Page 112 of The Casualty of Us
It’s gotta be what? Five in the morning for him?
Something like that.
I wait another second, but my mom’s suddenly mischievous smile has me rolling my eyes. Knowing she’s not going anywhere and answering the phone before the call ends.
“Hey, man.” I put the call on speaker, completely for her benefit because I am the favorite for a reason here. “How’s it going?”
“What the fuck, Oliver?”
I pause in setting the phone down, eyes moving between my mom’s now predatory gaze and the voice grinding out at me from the other end.
“Uh.” I swallow. “Sorry?”
“Why the fuck is O with Graham Bettencourt?”
Oh, shit. “Uh…”
Fucking Christ.
The one rule of hers I’ve followed perfectly is not to mention anything to him. The one thing I’ve done right in her book this summer, I guess, and now even that’s floundering in the wind because how am I supposed to know how much he knows now? I don’t know what I don’t know.
I clear my throat, confirming quickly, “You talked to her?”
“I don’t know if you could call it a conversation,” he scoffs darkly. “But yeah, she was going on about no hard feelings and options and I don’t fucking—no!” I jerk back at the shout and notice the sudden amusement filling my mom’s face. “That one goes in the yellow cab!”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, exactly,” he mutters before the sound of traffic starts to fill the background. “She was drunk and not making a lot of sense, honestly, but she said you two are fighting?”
It comes out more like a question than a statement, but it takes what’s left of my most likely ulcer-ridden stomach and obliterates it. Because she called him.
She needed someone—even if it was just a pissed-off drunk dial from the sound of it—but she called him. Which means my mom’s right.
“Ollie?”
“We–we are,” I finally answer. “It’s been weird this summer.”
He pauses, and the background traffic cuts out as a car door slams. “Weird how?”
“I don’t know…” I frown, wanting to tell him but not wanting to piss her off anymore right now. Trying to shift my perspectiveforher even if I fucking hate it. “It’s just been weird between us. Tense.”
“Come on, Ollie—”
“Dude,” I snap. “She called you, so leave me out of it.”
Another pause comes through the phone before he clears his throat. “You’re right.” I hear the rumble of a deep voice in the background before he mutters something back that I can’t quite catch. Almost giving me whiplash when he comes back in the next instant. “Can you at least tell me where she is?”
I sigh heavily at that, weighing my options for none too long before telling him. “She’s at Graham Bettencourt’s Hampton house.”
Ha.
And I get my kicks in for all of two seconds before his voice comes through all pissed again. “What the fuck, Ollie? How fucking long has she been there?”
“Dude…” I sigh, knowing he doesn’t get it, but there’s no way for me to explain either. “It’s been a really weird summer just—” My brows fall, words that were about to escape dying out for a second out of natural instinct. But then I catch my mom’s eye and swallow down my pride because…maybe he’s what I need to fix this. Maybe he can even make her see sense. Convince her to let the guys with the guns handle this and stay safe with—
It hits me then.
How fucking stupid I’ve been.
