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Mom pauses before she hangs up. “You should talk to your brother.”
“Jonathan doesn’t want to hear from me,” I retort. I don’t even know what I would talk to him about. My brother and I have never had anything in common. I was all about sports, and he was all about theater. The divorce just divided us more. While we lived with the Jacobsons, it was just easier to fall into a routine of not talking to each other. Then when we moved into our own house, we were so set in our ways that it was hard to go back to how things were before. I don’t know, I’m sure I’m the one to blame. It’s not like I’ve been home a lot over the years. I couldn’t wait to get out of Ridgeview. Make my own way in the world.
“That’s not true. He loves you, Mark,” Mom says, her voice thick with emotion.
A heavy weight settles onto my chest, so I do what I do best: avoid any and all emotions. “I’ve got to go. It’s been a long day. Call you again tomorrow.”
After a quick goodbye, we hang up.
I need to get my head on straight. I can’t afford to have all these emotions. Emotions make you do stupid things, and I’ve done enough of those to last a lifetime. I need to shut it down now before they get too heavy to ignore. The last thing I need is to toss and turn all night when I have another full day of driving tomorrow.
Sometimes it is hard for me to remember I have nothing to do with my dad’s mistakes. When I was twelve, I was dragged into one of my parents’ fights. Dad planned a whole birthday trip without talking to Mom about it. We flew to Chicago to go to a few baseball games, but really we spent time with an overly flirty coworker of his. I’d heard my parents argue over whether there was another woman, but after that trip I could confirm it. I wasn’t even that surprised by it, to be honest.
Two weeks after we came home, Dad asked Mom for a divorce. He said she was holding him back, that he wanted more in life than to be held down by a wife and kids. And then he pulled the rug out from under us by putting our house up for sale. Mom probably could have fought him on it, but she was too broken up to know how to go head-to-head with her big shot lawyer of an ex-husband. Thankfully, the Jacobsons welcomed us with open arms into their home.
By the time we moved out five years later, things had changed. My mom depended on me. I wasn’t just a son or a big brother anymore. She relied on me to get my brother and sister to school, rehearsals, and whatever else they might need when she was at work. It was way too much for a seventeen-year-old to deal with. When it came time for college I just wanted to get out of there, away from all the extra responsibility. I know logically that my parents’ issues are on them and not me, I still sometimes have a hard time being around my mom. At first it was because I knew she needed me, and I just wanted to be a kid. Now its more because I know how much she relied of me and needed me and I, just like my dad, abandoned her and hardly looked back. In all the ways that I have made choices that remind her of my father, I hate that this is one of those things. It hangs over me always in the back of my mind.
Moving home is going to bring up a lot of emotions that I really don’t want to deal with. And if nothing else, tonight is not the night to try to figure it out. Right now I just need to get get some sleep so I can be alert on the road tomorrow.
Chapter 3
Millie
Isit at my desk twirling my pen over my notepad full of doodles. I should be prepping for my meeting, but instead I’m just staring into space. I flip my pen one more time, but this time I’m less coordinated, and it flies out of my hand knocking down two of my picture frames and the entirety of my decorative cup filled with pens. I scramble to pick everything up.
“What’s up with you today?” Trina looks at me with concern.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” I lie. I’m not fine, but I don’t know why.
“You don’t seem fine. You seem… distracted.”
“I’m not distracted.” I’m a little more defensive than necessary, but there is no need for me to be distracted. There’s nothing going on in my life outside of work. I go to work. I go home. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. My life is boring.
Trina picks up one of the frames from the floor. “Whoa! Who’s the hottie in this one?”
I peek over at the picture in her hands. It’s from a hike we had taken the summer after high school graduation. Jonathan and I had raced to the top of the hill, and I tripped, spraining my ankle. Mark and Ben had been further up the trail and came running down when they heard me scream. The picture was taken when we had made it back down. Mark had insisted on carrying me the whole way down on his back even though it was bad for his knee. We had all been laughing at something that Ben had said. It was a rare moment that the four of us shared. It’s one of my favorite pictures.
“Meeting in 15 minutes,” calls Kimber. Her eyes narrow in on me from her perch in the doorway to our team of desks. I don’t know what I ever did for her to dislike me, but boy, does she.
I return my focus back to Trina, still not sure who she is calling a “hottie” and hopeful that it’s not Ben, because gross.
“That’s my best friend Jonathan.” They’ve met before so that leaves Ben or Mark. “That one is my brother, Ben. He’s married now.” I look for any sign of disappointment. Nothing.
“Uh, I mean the hottie who’s carrying you.”
That’s what I was afraid of. The only person left. Mister Unattainable himself. The very definition of off-limits. The one moving back home after years of being away. Not that I’ve thought about that at all since Helen told us three weeks ago. “That’s Mark. He’s Jonathan’s older brother and Ben’s best friend.”
I try to keep my reaction even. I haven’t seen or talked to Mark since Ben’s wedding. He’s come home a couple of times, but I have conveniently not been around. I’ve tried to push everything out of my mind about what happened that night, including that dance, but every once in a while, it creeps back in.
“Please tell me you’ve dated.”
“Me and Mark? Date?” I scoff. I fight the color climbing my neck with everything I have. Trina is eyeing me closely, her perfectly sculpted eyebrow quirked. I bark out a laugh. “He thinks of me as his best friend’s little sister.”
I half expect Trina to call my crap, but she doesn’t. “I wish my brother’s friends looked half that good. All my brother’s friends are trolls.”
“They can’t be that bad.”
“No, they are literally trolls. They get together and play Dungeons and Dragons on the weekends.”
