Page 61 of Hot Mess

“Mom. Mom, sorry. I’m picking up how people talk out here. So other than to talk about me, and get you worrying, what did Jessie need?”

Mom hesitated.

“I think she just missed having her cousin to talk to. You should give her a call.”

“I will, Mom.”

“Call her soon, she sounded so lonely.”

Was Jessie feeling lonely? I doubt it. She was acting, had to be. She had plenty of friends. I met them. She could keep them.

“I’ll call her after dinner. I should go. I have a meeting in the morning to get ready for.”

I ended the call. Sooner or later all of the lies I was telling Mom would catch up with me. I was bound to forget what I had told her. Who I was working for, who Nick really was.

I wasn’t lying about calling Jessie after dinner. I just hadn’t specified what dinner or what night.

When the doorbell rang a few minutes later I swore and glared at my phone, not realizing that the noise hadn’t been someone’s ringtone. While I was still staring at the phone, I heard a knock and my name.

“Nick!”

I ran to the front door and threw it open. I was in his arms, and he spun me in a circle.

I peppered his face with kisses, happy to see him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Isaac said you were in LA, but not where you were. I thought…”

Nick shook his head. “Isaac almost gave me away then. I’m in LA and I’m right here.” He kicked the door closed behind him.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have met you at the house?”

“Kayla, I came home to see you a day early. This was supposed to be a surprise.”

He loosened his grip on me, and I slid down his body. I missed being crushed up against him like this.

“Oh, hey”— he held out a big envelope— “this was on your porch. It’s not marked. Were you expecting a delivery?”

My heart plummeted. My stomach turned sour. I was going to throw up. I snatched the envelope from him and swallowed down bile. I panicked. He couldn’t know what was in that envelope. I stared at it. How had they found me? What more did they want? I had been making payments.

Nick shifted from side to side trying to catch my attention. “Kayla, babe, what is it?”

I groaned. I didn’t know what to tell him. I hated the thought of lying to him, but I had been lying to everyone else. So why not the man I was desperately in love with?

And I was in love with him, that wasn’t a lie.

A bit of reality in the mix always made lies seem real. Jessie had called, she lived locally, sort of. I was going to use her as my scapegoat.

“Oh, my cousin was going to run something by. She tried to call earlier. It must have been to tell me she was here. I missed her call.” If I added a ‘gee,’ and a ‘shucks,’ I think it would have been too much.

“You, okay?”

I shook my head. “Just upset that I missed her. It had to have taken her a while to get here. I was really sucked into my show.” I had been sucked into my own personal pity party, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d start believing my own lies.

It was okay if Nick knew how I really felt about Jessie, and Gabe, and their friends. I sighed. “If I don’t see her every other week or so, she calls my mom, and then I have some cross-country family ordeal because Jessie acts like I’m ignoring her.”

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