Chapter 18
“Do you know whether Jalen has plans this weekend?”
Rohan looked up at his mother as she walked into his office. He had been reviewing the pitch his team was giving a client tomorrow and was ensuring everything was correct.
“I want to ask her and the girls to lunch.”
“She has to work this weekend,” Rohan responded.
“Does she really, or do you just not want me taking up her time?” his mother questioned with a raised brow.
He refrained from rolling his eyes, liking them situated in his head, and he knew she would attempt to smack them out if he did.
“I’m taking her out tomorrow. So, you wouldn’t be taking from my time. She works nights this weekend, though, if you want to work around that.”
“I’m fine with that. Text her and get her permission to give me her number, or you can just give her mine. Either way.”
“Is there a particular reason you want to have a lunch date with my girlfriend and her sisters?”
“Yes, she’ll be more inclined to stay with you once I show her how great of a mother-in-law and grandmother I can be,” she told him, smirking.
“Don’t jump any guns,” Rohan responded before going back to looking over the proposal.
“I make no promises,” she replied before she retreated from his office.
He sat back in his chair after a few moments, thinking about the fact that his mother wanted to spend time with Jalen and her sisters.
Not that his mother ever had anything against the women he dated.
As long as they were respectful to her, she was respectful to them.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that she wanted to either.
Rohan knew it had been a while since he had dated someone seriously.
Almost two years before he started dating Jalen, if he was remembering correctly.
He didn’t see any harm in their spending time together.
He just hoped that his mother didn’t smother her and, more specifically, her sisters with all the grandmotherly love she had.
Which, in her words, he was forcing her to keep in by not giving her a grandchild.
She could be extremely dramatic at times.
Going back to the proposal, Rohan ensured everything was where it needed to be and that there were no mistakes. This had the potential to be another lucrative client if the budget they’d proposed for this project was anything to go by, and he definitely wanted them to be repeat clients.
After finishing his review, he emailed his team, to tell them they’d done an excellent job and could leave for the day if there was nothing else for them to do.
It was only a little after two, and he knew they were caught up on their projects and ahead on several others.
So, he didn’t see the harm in giving those who wanted to leave early that option. Primarily because he was leaving early.
He had just started his car when his phone rang. He gave it a minute to switch over to the Bluetooth in his car. Seeing that it was Jalen, he picked up.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey, are you busy? Scratch that. Of course, you’re busy. It’s the middle of a workday.”
“I’m not busy, gorgeous. What’s wrong?” he questioned at the tone of her voice.
“Can you…come pick me up from work? I let Kodi drive today since I’m not supposed to get off until five, but I need to go to the school, and I don’t want her having to leave to come get me.”
“I’m on my way, baby. Did something happen?” Rohan asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.
“Thank you. I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
With that, the two hung up the phone, and he hoped nothing had happened to any of her sisters.
Ten minutes later, he pulled up to the hospital’s west entrance and found Jalen there waiting for him.
When she got into the car, he could tell that she was upset. If her voice hadn’t given her away on the phone, her face did it for her now.
“Thanks again for coming to pick me up. I was going to get an Uber because I didn’t want to bother you, but they said it would be an hour.”
“You aren’t bothering me, baby,” he told her. “Which school are we going to?”
“LaVaughn Robinson High,” she informed him, and Rohan nodded.
They’d been driving for about five minutes when he questioned whether she wanted to tell him what had happened. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to talk about it,” he tacked on.
Jalen released a small sigh, and he got the feeling that what she really wanted to do was scream. “Landon got caught skipping class.”
Rohan remained silent, wanting to know if there was more to the story. While he knew she shouldn’t have been attempting to skip, he was also aware that teenagers did it. It was much like a rite of passage, and he’d done it himself as well.
“She was attempting to leave campus and go who knows where.”
At that, he understood why Jalen was upset.
While Landon could have been going home, she just as easily could have been trying to go somewhere else altogether.
A part of him wanted to voice the first part, give Landon the benefit of the doubt, but another part.
