Page 1 of Hot Set

Chapter one

Alex

What is humiliation?

Humiliation is a twenty-three-year-old man moving back in with his mom.

Yeah,that’shumiliation.

Look it up in a dictionary and you’ll see my picture.

How many other millennials have had to move back in with their parents? Who cares? Like I said, it’s humiliating.

I laid in my bedroom, the one that I hadn’t been in since I’d left for college years before, and stared at the ceiling. My mom insisted there was no shame in moving back in as long as I was looking for work, which I was, but I still couldn’t quite shake off the shame that inherently accompanies an adult occupying a teenager’s bedroom (the teenager being the adult’s former self, not some other teenager, which might be less shameful but possibly illegal). I sighed and buried my face in my pillow, inhaling the familiar fabric softener, Moonlight Blossoms. Momhad used it since I was a kid, and it would have been comforting, if it hadn’t taken me back to a time before my testicles dropped.

I needed to get out of bed and get to work. The jobs weren’t going to find themselves, after all.

I tossed the pillow aside and dressed, pulling on my jeans and a cable knit sweater. It was January and cold in New York. I padded downstairs, my feet slapping on the bare, hardwood stairs. When I reached the carpeted living room, the smell of bacon and blueberries drifted into my nostrils. I inhaled the familiar scent of my mom’s cooking and smiled. I had missed her cooking. During college, I lived mostly on fast food and sandwiches; there just wasn’t much use in cooking full meals for one person.

My mom, in her blindingly pink pajamas, stood flipping pancakes on the stovetop. She looked different from the last time I’d seen her. She and “Husband No. 3” had gotten divorced since I’d seen her last, and now she looked remarkably changed, ten years younger, at least. Mom had cut her hair short and dyed it a bright scarlet. It must’ve taken a good deal of work; Mom’s hair was as dark as mine, and I knew from a childhood listening to complaining that her black hair didn’t dye easily. It required at least two bleach treatments to get it to a reasonable paleness.

Mom looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Good morning! You certainly slept late.”

“I guess I’m not much of a morning person out of school,” I replied.

“I suppose I understand that. My schedule has been so sporadic since I began to work from home,” Mom replied.

I poured a cup of coffee and settled into a chair. Mom was always embarking on some work-from-home venture. She’d sold Mary Kay, Avon, Beauticontrol, essential oils, and pretty much anything else you could imagine. Presently, she was really into crochet, and she’d posted dozens of things—scarves, blankets,shawls, and pet beds—on Etsy. I had hoped it would go well, although Mom’s ventures had a poor track record. The good news was that my dad, “Husband No. 2” still sent her money.

Mom swooped in and placed a plate of pancakes and bacon before me. “Thanks, Mom,” I said.

Mom nodded and began preparing her own plate. “You’ve been around here a lot lately,” she said.

I paused, halfway to burying my pancakes beneath a deluge of maple syrup. “What do you mean?”

Mom sat across from me and curled her hands around her coffee mug. “Just that you’ve been around since you came back. I’m worried about you.”

I laughed. “I’ve been looking for jobs, Mom. A lot of them involve online applications, but I’m going to go and follow up on a few in-persons this week. The Internet sucks for us ‘people persons’.”

“That isn’t quite what I mean,” Mom replied, delicately cutting a bit from her stack of pancakes. “I mean that you haven’t really—well—gone out since you came back.”

“Well, I don’t really… I didn’t come back to socialize,” I said. “I just want find a job and move out. I’m too old to be back home with you.”

“You arenottoo old. Sometimes, things just don’t go as planned, Sweetheart,” Mom replied. “It’s okay. Just because you didn’t get a job right out of college doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to have any fun. You haven’t been to Bluehaven inyears. You haven’t caught up with any old friends…”

I ate a mouthful of pancakes to avoid having to answer. I really hadn’t had many friends in high school, and I certainly hadn’t kept up with any. Heck, even in college, I hadn’t really made many friends. So, I had no interest in going out and meeting up with old connections. I didn’t even really have any interest in Bluehaven. Sure, it was my home—a small town in coastal NewYork—but it wasn’t really anything special. No, Bluehaven was better described as a pit stop, a place to grab gas on the way to somewhere else,anywhereelse, like New York City.

“I guess I haven’t,” I replied in a monotone.

Maybe Mom would drop it.

“Well, maybe you should. What about that girl you liked? Shelby,” Mom asked. “I saw her mom at the supermarket just the other day. She’s a pretty girl.”

“Dropping it” was not my mom’s forte.

Shelby had been my crush for years, but we’d really only been friends, if that. Acquaintances might have been a more accurate term. Either way, I hadn’t had a chance with her. She was so far out of my league that we might as well have been on different planets.

“I guess so,” I replied. “I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

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