Page 73 of Love Unexpected
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rosie
I sat on my front porch, my feet still sandy from the beach, and debated whether or not it had been long enough to call my mom. The last thing I wanted was to call while Isaac was still there. She wasn’t responding to my text messages which meant he might be. Mom would talk his ears off if he let her.
I opted for sending one more text.This is killing me, Mom. Please call me once he’s gone.
It took about three minutes for her to finally call. “How are you holding up, sweetie?”
“Is he still there?” I asked, not even wasting time to say hello. “Please tell me he isn’t standing right beside you and I’m on speaker phone.”
“He’s gone,” Mom said. “He left about an hour ago.”
“An hour? Why did it take you so long to call?” I stood from the steps and started pacing back and forth in front of the wicker bench to the left of my front door.
Mom let out a weird, breathy laugh. “Oh, you know. I just...got caught up doing other things.”
“Mom, please,” I said, my voice wobbly. “Can you just tell me how it went? What did he say? Was it awful? Was he surprised?”
“Slow down with the questions, Rosie. Are you breathing? You don’t sound like you’re breathing.”
“I’m breathing,” I said. “I promise.”
“He’s a very nice man. So handsome and easy to talk to,” she said, her tone shifting just enough for me to know she was stalling.
“Mom.”
“And that smile. It’s enough to make a woman’s heart stop.”
“Mom.”
“I liked the other one—is his name Tyler?—as well. He was very nice.”
“Mom, I know what you’re doing. Why are you stalling? And why won’t you answer my question? Is it bad? Are you trying to keep from having to give me bad news?”
She sighed. “I’m trying to keep from having to give youanynews. Isaac asked that I didn’t. He wants to talk to you in person.”
I groaned and leaned forward, dropping onto the wicker bench, a cloud of dust and pollen puffing up from the seat cushion. Of course he would want to talk to me in person.
“That’s it? You won’t tell meanything? Can you at least tell me what he said when he found out?”
“I don’t know what he said. I didn’t go upstairs with them. I didn’t want to be on camera, so I left them to it.”
A little twinge of disappointment snaked through me as I thought about him filming the entire experience. Not that I hadn’t expected him to film it. It was the entire point of the trip. But a small part of me had hoped he’d decide not to.
“Did you get his message?” Mom asked. “I told him to send you one. I thought it was cruel for him to make you wait the entire time he was traveling home without getting some clue of how he was feeling. I told him that would be the worst possible thing for your anxiety.”
Oh. Great. Mom couldn’t tellmeanything, but she was more than okay sharing my mental health history with Isaac. Fantastic. I might scold her, except she’d told me that Isaac had messaged. And that was a far more pressing issue. I switched the phone call to speaker phone so I could navigate my way to Instagram and check my direct messages. Sure enough, there was one new message from Isaac. How had I missed it before? I’d been checking my notifications, but somehow, Instagram had failed to send me one for this message.
I clicked it open.
@RandomIOfficial: I’m not disappointed. Wait for me, Rosie. I’m on my way home.
My body stilled even while my heart started pounding, surely tripling its speed. This was big. He’d called me Rosie.
Isaac knew who I was, and Isaac wasn’t disappointed.
“Rosie?” Mom said. “Are you still there?”
