Page 43 of The Rules of Their Red-Hot Reunion

She wanted to be with him, see more of him, but...how?

Her computer indicated she had a video call and, happy to be distracted from her thoughts, which were going around and around, Aisha pounced on it, wincing when she saw it was her mum calling. Unable to cut the call, she rubbed her fingers across her forehead and sighed. ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘I’m phoning to see if you are coming to dinner, not this Saturday but the next. Everybody will be there.’

Would it hurt her mum, just once, to open a conversation with a‘Hello, darling, how are you?’?

‘I don’t think so, Mum.’

‘Why not?’

Oh, let me count the reasons.

‘Because you all but ignored me at Oscar’s party and when I did speak, my opinion was instantly dismissed? Because the family spoke over and interrupted me?’

‘We don’t do that!’

Oh, enough now!She’d always been careful to dance around her mum’s feelings, but she didn’t have the time or the energy to massage her mum’s delicate ego. Or anyone else’s! She was done with bottling up her emotions to make people feel comfortable. ‘Mum, what’s the point? Really?’

‘You’re our daughter—’

‘Well, it doesn’t feel like it! Growing up I felt like the ugly stepchild, never part of the family, and nothing has changed.’

‘We don’t—’

She sounded a little mortified, but Aisha was past caring. This moment had been a long time in coming. ‘Mum, I get it, you’re all intellectuals and I don’t fit in. I don’t get advanced maths or know how to map the neural pathways of the brain. But I’m not an idiot!’

‘Well, none of us think you are.’

Aisha scoffed at her tepid response. Really? That was news to her. ‘I don’t fit into the family, Mum. I never have.’

It felt good to verbalise her long-held hurts, to tell her mother how she felt. It felt a little like poison leaving her system, as if her blood were thinner, her heart able to beat a fraction better.

‘That’s not true!’

Aisha sighed. ‘It’s true for me, Mum.’

‘If that’s how you feel,’ her mum stated, her voice stiff with outrage, ‘I’m not going to beg you to change your mind.’

‘Mum, don’t be like that, okay? Everything is fixable, but only if we communicate and compromise. Talk to Dad and give me a call in a day or two if you think we can find another way of dealing with each other. Maybe, instead of a family dinner, it could just be the three of us. What do you think?’

‘I’ll talk to your father,’ her mum muttered.

Honestly, that was more progress than she’d expected.

Aisha lowered her phone, saw the call had been dropped and rested her forehead on her desk. Look at her, taking names and kicking butt! Aisha hauled in a deep breath, feeling lighter and brighter. She was learning about boundaries and what she would and wouldn’t accept. She was making others, and herself, take responsibility for their actions and behaviours. She was finally learning to take care of herself.

And damn, it felt good.

Aisha heard the beep of an incoming video call coming in on her computer, pushed her hand through her hair and faced her screen, her hand clicking her wireless mouse.

Her boss’s lovely face appeared on her screen and her white teeth flashed as she smiled. Aisha sighed, relieved.

‘Hello, Miles,’ Aisha said, leaning forward. Thank God for work, the one thing in her life that wasn’t complicated.

Miles’s smile faded and she leaned forward, her expression concerned. ‘Damn, girl, you look like hell! How hard are you working? Are you sleeping?’

Miles, under her sleek and sophisticated facade, was a bit of a mother duck. ‘Lots to do, Miles.’

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