4. Fifteen fucking months
Fifteen fucking months
Malcom was sprawled on his couch with a bottle of Sam Adams in one hand and his feet up on the coffee table, watching The Godfather , when his phone rang. Glancing over, his brows drew together when he saw the call was from his mother, so he quickly answered.
“Hi, Mom,” he greeted her, immediately wondering if something was wrong, since it was a really odd time for her to be calling.
“Hi, honey,” Beverly said. “Am I … interrupting anything?”
“No, I’m just watching a movie,” he told her, sitting up and turning the sound on the TV down.
“Oh? What movie?”
“ The Godfather. ”
“Really?”
“Really.” There was amusement in her voice, and he attributed it to the fact she knew he’d probably seen it twenty times already and could actually recite way too much dialogue from it. “So, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” she assured him, before saying, “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“Oh? What about?”
“Well, I just got off the phone with a woman named Jules Shaw. ”
It took him several seconds to realize what she’d just said, and he sat up even straighter, complete disbelief punching him in the face, hard. “What? You did?”
“Yes. I take it you remember her?”
“Yes.” He remembered Jules like one would remember a particularly bad case of food poisoning. “Vaguely.”
“Vaguely?”
“Yes, vaguely. So, you just now got off the phone with her? Like, what, a few minutes ago?”
“Yes. She called to get a character reference for you.”
Jules had called his mom for a character reference? After fifteen fucking months ? “She … did?”
“Yes, she did,” Beverly confirmed. “We had a very nice conversation, actually. We talked for almost twenty minutes.”
Hearing that his mom and Jules had had a very nice conversation somehow elevated the disbelief and anger coursing through him until he was at DEFCON 2, and he chugged the rest of his beer. “So, tell me about this very nice conversation you had with Jules,” he demanded.
There was a pause, and then Beverly said, “You sound angry.”
“I’m not angry,” he lied, moderating his tone to be as neutral as possible. “I’m just surprised to hear she called you, because it’s, uh, been a while.”
Like fifteen fucking months .
“Yes, Jules did say it had been fifteen months since you two met, but she explained there were some personal things she had to work through, which kept her from calling sooner. And while that’s certainly unfortunate, it told me after all this time she hasn’t forgotten about you.”
“Well, maybe I’ve forgotten about her , Mom.”
“You just told me you remembered her. And I’m not buying that ‘vaguely’ nonsense.”
Shit.
“Look,” Beverly continued, “I understand why you might be angry, because fifteen months is a long time—”
“Yes, it is. It’s more than a year— ”
“—but maybe finding out what those personal things were she had to work through would diminish some of your anger. ”
He didn’t even know if that was possible. “Did she tell you what those personal things were?”
“Yes.”
For a split second, he contemplated asking what they were, but decided he wasn’t interested in finding out what had kept Jules from calling for fifteen months, and instead turned his attention back to the reason his mom had called to begin with.
“So, tell me about this very nice conversation you had with Jules,” he repeated.
For the next few minutes, he listened as Beverly filled him in on the conversation with great detail, starting with the recounting of the meet and greet (thankfully the part about not wearing glasses during ‘sex and whatnot’ had been left out, because that would have been a nightmare) and he could tell by the tone of his mother’s voice she’d enjoyed the phone call.
A lot.
When she was finished, including the cringe-worthy character reference she’d given him, Malcom realized he’d gotten to his feet and was pacing around his living room. Forcing himself to sit down, he asked, “Why didn’t you just encourage her to rip up my card and go on her merry way?”
“Because I really liked her.”
He rubbed at his eyes. “How can you like her? You don’t even know her. Hell, I don’t even know her.”
“You liked her enough to give her your card, instructing her to ask me for a character reference. I thought that was really cute, by the way.”
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You should have told her to rip up my card, instead of telling her to call me. It’s been fifteen months.”
“I don’t care how long it’s been . I wasn’t going to make that decision for you, because whether or not you want to go out with her is your decision to make, not mine.
I honestly didn’t know what you would want to do, so when she said she was going to call you, I did warn her you might be a little upset with her—”
“A little?”
“—but I thought she might be able to get you to change your mind.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Now she has hope.”
“I do, too. I told you, I really liked her. ”
“I liked her, too, but that was fifteen months ago, Mom.”
Beverly ignored his frustrated response. “You’ve thought about her, though, haven’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter if I have—”
“Of course it matters.”
“No, it doesn’t. That ship has sailed.”
“I don’t believe that. And I don’t think you really do, either. You obviously haven’t forgotten her, and she hasn’t forgotten you, so … maybe the ship is still in the harbor.”
He made a sound in his throat of aggravation—aggravation with his mom and also with Jules, because … fifteen fucking months. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“However, if you really decide you don’t want to go out with her,” Beverly said, now sounding resigned, disappointed, and stern all at the same time—a tone he’d been on the receiving end more than once in his life, “I expect you to be kind to her when she calls and you tell her that. Understood?”
Apparently he was always going to be ten years old to his mom. “Yes.”
“You can’t be mean.”
“ Mom. ”
“What?”
“I got it, all right? I won’t be mean. I’ll be kind.”
“I just want to make sure. I really did like her. She had a … spark.”
Jules definitely had a spark, Malcom thought, picturing her in his mind even though he didn’t want to.
“I asked her if she was pretty,” Beverly said. “Her answer was that she’d been told she was, so I assume she’s more than pretty and was just being modest?”
“Yes,” he sighed. “She’s more than pretty.”
“What does she look like?”
He sighed again. “She has red hair and blue eyes. Freckles. And … a little bump on her nose.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Malcom decided the conversation with his mom needed to be brought to an end, because it had gone on for too long already. “Thanks for calling, but I have to go.”
There was a long pause, then Beverly said gently, “Okay. But when she calls you, would you do me a favor?”
“Depends on the favor.”
“Would you talk to her, and find out why she didn’t call you, before kicking her to the street?”
“You mean to the curb,” he corrected her. “And I’ll think about it, all right?”
“All right. Good night, Malcom.”
“Good night.”
Needing another beer, he quickly went and got one, then resumed sitting on the couch, absently watching as Michael Corleone meets Apollonia in Sicily, getting struck by the ‘thunderbolt’ of love.
Because it reminded Malcom too much of when he’d first seen Jules, he turned off the movie for the first time in his life and finished his beer in silence.
When he heard the telltale whoosh of an incoming text, he glanced down, not surprised to see who it was from.
MOM: I mean it. When Jules calls you, please talk to her.
Without replying, he silenced the phone and set it face down on the coffee table, his entire body on edge.
After an unexpected phone call from his mom, he was suddenly thinking about Jules again, and their brief encounter.
He couldn’t help but remember the intense, visceral pull he’d felt for the redhead and how he’d waited like a lovesick asshole for her to call.
Fifteen fucking months.
If she did call him, he was not going to talk to her.
Nope. Jules Shaw could kiss his ass.