CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nora
Once we’d conceded the umbrella was impossible to find in this large town, I swallowed my pride and asked if we could still visit my mum.
As much as I didn’t want him involved in my personal life, I knew if I didn’t see my mum soon, she’d appear at my apartment for a welfare check.
She answered our phone call, and the contagious delight in her voice rippled through the phone speaker.
I’d been so worried about her disappointment in me losing the promotion, I’d forgotten how strong she made me feel.
Never stop fighting for what you want.
I wanted this umbrella so we could get our lives back on track.
Being tied to the existence of a man was the exact opposite of what I’d been working towards my entire adult life.
My chest tightened and my stomach twisted.
My heart thumped, each beat a reminder that I’d maintained who I was despite spending each day with Corey.
Balance between a career and the possibility of love. Corey was showing me it was possible.
Don’t ever let someone make you feel less than you are.
Mum believed in me when I started my first job in a retail clothing store, and she’d believed in me when I said I was going to work my way from a shared reception desk in a city building all the way up to management.
Sometimes, her belief was the only thing that convinced my feet to walk to my shitty little desk with the hope it might one day become a big desk in a big office.
This visit would be exactly what I needed. Mum’s reminder to keep me on track with my goals.
‘Okay, we eat dinner at like five on a Sunday.’
Corey laughed, ‘I’m sorry, five? What are you, eighty years old?’
‘It’s so me and my brothers’ can still head home and be rested for work the next day. My point is, we probably won’t make it to Paddy’s until eight-thirty, so it’ll just have to be drinks so we can be home before I turn into a pumpkin tonight.’
Corey nodded and texted Paddy.
‘And please remove this.’ I lifted the green hat he always wore from his head. ‘Although it does go well with my eyes.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Corey huffed.
‘No, Mum will immediately know something’s up with me if I look like I’m on my way to coach Little Leagues or something. Now, we should get going. Do you remember who’s who?’
In between people passing us in the park – umbrella-less – I’d refused to let Corey do anything more than study my brothers until he could name them on command.
‘Yeah, yeah. It’ll be fine.’
‘I mean it, Corey. My life isn’t a game. I did my best with your family, now you need to do the same.’
Corey held four fingers in the air. ‘Scouts honour.’
What the fuck kind of anti-promise was that?
‘Nora, my little chicken pie, is that you?’ Mum’s voice floated down the hallway.
I flung my jacket over the black couch, kicked my shoes into the corner, and gestured for Corey to do the same.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he called down the hall, then turned to me and lowered his voice. ‘This is weird. Calling someone else Mum.’
‘Tell me about it. My stomach and chest were all wrong the other night – and I mean more than physically.’
‘Chicken pie.’ Oliver appeared from the living room and wrapped his arms around Corey’s stiff body.
‘We missed you last Sunday.’ Rowan wasn’t far behind him.
Despite being two years younger than me, they caged Corey between their tall skeleton frames and ruffled black hair. I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of Corey’s face, likely scrunched in disgust.
‘Get off me,’ he barked.
He wriggled out and obviously located the scar on Rowan’s cheek because he asked, ‘How’d your exam go?’
Before he could answer, Rowan’s identical womb-mate flung his arm over Corey’s shoulder.
‘I think we’d like to be introduced to your friend first,’ Oliver evaluated me with his hazel eyes.
Corey took a few steps closer to me and reached for his non-existent comfort hat. ‘Oh, right. This is Corey. A friend from class.’
‘Wait, Corey? The Corey?’
Oh shit. Corey raised a suspicious eyebrow at me.
‘I thought Nora would bury you in a ditch, not bring you to dinner,’ Oliver continued.
‘Let’s not start this again.’ I slapped my hand over my mouth, remembering I looked like Corey.
‘She called you… What was it again?’ He tapped his chin. ‘An entitled rich assh—’
‘Woah, I’m not!’ I yelled over him, raising my palms to stop him talking.
Corey smirked at me, and I winced. At least it wasn’t news to him that I hadn’t liked him since our first day.
Now, though, his aggravating quirks dissolved because there was another side to him.
A side where he wasn’t an entitled nepo baby, a side where he hid his fears of trying to please his dysfunctional father.
‘Apparently you brag about your job.’ Oliver grinned in delight. ‘Oh, and you stole the seat she wanted.’
‘Stole the seat I wanted?’ Corey scratched his head of long black hair.
