Page 11 of So This Is Love

“Listen, I need to borrow some money until next week, just for some necessities.”

And there it is. I roll my eyes, frustrated but not surprised because I can’t remember the last time my mom called me and didn’t ask me for something.

“What happened to the money that I just gave you a few weeks ago?”

“I told you my car was in the shop and I needed some help with the repairs.”

She had said that. And the time before that it was groceries and the time before that it was because the washing machine was broken. It’s always something.

I make it to my train station and walk down the stairs. I pull my card from my coat pocket and tap it on the scanner to unlock the turnstiles.

“How much do you need?” I ask flatly.

“Just a hundred dollars. Money is a little tight right now and I -”

I don’t bother to listen to the rest of her sentences. Instead I pull the phone away from my face and open my online banking app. I type in the amount that she asked for and press the button to send the money to her.

“I sent it but I gotta go, my train is here.”

It wasn’t, but now that she said the real reason she called me, there was nothing else I needed to say to my mom.

“Okay thank you, I love you,” she replies sweetly.

I end the call, close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. The automated voice on the intercom alerts of a train approaching.I take three more deep breaths and open my eyes to my train slowly riding into the station until it finally stops and the doors open. I step onto the train and opt to stand instead of sitting between people. The train is decently full but since I worked later than I meant to, I missed the evening rush. The automated voice comes over the intercom again to alert that the doors are closing. A few seconds later, the doors close and the train pulls away from the station with a jolt.

All of the exhaustion of working all day hits me on my commute home. I eat dinner and then head to my bathroom to take a shower. The hot droplets of water hitting my skin as I step into the shower feel heavenly. So much so that for a while I just stand there and enjoy the warmth and calm that the water pouring off of my skin brings. After my shower I put on some pajamas and get into bed. I turn on my tv and set the volume low to act as background noise while I’m awake and to help me fall asleep. Though tonight is a night that I know sleep won’t evade me because my eyes are already heavy while I open Instagram to do my nighttime scroll.

Stories is where I usually start scrolling, and once I get bored of that I switch to the actual timeline to see the posts of the people I follow. I scroll aimlessly until one post in particular catches my eye, or rather less the post and more who posted it. It's a picture of the city at night, darkness in direct contrast with the lights of buildings and cars and clearly captured from many stories above the ground and a simple caption that just says ‘home’.

Sonny followed me back on Instagram the day after we ran into each other and liked the most recent picture that I had posted. With everything going on with life and work I haven’t thought much about him and I haven’t even told Zara about running into him again. Hesitantly, I click on his handle to go to his profile. He doesn’t post often, once a month at most butfrequently less often than that. A throwback picture of toddler Sonny with his mom that he posted for Mother’s Day a few years ago, brings a smile to my face. His mother is stunning and Sonny is in her arms with one of those big cheesy grins that kids make when they’re really happy. My eyes have gotten heavier and slowly without me noticing I slip into slumber, my phone falling onto the bed next to me.

5

Sonny

Stepping away from performingand releasing music for the first time, since I was signed to a record label at 19, made it blatant that I needed to diversify my financial portfolio. Not that I hadn’t been before, but I wanted to do more than I had been previously. Because whether it was now or some time in the future, there would come a time when I wanted to step away from music for good and I needed to be prepared for that. Over the years I had invested in some different avenues and I prided myself on saving far more money than I spent, but I wanted to continue to live a comfortable life.

The desire to move into other business ventures is how I met Tristan Hawthorne. Tristan’s family has deep ties to the construction and real estate industries and have been prominent in it for generations. When it got back to Tristan that I was interested in partnering together he was open to the idea and thus our partnership on Oasis began.

Tristan is standing by the bar in the middle of Oasis when I walk in through the back entrance. There are very few times when I’ve met with Tristan and he hasn’t been in a perfectlytailored suit, so I figured today would be no different and I was right. He’s wearing a black button down shirt and navy dress pants, the matching suit jacket resting on the bar stool next to him and black loafers. His back is to me and he’s on the phone, cursing somebody out by the sounds of it.

The phone call ends as I walk up next to Tristan at the bar.

“My bad about that,” Tristan says, hanging up the phone.

“No worries, everything alright?”

“Yeah it is now. Half of my liquor order was missing so I had to get into it with my distributor because that shit is unacceptable.”

I nod in agreement. “Glad that it got straightened out.”

“Yeah there was no question about it if they wanted to keep my business.”

The door to one of the storage rooms opens and a man wearing a beanie and white shirt emerges pushing a dolly with cases of liquor on it.

When he nears us he nods his head to me and Tristan. “What’s up, boss.”

“The rest of that order should be here by the end of the day. And I need you to do another inventory check to make sure everything is good for the opening.”

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