Page 74 of Wait With Me
“I thought you worked for a living,” she retorts.
“I don’t leave my house until 7:15. I had a good thirty minutes before I had to get up, you brat.”
She sighs heavily. “Mom’s worried about you.”
I stretch my arms wide and throw my feet off the side of the bed to make my way to the bathroom. “Why?” I ask, pulling myself out of my boxers.
“Because you haven’t sent her an email in two weeks. Are you peeing?”
“No,” I lie.
“Liar.”
“I’m not peeing. It’s just the creek by my house. It runs really fast and hard in the morning.”
“You’re disgusting. Have the decency to mute the phone line next time.”
“But then you wouldn’t be able to hear me pee.” A lazy grin spreads across my face as I tuck the phone against my shoulder to wash my hands. “What’s Mom’s deal?”
“You go from emailing her on Sunday nights like clockwork to radio silence on all of us for two weeks. We talked about this, Miles. One email a week means you get to avoid the two-hour phone calls with her where she threatens to come stay with you for a week. Why are you slacking?”
I exhale heavily and make my way down the hall out into my kitchen. My timed coffee pot has finished brewing, and I pour myself a cup. “I’ve been busy.”
“Bullshit,” she snaps as I open my front door and step outside onto the porch. The sky is a mixture of blue and golden sunrise, illuminating the treetops in front of my house.
“I haven’t felt like talking, Meg.”
She groans loudly. “Don’t tell me you got back together with Jocelyn. I’m telling you, Miles, our family will not be able to stand this again. I thought she was married and had a kid anyway.”
“It’s not Joce,” I snap, rolling my eyes and taking a sip. “It’s that…author girl,” I admit because I know my sister, and she won’t quit until I fess up.
“The one you called me from the bar about?”
I clear my throat and reply through clenched teeth. “Yes.”
“Oh man! I didn’t know you were seeing her!”
“I’m not…I mean, I was. But it’s over now.”
“Why?”
“Because she lied to me about some shit, and I’m not bringing noise like that back into my life again. Been there, done that.”
Megan’s little growl on the other line surprises me. “Don’t think every girl who isn’t perfect is like Jocelyn, all right? I don’t know this author chick, but I do know you, and you sounded so crazy happy that night you called me to talk about her, Miles. Happier than I’d heard you in like…forever. I’d say since Joce, but honestly, you were never happy with that girl. Not a day in your life. I know I haven’t met this author, but I called Mom the very next day to tell her about how you sounded because it was so night and day different. We were excited.”
“Seriously?” I state, my jaw dropping. I knew my family had issues with Jocelyn, but they rarely ever voiced them to me. They were always blindly supportive of my decisions. “You guys never said anything.”
“Miles, Joce was the worst, and she made you miserable. You were moody for years because of that girl. God, every time you guys broke up, we all prayed it’d be the last time.”
“Why wouldn’t you say something to me about that?” I exclaim, wrapping my hand around the railing of my porch and squeezing it in frustration.
“Because we never knew when you might get back together with her! And if we admitted how we really felt, and you stuck with her, it could ruin our relationship with you. We actually used Grandpa to tell you she was a massive bitch because we knew you couldn’t hate him.”
“Oh my God,” I exclaim with a shake of my head. “Grandpa was in on it?”
“Oh yeah,” she replies with a giggle. “I remember him saying to Mom one time…‘If you guys are too weak to tell Miles to drop that girl, then I’ll do it.’Mom was super insulted, but it was Gramps…ya know.”
I laugh loudly at that. “God, I can picture him saying that.”
