Zelda
It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m up to my eyeballs in grad school work that I’ve been putting off all week.
My small group isn’t thrilled with me, either, for canceling on Thursday’s study and planning session, and they’re getting a little snippy in the online chat.
Finally, I type out my final response. I’m going to go work on developing my content. Call if you need anything.
None of them ever call because nobody wants to have to use the phone to actually talk to someone unless it’s absolutely necessary, so I settle in with my studies, determined to ignore my phone for another hour or two until I’m caught up.
I’ve been texting Sawyer all morning.
I want to be texting him now, but I’ve got work to do, and I still feel off from the dream I had early this morning.
It was about the guy from that neighborhood, the chunk of concrete still in his hands, only he had already used it to break through the windows of my little basement apartment, and he was brandishing it from where he stood next to my bed.
I woke up with my heart pounding, and my first instinct was to text Sawyer.
Only I couldn’t bring myself to tell him exactly what had happened.
What was the dream about?
It was the first question he asked. Every college man I ever flirted with the entire time I was away would have teased me about it first.
I don’t remember exactly, it was really unsettling
Every day that goes by, I’m getting more and more comfortable with him, but today, there’s a creeping unease in full force.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell myself out loud, and I jump when my mom’s voice filters through the basement entrance, almost like she’s replying.
“Zelda?”
“Yeah?” I get up from the computer, minimizing what I’ve been working on along the way, and go to the door. A burst of warm air comes in when I pull it open, and I’ve been working with the lights off, so the sun is mildly blinding.
“Hey, honey.” She’s wearing her typical weekend uniform of jeans and a crew neck sweatshirt that somehow manages to look expensive, even though I know she doesn’t spend a lot of money on clothes. Her hair, the same shade as mine but going gently gray, is pulled back into a low bun.
“What’s up?” My mom and I were close when I was a teenager, but something about the accident at the quarry changed that.
She became more possessive, more worried.
She’s tried to work on it, I know, but old habits die hard.
Now I feel like a teenager standing here, even though I’m standing on the threshold of an apartment I rent from them and not the doorway to my childhood bedroom.
She gives me a smile. “I wanted to come down and see how you are. You haven’t been around much lately.”
I crack a smile, too. “I’ve been busy.”
“Work?”
“Work, school—you know, all the usual stuff.”
“A guy?”
I can’t stop my eyes from narrowing, and I open my mouth, then close it again. I can’t accuse her of being nosy if she saw Sawyer come in with me the other night. It is her house. But that old feeling of being fifteen years old and caught in some little lie wells up in my chest.
My mom’s eyes linger on my face, but she doesn’t let me dangle for long. “Did you want to go get a coffee?”
I take in a deep breath and let it out. I want a break from the screen, a break from the work, but if I know my mom—and I still do—this is a set-up, a way for her to get someplace neutral so she can ask more questions.
It doesn’t take her three minutes once we’ve settled in at a table by the front window of the Sweet Shop, a coffee joint and tiny bakery not far from Bernie’s.
“You know, you don’t have to feel…you don’t have to feel strange about bringing people home.” Her hands are wrapped around a mug of cinnamon tea.
“Mom,” I say, keeping my voice even, light, a little joking, wrapping my own hands around a mocha served in a similar mug. “Are you asking me this because you were spying on us from the window?”
She has the grace to look a little sheepish. “I might have—caught a glimpse.”
“I don’t really think you were spying.”
“I’m curious.”
“He’s a guy I met when I was out with Carly.”
“A guy from the bar?” The corners of her mouth turn down before she can keep a neutral face.
“Not…really?” I take a sip of the mocha, which is delicious, and put the mug back on the table. “He was at the club we went to, but he’s not a regular there.”
“Where’s he from, then?”
I take a breath. “The neighborhood, actually.”
“Our neighborhood?”
“Yeah. His aunt is a woman named Linda, from a few houses down.”
My mom’s face lights up. “Oh, Linda! She’s so pleasant.”
“You know her?”
“I’ve run into her a few times when we’re both out walking. I didn’t know she had a nephew. What does he do?”
This is it—this is the question that’s either going to be answered with a lie or bring the entire conversation to a grinding halt.
I’m not a big fan of lying to my mom, but I think of that guy standing outside Sawyer’s car window, and there’s no way—no way—I can tell her what Sawyer does. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“He has a job in the city.” It’s true. Sort of.
She nods, and I wrack my brain trying to remember if Sawyer was wearing a jacket. No—a dress shirt, and he didn’t have the sleeves pulled up. There’s no way she saw his tattoos.
My mom takes a sip of her tea and leans across the table, eyes shining in a way that surprises me. “Is he in town for long?”
“I’m not really sure. I guess his dad is very ill.”
She frowns then, and it’s genuine. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I guess they have—a complicated relationship.”
My mom shakes her head. “Some people do.”
Like us.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, sipping our drinks.
“So…do you think it’s going to get serious?” She asks the question in a light tone, but I can tell by the look on her face that she’s dying to know.
My stomach turns over. I open my mouth to tell her that it seems like it’s getting serious, like there’s nobody else I’ve ever wanted to talk to so much in my life, that he would put himself between me and any danger…
But I can’t, because being with him is a danger.
Instead, I buy some time by taking another drink of the mocha, and then I give a little shrug.
“It could be. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”