Page 31 of Forever Yours

Brad, or who I thought was him, said something in the background, and she laughed. It was genuine. Happy. And hearing it made my heart hurt. When was the last time I heard my mom laugh?

“Do you want me to come?” I asked, hoping for, while at the same time, afraid that she would say yes. It was an odd mixture of emotions to feel at once. I would always be that little boy desperate for his mother’s approval and attention, but the adult part of me wanted to tell her where she could stick it.

Suddenly needing to get up and move around, I left the bench and walked down to the other end of the breezeway. The wind funneled in through that direction making my hair fly up in all directions. I glanced down at the players on the field. I knew just from the way he ran which one was Julien. He had possession of the ball, and I was missing the entire thing.

“Mom, can we talk later? I’m out with some friends.”

“Oh, yes. Sure. I’ll have Brad’s assistant call you next week with the details.”

“I can call—”

The line disconnected.

No goodbye. No, I love you.

It shouldn’t hurt. I should know better.

Shaking my head, I wiped my wet cheek against my shoulder, took a deep breath, and made my way back down to the guys to watch the rest of the game.

CHAPTER 10

Dad: I’m here if you want to talk. Love you.

My fingers hovered over the qwerty board for so long, they cramped. Mom’s promise to call Dad ‘soon’ turned out to be right after she hung up on me. And I didn’t want to talk about it, but I did want to know his opinion on whether I should go to the wedding. Just not right then when my emotions about it were all over the place.

Me: I know. Love you too. Will call tomorrow.

I had been hiding outside on the back patio of Fallon’s frat the last half hour as I waited for Julien to arrive. He had to stay after the game for interviews and texted to say he’d come right over after he showered. Jayson and Ryder were inside somewhere, Ash showed up five minutes ago, and I hadn’t seen David yet.

“Whatever they’re drinking, I don’t want any.”

I looked in the direction Ash tilted his head to where two guys were taking turns vomiting over the deck railing into a hedgerow of bushes below.

There were strict guidelines set by the university about parties that took place at Greek life houses—which was a dumb name to call fraternity and society houses. County laws that dictated what was allowed and what wasn’t. For instance, underage drinking and public intoxication. The former, only legal if you were twenty-one or older, the latter illegal at any age. Another one was the county law that prohibited any outdoor gathering to be more than twenty-five people. Or the law that banned sex or lewd acts in public places. All stuff that was clearly stated in the student handbook I was bored enough to read one night.

I’d say the party tonight was in clear violation of all of them and then some. But had the campus police shown up to shut the party down? Nope. The laws bent differently when your last name was Montgomery. Just another example of how the rich controlled the world and us peons should be grateful that we were allowed to live in it.

A flash of familiar hair caught my attention, and I did a double take at the blonde girl walking up the back steps from the yard. For a millisecond, I thought she was Liz. Similar hair color and build, but up close the differences were stark: brown eyes, thin nose and lips, and she wasn’t as tall as Liz.

I turned back to Ash who was busy glancing around at everything. Fallon’s frat house was basically a mansion and reminded me of a smaller version of The Breakers in Rhode Island. The entire house screamed money—old money, new money, the deep pockets of its alumni and legacy members. The grounds were substantial enough to include a tennis court and a swimming pool, two things I highly doubted the other Greek houses had. The inside, or what I could see of it as I quickly made my way through to the back patio, was all dark, polished wood with modern furniture and a mounted television as big as a movie theater screen that took up an entire wall of what had to have been the living room. That was about all I saw, other than a peek into the kitchen.

The two guys finished emptying the contents of their stomachs and stumbled back inside the house.

“I hope someone cleans that up,” Ash commented.

“Fallon said they’re making bathtub gin—”

Ash’s face scrunched. “That’s disgusting.”

“—in one of those big plastic bins—”

“That’s still gross.”

“—and to stay far away from it,” I finished.

“That sounds about right. And now you’ve made me thirsty. Want anything?”

A chorus of cheers went up at the beer pong table across the other side of the patio near the gas grill.

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