The bigger part told him it wasn’t his business, and Jalen hadn’t asked for his two cents, so he kept them to himself.
“I just don’t know what to do,” she spoke again after a moment. “Grounding her doesn’t seem to have an effect, and it causes her attitude to be worse.” Rohan glanced over to find her fidgeting with her fingers. “And sometimes corporal punishment does more harm than good, but I’m at my wit’s end.”
He wasn’t a parent, and while he was extremely active in Alynn’s life, his niece wasn’t at an age where he had to experience what Jalen was going through with Landon.
He would like to think that he and his brother hadn’t given their mother too much trouble, but he could have been wrong.
He wondered if maybe what she needed was to speak to someone who had experience parenting.
He knew well that Jalen had been doing it for the past five years, and probably even before that. However, Rohan knew that with her only being seven years older than Kodi and ten years older than Landon, bumping heads with one of them was inevitable.
“This isn’t the right time to bring this up, or maybe it is, but my mom wants to take you and your sisters to lunch this weekend.
I don’t know how comfortable you’d feel talking to her about what’s going on with Landon, but she may give you some insight.
I mean, she raised my brother and me, and I’m sure we were hell on legs. ”
He glanced over to see that had pulled a smile from her, and she nodded slowly. He figured he could text her his mother’s contact information later that evening.
They pulled in front of the school, and Rohan watched Jalen take a deep breath before opening the door. “I’ll be back as quickly as possible.”
“Take your time,” he responded. He watched her close the door and head towards the school entrance.
????????????
Jalen stepped into the school building, heading to the office. She had attended school there herself and gone to as many of the teens’ progress conferences as her schedule would allow. So, she was very familiar with the layout.
She was just about to enter the reception area when she was stopped by a teenager. He was taller than she was, but he had such a baby face that there was no way he was a staff member.
“Hi. Um, you wouldn’t be Jalen, would you?”
“I am,” she answered. “Do I know you?” she then questioned, and the teenager shook his head.
“No, I’m Max. Landon and I went to the movies together a few weeks back.”
“I see,” Jalen responded. “I assume you’re the boy she was spending all of her time on the phone with before she got grounded.”
“I was sometimes, but not all the time. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Jalen raised a brow at him but gestured for him to continue. “Landon’s been talking to a man.”
“What?” she asked; her brows furrowed.
“I don’t know how she met him, or who he is, but that’s who she’s been talking to.
She and I are just friends. When we went to the movies, she wanted to meet him, but I didn’t feel comfortable with her doing it.
So, I told her I wanted to come and be, I don’t know, a buffer.
I felt better when I found out Kodi would go as well, but Landon was pissed. Even more so because he had to cancel.”
Jalen stared at him for a moment as she attempted to process everything that he’d said. “Kodi told me you tried to kiss Landon, but you’re telling me it wasn’t a date. You went because you…”
“I was scared for her, and I wasn’t trying to kiss her. I was telling her it was a good thing he didn’t show up because he was probably some creeper, but Kodi walked up, and I didn’t want to seem suspicious whispering and whatnot.”
She could feel a headache starting behind her eyes, and she was beyond pissed. Not only had her little sister gone out and met some man, but she’d put herself and Kodi in danger by trying to go meet him.
Somewhere in Jalen, she felt as if it were partially her fault. She tried to monitor what her sisters got into, except for Kodi, but it was admittedly hard with her hours and going to school.
“I know I probably should have told Kodi then, after that, but Landon promised me she wouldn’t contact him anymore.
I believed her. Except, I’ve been letting her use my phone while we’re at school, and today she forgot to erase the messages when she gave it back to me after gym.
It’s the last class we have together. I saw she was planning on skipping the rest of school to meet him.
I…told the vice principal she planned on skipping.
But I felt you needed to know this. I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. ”
“Thank you, Max. For being a good friend, because were you not, you wouldn’t have wanted to go with her to keep her safe, and you wouldn’t be here talking to me now.”
Max nodded. “I should get back to class.”