Page 71 of Lease to Love

“That's what I call her, actually. Sunshine.”

There was a pause.

“You have a pet name?” The surprise in her voice was genuine.

“Well buy me my plane ticket now! I have got to meet this girl.”

She laughed. I just shook my head.

“What girl?”

Pops' voice boomed from somewhere in the background.

“Your son has a girlfriend.” Ma sounded proud.

“Erik?”

“No, Malcolm. Your other son.”

I laughed at the unnecessarily sharp tone Ma took.

“What you got all that bass in your voice for?” Pops hollered back. “I walk in from the garage and hear you talking about some girl, and I can't ask a question?”

I leaned back into the couch, smiling.

There they were. My parents. Still arguing about absolutely nothing. Still somehow finding a way to make me feel twenty years younger every time they did it.

I knew it was harmless. In New York, arguing was a love language.

Which was probably why I liked arguing with Summer so much.

I froze.

No.

Absolutely not.

I sat forward.

Stop.

That thought didn't belong anywhere near the same sentence as love.

Summer was my tenant. My fake girlfriend. A strategic partner in an arrangement designed to accomplish a very specific objective. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Even if everything I'd just told my mother about her was true.

It was still an act.

I kept telling myself that while Pops grabbed the phone and launched into his usual rant about how the house I'd bought them was too damn big and too damn quiet, how he still missed the old neighborhood, and how Spike Lee should've “never sold his house in Fort Greene and let the colonizers in.”

I laughed at the appropriate places. Argued with him about the house. Listened to Ma fuss at him in the background.

When I hung up, the television was still muted and the house was quiet again.

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

Everything I'd told my mother had been true. That was the problem.