Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 36768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 147(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 147(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.
My heart constricts painfully, thinking about the way he turned his back on me. It didn’t feel like a mistake to me—it felt like heaven at the time. But the fact that he thinks it is just makes me almost sick.
My eyes start to blur with tears, but I take a deep breath and shake it off. No point crying over it. Not again. Not yet.
My phone whirrs again and I paw for it, annoyed. Unsurprisingly, it’s my mom. And it’s 6:17am, which means two whole minutes after I’m supposed to be awake.
For a few rings, I just stare at the screen in defiance, wondering what would happen if I toss my phone out into the bushes and pretend she doesn’t exist at all.
But I’m too much of a goodie-two shoes for that. And so I dutifully hit the accept button. “Hi, Mom. How’s the IRS stuff going?”
“Rise and shine!” she chirps into my ear ignoring my question. There’s something about the way she says it that confirms she’s had at least two cups of coffee already. Black. With a small bowl containing exactly 3.5 ounces of plain Greek yogurt. Rock and roll.
“Morning.” I snuggle back into the sheets, inhaling the scent of the detergent, which isn’t the detergent at home, but is almost like home. Even better than home, really. And suddenly I get a flash of Mike washing laundry. And in my hazy morning lazy unrested brain, I flash to a fantasy of him washing baby bibs and a onesie and a little blanket decorated with tiny blue whales.
Michael Dean Hawthorne, Jr. your son…
“Oh my god, I’m losing it,” I mutter.
“You are not, young lady! You are not losing that first chair position. Not if I have anything to do with it. Now tell me the plan for the day. Twenty-minute increments. Go.”
I stare up at the ceiling, at the pretty light fixture that I remember Mike installing. A linen drum shade with a frosted glass base.
“Can’t I just share a Google Doc with you after I’ve peed or something, Mom? Do we have to do this now?”
I hear her gel nails clatter nervously on at tabletop. “Paganini isn’t going to practice himself, young lady.”
I find myself laughing a little. It sounded vaguely dirty somehow. “Alright, alright.”
“So because I knew you wouldn’t have your day planned yet, here’s the schedule I put together for you today,” Mom says, and launches in. Around about the time she starts determining the exact number of ounces of oatmeal I can eat with breakfast, I drop my phone on the pillow, without putting it on speaker. It dulls her shrillness just enough to make it bearable.
But it also means that now, I can hear Mike’s footsteps down the hall, in the master bath. The sound of running water. A toothbrush. The click of a doorknob.
My heart shoots into my throat, and I swear my pulse goes from 65 beats per minutes to 165. From adagio to presto, because of his freakin’ footsteps. Great.
I grab a pillow and stuff it over my face, resisting the very real urge to scream and scream. I want him. I need him. And he thinks it was a mistake. What the heck am I going to do?
“Are you listening, young lady?” I hear my mom snap.
I pull the pillow off my face just far enough to say, “Yep. Taking notes. Really appreciate this, Mom. You have no idea.”
And off she goes with her scheduling insanity again.
I rub my fingertips hard against my eyebrows, hard enough to make it hurt a little, to help wake me up. Then, on the other end of the line, I hear my mom saying, “No, you cannot talk to her. I haven’t even gotten to lunch, and what about practice, Ben? What about practice?”
“Oh for Chrissake, Janet,” my dad grumbles. “Give me the damned phone. Go take a walk around the block or something. You’re making my ulcer flare.”
I fumble for it quickly, putting it to my ear. “Dad. Hi.”
He inhales slowly. “You okay? I feel a tremor in the force.”
I blink up at the ceiling. “Yeah. I’m just…” Lovesick. Distracted. Horny. Needy. Lost. “… nervous.”
My dad sips his coffee, which I happen to know is light and sweet and utterly delicious. Like a donut in a cup. “You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. No matter what. How about I talk to Mike, real quick.”
I glance at the door. “I’m still in bed, Dad. Why don’t you just call him?”
“I tried, but he’s got it on Do Not Disturb.”
I growl into the pillow and then roll out of bed. I get a quick glance of myself in the mirror. Do I look cute? Is an old 2019 Carolina Youth Symphony tank and mismatched girl-boxers cute? I have no clue. At all.