Page 28 of Mostly My Girlfriend
So many changes. But finally, even more than after I got the job with the bank in New York, I felt like I was on the path leading me to my future.
But that didn’t mean I could forget my past. Which meant I needed to have a serious conversation with Mom about the bills and exactly what I could handle on my salary. I was pretty sure I could cover half the mortgage and still leave plenty for me to live on while looking the part of a vice president in a growing company.
Albeit a small company for now. Currently, Ethan had four software developers working for him and that was it. When he’d introduced me as his number two, the guys hadn’t looked up from their computer screens.
To build the infrastructure we were going to need to take Phoenix national, we were going to need to add whole departments. Which was, Ethan explained, my headache.
I couldn’t wait to get started.
Bouncing downstairs, I found everyone in the kitchen. My mother was hugging Ethan while he awkwardly patted her back with one hand and held a soda in the other.
Which meant he still wasn’t drinking. I wondered if, now that he was out of school, he was still taking the Adderall. It wasn’t something I’d asked him in the three years we’d been apart because I knew it would make him prickly.
I thought of his parents, who were spending Christmas alone this year without even me around to give them a sense of connection to their son.
But they had made progress. When Ethan came to New York to get me, I had insisted he visit with them. It had been tense and difficult, with a lot of anger on both sides, but still, it was a step.
He’d flown home for Thanksgiving last month, and I’d let him go without me. Let him have some time with just him and his folks. When I asked how that visit had gone, he’d saidless than awful. I assumed that was progress.
I was about tell my mom to back off when I realized she was sobbing on Ethan’s shoulder, not just hugging him.
John still looked bitter and angry, and Robbie and Devon looked stunned.
“Are you for real right now?” Devon asked.
Ethan glanced at me. “Don’t get angry.”
Which was usually my cue that I was about to get angry.
“It’s too much. Too much,” my mother said as she pulled away from Ethan. “I need a tissue.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Ethan, why did you make my mother cry?”
“He paid off the mortgage,” Robbie announced. “The house, the farm, it’s free and clear. All of it.”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. “Wait. What?”
“Yeah, little sis, I always thought it was going to be you to show me up for not getting the job done. Instead, it’s this fucker and his…what did you call it?”
“Bitcoin,” Ethan said, not taking his eyes off me.
“Internet money shit,” John said as he reached into the fridge for another beer.
“You did this?” I asked Ethan. “You seriously did this?”
“Don’t be mad, honey,” my mom said as she used a napkin to dab her eyes. “Ethan’s been checking in with me these last few years and, well, a few months back I got a call from the bank. They said I was in danger of foreclosure. I just wanted some options.”
My mother. Called Ethan. And not me. “Mom?”
“Oh honey, I didn’t want to burden you. You’d just gotten out of college and were starting that job in New York. You already had so much on your plate. I was only asking for some advice. I didn’t know he was going to do this.”
This. Paid off my entire family debt. Without telling me.
I glared at Ethan and he knew that if I’d been born with laser vision, he’d be dead right now.
“Come on, let’s go for a walk outside,” Ethan suggested.
“It’s, like, twenty degrees outside,” I pointed out even as he grabbed my elbow.