‘That’s what you said. The seat at the front, and he blocks your view.’ Rowan joined in now, delighted by our discomfort.
I stared at Corey, trying to convey the seat was a minor thing – though at the time it really bugged me. All those small problems that mean nothing now.
‘I didn’t do it on purpose. If she’d told me, I’d have switched, but it’s time to put the past in the past and all.’ I laughed hoping we could move on from this confronting exchange before they blurted anything more in front of Corey.
‘You speak like Nora. The past is in the past,’ Rowan laughed.
‘Actually,’ Corey said with my soft voice.
‘He probably wouldn’t have. I scowled when he told the teacher his job, and it pissed him off enough that he wanted to prove himself to me.
He hates disappointing people and was desperate to show what he knew, he just went about it in a ridiculous way.
’ He gave me a pained look and laughed, ‘Really, really ridiculous.’
I stared at him in disbelief. I’d never even considered anything like that when I’d decided to hate him.
To me, he was nothing more than an arrogant braggart.
A head of expensive curls wafting in an expensive peppermint fragrance.
For him, he’d probably trudged around under the watchful eye of his hateful father all day, pummelled by criticism until he became an empty shell.
Then he’d walked into class and had a stranger immediately judge him and make him feel worthless again.
My opinion melted. He needed to know he wasn’t a disappointment. Not to me. Not anymore.
‘I didn’t realise,’ I whispered.
Corey shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’
Oliver narrowed his eyes in suspicion, neither of us making any sense to him.
‘So, ah, Mum’s making lentil lasagne for dinner.’ Rowan tried to lighten the mood.
Since scrolling across a reel about animal rights, Mum declared her house a meat-free zone.
The problem was, she refused to follow recipes and didn’t remember all the different types of lentils, especially the red ones which turn to mush.
It made for interesting lentil salads. One night, we’d scooped up globs with smiles on our faces, waiting for Mum’s scrunched-up face to admit it was horrendous before ordering takeout.
Despite all of this, she refused to change the nickname she’d given me after insisting that’s what she’d eaten the night she’d conceived me.
That little piece of information I could never forget no matter how hard I tried, making me shudder every time I see it listed on menus.
‘How was work?’ We must have said her name three times, because she appeared from the kitchen like Beetlejuice.
Her dark bob framed her face, making her brown eyes appear deeper.
She wrapped her arms around Corey in a way that only a mothers could.
Like a weighted blanket during a storm, or a mug of tea warming your insides while the wind whipped your body.
I wished it was my body she was hugging and closed my eyes to let my imagination cure that ache.
‘It was good,’ Corey replied.
‘Did you get that promotion?’ Her brown puppy eyes were still successful at fifty-four years of age.
I’d hidden from the truth for an entire week, and now thanks to my cowardice, Corey needed to break the news to her.
‘No,’ Corey flinched, making my eyes shrink the same way his normally did.
I recognised it from when I yelled at him in class, or when he realised he’d said something that had annoyed me, or the time I’d accidentally stapled my finger. He wasn’t being smug when they shrunk; they shrank in sympathy.
The tea towel in her hand whipped the wall as she threw her arm down with force.
‘It’s fine, Mum. They’ll see Freddie wasn’t the right choice soon enough. Reports will pile up; he probably doesn’t know how to analyse half the data he’ll receive. He worked in legal which they think is a bonus, but I think it means he’ll be too worried to take any risks.’
Corey snuck me a soft smile that pinched my heart with a comforting squeeze.
Mum frowned and shoved her hands on her hips. ‘A bunch of corporate dicks. That’s what they’d have if that boss of yours had it his way. Every conference would be a sausage party and—’
‘I saved a life today,’ Oliver interrupted. ‘There was this ant, and he was walking along the basin when I went to wash my hands.’
Mum rearranged her features three times before successfully showing interest in my twenty-six-year-old brother’s ridiculous story while I hid my grin, knowing this was for no reason other than to avoid the oncoming speech of knocking down the patriarchy.
‘So, I grabbed a piece of toilet paper and flattened it to the sink, waited for the ant to walk on it, then carried him outside,’ Oliver finished.
‘Such a hero,’ Rowan laughed.
‘Every life is important,’ Mum insisted. ‘Now, I’ve been rude.’ She turned to me. ‘You must be Corey. It’s lovely to meet you.’