Page 1 of Tattoo My Heart
ONE
“Evelyn, are you still there?”
I’ve been listening to my mother talking in my ear for the last forty-five minutes straight. She’s gone on and on about the party she is having at my parents’ beach house to celebrate July Fourth.
“I’m here, mom,” I speak softly into the phone. I am at the grocery store, trying to get two birds with one stone. One bird is doing my shopping for the week, the other is getting my weekly call with my mother out of the way.
“So, who are you bringing then?” The excitement is clear in her voice, and now I have to shake my head and clear the confusion my brain is shrouded in. I guess I wasn’t listening to whatever she was saying.
“Bringing where, mom?”
I want to laugh when she sighs. She is annoyed with me now, but I know she also loves me, so it’s all good.
“To the party, Evelyn,” she snaps at me. “Everyone else is bringing a date. You’ll be the odd one out if you don’t.”
I snort in amusement. “Who is everyone?”
“Well, all the immediate family at least. Even Cal said he was bringing someone.”
The amusement dies when I hear my stepbrother’s name coming out of her mouth. Our parents married when I was sixteen. Cal was twenty at the time and away at college. He was smart and rich, and so full of himself, I couldn’t stand the sight of him.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize what an asshole he was until after I developed a healthy crush on him. However, he put me in my place right away. He also made it very clear that he thought both me and my mom had bamboozled his father into some crazy scheme where we planned on taking all his money, and, by association, leave Cal out on the streets because his inheritance would be in our bank accounts.
“Ugh,” I let out in disgust. “Just you saying his name is giving me the hives, mom. And just because of that, I don’t even want to come.”
“Evelyn Elizabeth Moore,” mom gasps in shock. “You do not mean any of that. I know you kids didn’t get along when me and William first got together, but it’s been eight years, honey.”
“And he’s never been nice to me in the last eight years, mom.” I realize how loud I am when my voice seems to travel up the aisle I am in. I look both ways to make sure there is no one there, then snatch two packs of cookies off a shelf. That way it won’t feel like I was in this area for nothing.
“Evelyn, that is not true at all,” mom tries again. She’s always on a mission to make us get along. “He didn’t know us properly when I married William.” The tone of her voice sounds way too sympathetic for my liking.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumble into the phone and continue pushing the shopping cart through the store.
“Anyway,” she cuts me off. “He met this lovely girl that he wants to bring over for all of us to meet. So you have to come.”
I roll my eyes toward the ceiling. “I’ll be there.”
“Great!” She about starts clapping. “Don’t forget to send me a picture of the young man you’re bringing. Bye now!”
I stop walking, my eyes just blinking in distress. I can’t believe I agreed to this mess. To top it all off, I don’t have a boyfriend to bring to the shindig.
All sorts of crazy thoughts are swirling through my head. I wonder if my best friend, Carrie, would be okay with me borrowing her boyfriend for the day. They have a new baby. I could offer her a full weekend’s worth of babysitting services in exchange for her very handsome boyfriend to attend this party as my own boyfriend.
As I continue pushing the shopping cart up and down the aisles, throwing random things in as I go, I bring my phone up to call my bestie.
“I have a nine-one-one type of situation,” I tell her as soon as she picks up. I hear the baby crying in the background, and I feel bad for two point seven seconds. “It’s a real life emergency, Carrie,” I cry to her.
“What’s going on, goofball?” I let out a sigh of relief when she laughs.
“I need to borrow James for a weekend.”
“What?” The snort she lets out when she laughs at my cockamamie idea would normally amuse me, but I am desperate.
“I’m serious,” I assure her. “My parents are having this party on the fourth, and I need to be there with a date. I don’t have a date, and…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” she stops me, no longer sounding amused. “You want to borrow my boyfriend and take him away on aholidayweekend? While I do what? Stay home with the baby? Alone?”
“Well…”
