Page 9 of The Truth About Love

Admittedly, the note I scribbled for Summer-Raine during class yesterday wasn’t my finest work, but I had to come up with something quickly if I was going to be able to slip it into the pages of her book undetected.

I never thought she’d actually text me.

I’ve had the same shit-eating grin on my face since I woke up to her message this morning.

“Whatever.” He rolls his eyes, looking over the breakfast menu despite always ordering the same thing. “But it’s creepy, so cut that shit out.”

I scrunch up a red napkin and toss it at his head. Thankfully, the sound of approaching footsteps saves me from getting hit with a fork in retaliation.

Auntie Rosie, who isn’t in fact an aunt at all but insists that her patrons call her it anyway, smiles down on us with fondness and red lipstick on her teeth.

“What can I get y’all?” she sings in her southern drawl that can’t possibly be real considering she’s a village native. “Don’t tell me. One cappuccino and one glass of freshly squeezed OJ. Two breakfast burritos. Hold the salsa for my Freddy-bear and extra cheese for the angel with baby blues?”

She may be pushing eighty, but Auntie Rosie is a woman confident in her sex appeal, despite Fred and I being a couple of years outside her target age demographic. Regardless, she’s brought a blush to my cheeks more times than I can count and Fred always humours her flirtation every time we come here to eat.

“You know us so well, Auntie Rosie,” he says, handing over the menus and winking when her fingers brush against his and linger there for a few beats too long.

My eyes roll.

Rosie struts off to the kitchen to place our orders with far more swing in her step than I knew a woman her age could be capable of.

“What?” Fred asks, catching me eyeing him with mirth.

“You’re as bad as she is.”

“Nothing wrong with a flirt once in a while with an attractive woman.”

“Seriously? You’d really go there?” I shake my head in disbelief. “She’s older than your grandmother.”

“You know I’m not one to discriminate, dude.”

“And Mia wouldn’t mind if you started fooling around with a woman four times her age?”

“Oh man.” He sighs. “Don’t talk to me about Mia right now.”

If I’ve learnt anything about Mia during her and Fred’s brief relationship, it’s that she’s impossibly difficult to please. Possibly even more so than her predecessor, Bethany, who made him delete all his social media accounts and wouldn’t let him watch movies with any hot female characters.

Fred’s little black book reads like a Yellow Pages for emotionally abusive and overly-controlling teenage girls. And yet, he jumps from one relationship to the next with very little time in between. For someone who claims to hate commitment, my best friend is a serial monogamist.

“Trouble in paradise?”

He snorts. “You can call my relationship a lot of things, man, but paradise ain’t one of them.”

I say nothing, knowing that if I wait long enough, he’ll start talking about whatever shit is bothering him.

And I’m right.

“She wants us to move into my parents’ pool house.” He drags a hand through his short dirty blonde hair. “We’ve been together two months. I’m not even eighteen yet and she wants us to live together. I can barely handle Saturday nights with her, let alone every damn day.”

I’d ask him why he bothers to stay in a relationship that makes him so miserable, but I already know the answer.

Like most of the rich kids round here, Fred’s parents are largely absent. They’re not necessarily bad parents, hell, they’re far better than mine and I’m dirt poor, but they’re stern and often cold and if I’m totally honest, I’m not sure he’s ever received a hug from his mother.

So, he stays with Mia because even though she gives him headaches, she also gives him affection. And when their romance eventually goes to shit, because it will as it always does, he’ll move onto the next toxic relationship in his never-ending pursuit of intimacy. He’ll check out other girls and make a show of flirting with Auntie Rosie to keep up his ruse that girlfriends suck and commitment is useless so no one knows that all he wants in life is love.

Even if he’s looking for it in all the wrong places.

I don’t say any of this, of course. Doing so would only make me a hypocrite. Because it’s not as if I’m prepared to sit here and have a deep conversation about my own mommy issues.

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