Page 44 of Dash

She sniffs the air as she steps into the living room. “Are you cooking?”

I wrap my arms around my stomach, clinging to the edges of Dash’s hoodie as if it can protect me from whatever venom she’sabout to spit at me. “Weird concept, but I eat, just like everybody else.”

She glares at me. “You’re snappier than usual. What’s wrong?”

Don’t stab your own mother with a spatula.

“I told you, I’m busy. If you’d called ahead, I would have told you that.”

She sinks down onto the sofa as if she didn’t hear those words. “Darling, you’re never too busy for your own mother, and I’m not going to make an appointment to come and see you. You’re my daughter.”

“I’m also nineteen years old and I have a life, Mum.”

She waves this off as if it doesn’t matter. To her, it doesn’t. Everybody just runs to Evelyn Harrington’s timescale, including me. “Sweetheart, what you’ve built here isn’t a life. It’s a prison sentence. I don’t know why you insist on tormenting yourself with this,” her eyes roll around my living room, taking in the peeling paint, judging the cheap furnishings I got to make things look homey, “situation.”

I fidget. Suddenly, I’m eight years old again.

I try to ignore the way my chest caves in at her disapproval. I could live in a twenty-bed mansion and she would still find something to complain about.

“As much as I want to spend the next hour having all my many faults pointed out to me, Mother, I’m not joking, I am busy.”

She scowls at me. “You never have time for anything these days, Dayna. You’re either working or partying.”

“I work hard to keep my life. Something you might know if you actually got off your arse and lifted a finger.” The words are sharp, cutting. I’ve never snapped at her like that before. Her eyes flare, her mouth pulling into a tight line.

“How dare you? You know I can’t work because of my migraines.”

She’s never had a migraine in her life. I would have sympathy for her if she had. I don’t even think she’s ever had a fucking headache.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. The only way to get her to leave is to figure out what the hell she wants and just agree to it.

“If this is just a social visit, can we pencil something in over the weekend when I have time?”

“Oh, darling, I have a fundraiser over the weekend. We’re trying to build a new wing at the Children’s Hospital.”

Despite how annoying she is, I do smile at that. “That sounds like a great cause.”

“Anyway, that’s why I’m here. James Critchlow will be at the event. He is ambitious, very attractive, very wealthy, but most of his success comes from?—”

“No.” I cut her off before she can keep going. “I don’t need you to play matchmaker with my life. I can swipe left on my own dates.”

Her nose wrinkles with distaste. “Please tell me you’re not using those ghastly dating sites. Nothing good ever comes from those.”

That we both agree on.“I’m not.” I don’t tell her about Dash. If I do, I’ll never get her to leave. She’ll have an intervention staged within thirty minutes, a priest and a psychiatrist on the doorstep.

Usually, I’d love rubbing it in her face that I’m dating someone she wouldn’t approve of, but I feel protective of Dash, and of what we have. I don’t want her to know about him. I don’t want her to dirty what we’re building with her poison.

“James is a really good catch. I think you’d fit well with him.”

I scowl. “I’m not marrying someone because you think he’s a good catch. I’m not marrying anyone.”

Especially not a boy who sounds like he wears slacks unironically and spends his summers on yachts in the Caribbean.

“Dayna—”

“No!” I lose my temper. “No! I am sick of you interfering in my life like this. This is why I moved out. This is why I live in a fucking shoebox apartment, working two jobs to keep my head above water. Because doing that, killing myself to make enough money to live here, is better than suffering in that fucking tomb of a house with you. I’m tired of having to explain my choices to you. If you don’t like it, too fucking bad. I’m not your doll, Mother. You don’t get to dress me up and parade me in front of your friends so they can pick me. Now, I really have to get ready. So, if you’re done trampling all over my life, can you please, please, leave?”

The air is so thick I can taste it. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, not at first. Then she stands abruptly.

---