Do you know why he was here?”

“So you guys talked and it was okay?” she asked instead. “Jillian, this is the first time you talked to him in how many years?”

“A lot of years, but do—”

“I’m sure it was more than okay,” she said. “I’m sure that there was probably a little part of you relieved to have actually spoken to him?”

I started to tell her “hell no,” but was there a part of me that was relieved? I wasn’t sure. What did I have to be relieved over?

“Honey, I know this is an old conversation, but you two were so close. From the moment your father brought him into the house, you were his little shadow. You thought the world of him at one point, and I know he still thinks that of you,” she said, and my free hand clenched into a ball so tight my knuckles ached. “So talking to him had to be more than okay. You werethatfriend to him, Jilly, and because of that, perhaps one day, you two will find your way back to each other.”

I sucked in a shallow breath, reminded of another person saying the same thing to me. “I’m not that friend anymore, Mom. It’s not like that. It will never be like that.”

“Maybe not, but the future isn’t written in stone.”

This was not what I wanted to talk about and this conversation was pointless, because I didn’t plan on seeing him again. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later, okay?”

Mom sighed, and it was a sigh of someone who was worried and not annoyed. “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Hanging up the phone, I sat on the edge of my bed and found my mind wandering once more into places I’d rather it not, but it was something Mom had said—something that my friend Katie had also said to me hours before every aspect of my life had changed.

“You’re that friend, Jillian.”

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