Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 109038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
I slide out my phone.
“Shit. It’s my mom,” I tell Logan.
“She’s up at this time of night?”
I nod. “Mom’s a night owl like me. God, I never should have taught her how to video call. I have to answer. I won’t show you, okay? My mom really likes Yard Line, so…”
Logan nods. “It’s fine. Go ahead and answer. I have fresh mangoes in the kitchen, I’ll cut some up for us.”
I press the button to answer the call. “Hi, Mom.”
“Chase, this thing was manufactured in the depths of hell,” she says immediately, pointing her phone toward the new thermostat I set up in her house last week.
“Hello to you, too, my sweet, loving mother.”
She laughs. “Sorry. Hello, Chasey. Could you pretty please help your dear old mother with trying to program the schedule on this technological instrument designed to make me frickin’ lose my mind?”
“Yes, yes, I can,” I tell her. “Okay. What’s the problem? You want to change the schedule on it, or have no schedule?”
“It’s frigid as the Arctic from six ‘til ten, then it suddenly turns into a sauna in here.”
I tell her to show me the different settings, and for the next fifteen minutes, I walk her through deleting the old schedule and making her own. By the end of the call, she’s praising me like I’m some sort of thermostat whisperer, and she settles down onto her couch and looks at me through the video.
“Wait, you’re not in your apartment,” she says, peering at the background. “No brick wall.”
“Oh. No,” I tell her. “I’m at a friend’s place.”
“Fancy friend, huh?”
I see that the background of my video shows part of the white couch as well as the lower wood paneling on the walls of the suite. There’s a framed piece of art on the upper part of the wall.
I nod back at the painting. “It’s a replica of a Matisse painting. You like his stuff, right?”
My mom doesn’t paint, but she does like hearing me talk about it, so it’s a welcome distraction.
“I think I love most of his stuff. You know, your father hated that type of painting. Said it just looked like colors on a canvas. I don’t know where you got your creativity, but it certainly wasn’t from him.”
Mom chuckles as she talks about my father.
But my chest tightens every time she brings him up.
My mom never knew the worst of it. Dad never hurt me when she was around, somehow carefully making sure that she was always out at work or at the store anytime he hit me. She was aware that Dad wished I played sports, but around her, he never said it with as much acid in his voice.
And she also wasn’t around whenever he called my art “worthless.”
I never had the heart to admit it to her.
To her, Dad was just a serious, hard worker who always brought home a good income to take care of the family. She was devastated when he died, and every time she brings him up now, I hold back from describing just how horrific my relationship with my father became.
It’s always been the only secret that Julian and I keep from our mom.
Well, until the secret of Logan, I guess.
But at least when Mom started watching Yard Line a few months ago, it was a more pleasant secret to have rattling around in my heart.
“I’m glad we fixed the thermostat,” I tell her.
“Hah. No we about it. You’re a godsend, Chasey. I’m going to go finish this crossword puzzle. Have a good night with this friend. Whoever they are.”
She winks at me and I can’t help but smile a little. “Night, Mom.”
When I hang up, Logan strides back into the room with a plate in his hand. There are slices of fresh mango, some raspberries and strawberries, and a bowl of whipped cream next to them.
“I know it’s not much compared to the desserts you make in the restaurant now, but they’re ripe and fucking delicious,” Logan says.
“This is perfect.” I dip a slice of mango into the cream and take a bite. “Our head pastry chef works for hours to make cakes and pies, and I swear fresh fruit in cream is just as good. Damn.”
We devour most of the plate, and Logan relaxes a little afterward.
“I’m jealous of how you talk to your mom,” he finally says.
“What? Really?”
He nods. “She talks to you like you guys are friends. My parents are so formal. Even my siblings are. When they call me, every Saturday morning, I swear it’s almost like a business call. Always the same questions, and never anything too personal or too real.”
“I assume there aren’t many emotions on display?”
Logan grimaces. “Zero. Sometimes it feels like my parents are just trying to play the role of perfect parents, and in the end there’s not really any room for pesky things like feelings.”