Page 62 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“Stay calm,” Sam said to the only person in the room who was panicking—herself. She hit play on the first voice mail, and her mother’s stilted tone came through the line as if she were sucking on a lemon.
“Sammy. It’s Mom. I need you to call me back when you can. Thanks.”
“That’s it?” Sam asked as the line went dead.
Her anxiety increasing, she jumped to the second voice mail, time-stamped forty-three minutes later.
“Sammy, I’m sure you’re busy, but this is important. I need you to call me back now. Thank you.” This time her mother didn’t sound like she had eaten something bitter. She sounded downright pissed that Sam had missed somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen attempts to reach her. Sam hardly thought the volume of calls was reasonable given the amount of time her mother had let pass between voice mails, but then again, what if her granddaddy had fallen and they needed her medical opinion on something?
When she pressed play on the final voice mail, her mother’s voice came back through the line. “Samantha, I don’t know where you are, but it is clear that you are not interested in returning my call, so I’ll just tell you that somehow you botched the invitations to the party. I just talked to Mrs.Blake, and she received a save-the-date to a wedding reception for someone’s engagement party that she’d never heard of—Jehan Kazen, if you can believe it.”
Sam felt the pit of her stomach drop as her mother began to detail calling her friends and finding out that all of them had received a strange invitation to an engagement party, but none of them had received a notice about her event.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered as her mother wrapped up a message that would have seemed like yelling if the phone hadn’t had volume control.
“It seems to me that you somehow managed to swap those lists, and now I venture to guess that Jehan’s party is as ruined as mine. So there you have it. No need to call me back. I know you’re busy anyway.”
“Oh no. No. No. No.” Sam repeated the one-word mantra as she dashed from the couch to her room to grab her laptop. Clicking over to the invitation website, she navigated to theYour Orderstab and stared in horror as the website confirmed exactly what her mother had accused her of. She had, indeed, mixed up the lists.
Running back into the living room, she grabbed her phone. It was almost one o’clock in the morning in Ohio. Normally, she wouldn’t call, but knowing her mother, she was probably doing something dramatic like sitting in their dark living room staring daggers at the phone. Taking a shaky breath, Sam dialed her mother to beg for her forgiveness. The phone rang once, then twice, then went to voice mail.
“Nope.” Sam hit the red hang-up button, knowing that whatever voice mail she left would be used against her unless it was perfect.
Clicking over to her contacts, she found her brother’s number and tapped it. She was sure Isaiah already knew what had happened, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t want his advice. The guy had basically mastered the many moods of Diana Holbrook.
The phone rang three times before her brother picked up. “Hey, Sam, it’s kinda late for you. Everything okay?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“No. I was just trying to finish up something for work. What’s up?” Isaiah asked. His voice always reminded Sam of a weighted blanket. His entire energy could best be described as steady.
“Oh my God, Isaiah, I messed up Mom’s invitations. I agreed to help with this ridiculous party just so she’d forgive me for moving to San Francisco, and now she isn’t speaking to me, again.” Panic spiked through her chest as she imagined a series of worst-case scenarios, including her mother just flat-out refusing to let her in the house for all foreseeable holidays, birthdays, weddings, and funerals.
“That’s not great,” Isaiah said, pulling her out of her spiral. She could practically hear him taking off his glasses to run a hand over his face.
“Not great at all.” Sam felt this was a dramatic understatement, but she was trying to calm down, not sink further into a freak-out hole. “She didn’t tell you?”
“Mom called me. It’s just that I was in the middle of a project, so I didn’t answer. Guess I picked the wrong time to ignore her call,” Isaiahjoked. Sam knew it was for her benefit more than his own. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Sam took a deep breath and let the whole thing rush out, in the hopes that if she spoke fast, she wouldn’t cry. A plan that mostly failed but did mean that she had to repeat salient details a few times, so at least there was that added downside.
“Okay, first, I’m gonna validate that while it’s okay to cry, you don’t need to. It’s ludicrous that Mom expects you to do this while you are trying to adjust to a new job and get this program off the ground. That was bound to cause some issues,” Isaiah said, sounding like a TV-show therapist—a trait that might have annoyed Sam on any other day but was particularly helpful to her right now.
“Thanks.” Sam sniffed and grabbed the hem of her shirt to wipe her eyes.
“Second, I would say that this isn’t really about her having a party for her friends. It was about inserting herself in your life. You know good and well she has already told all of these people about the reunion. The paper invite was a formality.” Isaiah’s laugh was low and mellow. “If you are going to feel bad for anybody, feel bad for your friend, who is likely going to get some rando wedding gifts from Mom’s friends. You know what Aunt Debbie’s taste is like. So many unsolicited demitasse tea sets.”
Both of them laughed, remembering all the strange gifts that had been sent their way over the years, including the small china cups someone had truly believed Isaiah needed when he’d moved into his own place in LA.
“Well, she found out from Dr.Blake—who she called Mrs.Blake again—so at least the gifts from her will be good.” Sam paused so that both she and her brother could roll their eyes. Dr.Blake was the mother of Sam’s childhood best friend. It wouldn’t have been so egregious except that Dr.Blake was literally one of the world’s foremost experts on modern manners.
“So here is what you do. Call Mom back. Leave a simple voice mail with how you plan to correct the mistake. Apologize and say you love her and that she can call you back when she is ready. Then immediately do what you said you would so she can’t argue with you about it or lay on extra guilt.”
“You’re basically the Mom whisperer.”
“Clearly she expects some prolonged, dramatic thing. But honestly, who has the time? You’ll say sorry, you didn’t do it intentionally, and you won’t make the mistake again, so she can get over herself.”
Sam laughed, feeling her spirits lift as she nodded along with her brother’s pep talk. “Thank you, Isaiah. And I’m sorry I interrupted your work.”
