Page 17 of The Invitation
My lips twist at the irony of Mom being the voice of reason.
“Speaking of fun sex, has Donovan called you?” she asks with a little grin.
Of course, she’s suddenly engaged in the conversation. We’re talking about sex, not something as silly as my unemployment.
Exhaustion begins to creep into my bones.
“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” I say, although I’m certain she won’t drop the subject.
“So has he called?”
I sigh. “A couple of times, but I didn’t answer. Once I’m done, I’m done, you know.”
She chuckles. “Yes, I know. And you better be careful, or you’ll end up alone like me.”
“Who knows? I might.”
Mom sets down her plate and picks up her wine, settling back against the cushions. “Is that what you want? To be alone? Seeing your friends marry and start families isn’t making you want the same thing?”
She eyes me carefully, almost as if she’s afraid of my answer.
My chest pulls tight as I consider her question—one that I’ve been mulling over for a while. A part of me thinks that if I found Mr. Perfect, getting married and having babies would be the endgame. The idea of having the standard fairy tale like Sutton is exciting … for a moment. Then it makes me sweat.
Even when I consider having a family, I immediately envision the end. Where there’s black, there’s white. There’s a sun and a moon—a start and an end.
It’s the end that stops me from heading down that path.
It’s the end that I fear.
“I don’t know what I want,” I say when I realize she’s waiting for an answer. “But it doesn’t matter because unless I found the absolute perfect man, I wouldn’t entertain settling down.”
Her body dips into the cushions. “Good. Now, let’s talk about something else. What did you do today?”
Thank God. “I had a couple of interviews, then I met Sutton at The Swill.”
“What’s that?”
“A little bar near Jeremiah’s and her house. She said it was a dive bar, so I went in like this.” I motion toward my cutoffs and shirt. “Let’s just say there was not one neon sign in the whole place.”
She smiles. “Yikes.”
“I know. And then Ripley Brewer walked in …”
Mom’s icy glare freezes the words as they tumble past my lips.
Shit.
The mention of his last name cools the warmth of the evening. It doesn’t matter how fired up I get about him, it won’t be enough to thaw Mom’s response. I always forget she hated them first—that she hated them before I even knew them.
“Ripley is friends with Jeremiah and stopped to say hello to Sutton,” I say.
She hums.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to bring them up.”
She places her glass down with a clink against the tabletop. “It’s fine. I saw Reid got sentenced and will spend the rest of his life behind bars for his crimes. That made me feel a bit better.”
I give her a small smile, but she doesn’t see it. She’s too consumed by her own memories to notice.
