Page 81 of Must Be Love - Irresistible Bachelors

Unfortunately, there is one more person I can call. She’s the last person on every possible list, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

My mom answers on the first ring.

“Amber? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, Mom. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Are you sick? Is someone hurt? Is it Dana?”

“No, no, everyone’s fine. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Perhaps I should call my parents more often. It’s not right that her first reaction is that there must be an emergency.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

An awkward silence settles between us. Maybe this was a mistake. I should’ve tried Tammy instead.

“I just wanted to say hi. I should let you go.”

“No, wait,” Mom says. “You sound upset. Is everything okay?”

I open my mouth to say that I’m fine, but instead, the entire story tumbles out. Okay, not the entire story. I leave out the sex and the semen parts. I just tell her that AJ and I got into a fight without being too descriptive. I make sure she knows he did something that’s hard to forgive, though.

When I’m done, my mom laughs. “You’ve gotten yourself in quite the pickle, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I have. I’m not usually like this. Everything just happened all at once…”

“I know, dear. My advice is this: if you really like this guy, find a way to forgive him. You don’t want to miss out on true love over a silly fight.”

Her response is unexpected. “That’s it? You’re not going to try and fix it yourself?”

My tone is harsher than I meant, but twenty-five years of pent up frustration came out in those two sentences.

Mom takes a breath so deep that I can hear it over the phone. “Your sister and I had a long talk yesterday. She said that I’ve been too controlling all your lives and that I’m trying to do the same with my grandkids. I see that she was right. You obviously feel that way, too. So I’m trying to work on it.”

“Wow, Mom. That’s great.”

“It’s slow going. Well, it’s only been a day. But it’ll be slow going. I’ll be honest, I can think of a hundred things I want to do to make this all better, but I’m not going to do them.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Mom sniffles. “Thank you, Amber. I hope this means you’ll call more and maybe stop by the house?”

I bite my lip. “It’ll be slow going for me, too.”

“I understand. We’ll make this work. And you’ll work it out with AJ. I know you will.”

At least my mom has confidence in me. We chat a little bit more about mundane things, and it feels good.

After we hang up, I get back on my laptop. I don’t know if I can still be with AJ after all of this, but I do know that I have a job to do. I open up the campaign, and inspiration strikes.

Weird how a conversation with my overbearing, controlling mother is what got me out of my work funk.

Maybe we should talk more often.

25

AJ

I should not have answered the call from my mom.

I thought it would be a good distraction from all this shit with Amber because my mom can talk my ear off for hours. But it got to be really painful after about five minutes.

“And so June…you remember June, right?” my mom drones. She doesn’t wait for me to answer before charging forward. “June told Abby that she was going to leave the community all because Abby’s friend Walter wouldn’t go on a date with June. It’s ridiculous! Walter’s wife died less than a year ago. Besides, June is a hag if you ask me. I don’t blame him for not wanting to date her.”

“That’s crazy, Mom.”

“You think that’s crazy? Wait until you hear about what happened with Hector and Barb.”

I don’t care what happened with Hector and Barb. I don’t know these people. Even so, Mom tells me everything about their tumultuous affair. Who knew this much could happen in a retirement community?

This goes on for a full hour. I don’t have a chance to get more than a few words in before she launches into the next story. At least with my mom rattling in my ear, I don’t have a chance to think too hard about Amber.

After the tenth long-winded story, I’m losing my patience with my mom. This happens every time we talk. If she knows all these people in her neighborhood, why can’t she talk to them sometimes? The way she speeds through her stories, it’s like she hasn’t spoken to a human in days. And we just talked yesterday!

I know I should appreciate that my mom cares enough to call me regularly. Not everyone has a close relationship with their parents. Still, it’s frustrating when it always goes like this. My mom doesn’t care who she’s talking to. She just wants to talk.

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