Page 55 of Latte Girl
“Thank you,” she whispers into my hair. “I’msorrytoo.”
I let her go and she heads into her room to start getting ready. I return to my own room and grab my phone to call Jordan, figuring that will be easier than sending a flurry of texts. He picks up after thefirstring.
“Hailey.Hi.”
My heart skips a beat at the sound of him sayingmyname.
“Hey. Howareyou?”
“I’ll be better when I see you,” he tells me, and while I’d smack him for being so cheesy if he were here, my heart decides to skip another beat allthesame.
“What’s up?”heasks.
“Um, so, plans have changed. I have to get my sister in an hour and meet you after that. I can be at the park for 7:30.” I decide to wait to tell him I also have to bring Amandawithme.
“Shit,” he swears into the phone. “I have to be gonebythen.”
“Why?”
“It’s this...dinner...thing,” heresponds.
I’m still on edge from the argument with my mom, and hearing yet another vague answer from him pushes all of my angrybuttons.
“You keep asking me to trust you Jordan, but aside from the fact that you like designing apps and hate your job, you hardly tell me anything about your life. You can’t keep pulling me in and then pushing me away. I don’t want to be your distraction from your life; I want to be a partofit.”
I stop myself from going any further. The line goes silent as the impact of what I’ve just said hitsusboth.
“Youalreadyare.”
I feel a tightness in my chest at the sound of those words, and have to remind myself that I still have plenty of reasons tobemad.
“It doesn’t feel like it right now,” Ireply.
He stays quiet for amoment.
“I have to go to this dinner being held by a client. I can’t miss it or my dad...” I can picture him scratching his head as he comes up with the rest of the words. “Look, I wanted to talk to you about this in person, but my dad has this...this image of me that he thinks is good for the company, and I’m scared it’s going to start damaging what’s between youandme.”
I let myself flop backwards onto my bed, relief and annoyance rushing through me in equalparts.
“Is that what all this is about?” I demand. “Jordan, if you think I’m going to stop wanting to see you because your dad makes you drive a BMW and live in a giant apartment, you’rewrong,”
He stays silent and Icontinue.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I doknow what it’s like to have to meet your parents’ expectations. I’ve told you how my mom feels about me going to university, and you know how much time I have to spend looking after Amanda. I mean, I was going to have to bring her with me to see you today. Of course I understand that sometimes keeping your family happy means you have to do things you don’t really wanttodo.”
“You understand that?” herepeats.
“Yes,” I sigh, rolling my eyes, “Iunderstand.”
“That makes me feel so muchbetter.”
I feel like I’m giving him a walkthrough on how communicationworks.
“Good. So next time you’re worried about something like this you’ll tell me, right? You’re not going to drag it out until I end up thinking you must have killed someone or somethinglikethat?”
He doesn’tanswer.
“Jordan?” Iprompt.
