AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My mom shook her head. “I knew that job was trouble.”
“Oh, please. You couldn’t have foreseen this, not even with your nagging-mom-skills.”
My mom looked hurt, and I felt bad right away. It was a system she had put in place, obviously. Whenever she didn’t like what I said, she looked hurt. If it didn’t work, she started crying. I wasn’t up for that tonight. It took everything I had not to cry myself.
“What does it matter anyway?” I asked. “It was just dinner.”
It was a lie, but even if it had only been dinner and nothing had happened, I might have still been in this shit. Although, that was a lie too. I wouldn’t have stayed over if it had only been a business dinner. It was everything after that had gotten me to where I was now.
My mom stood up and walked toward the television before she turned around, one hand on her hip.
“You can’t fool around like this. I know you’re angry about what happened with Daniel, but acting out isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Is that what you think this is?” I groaned. “Oh my God, Mom. How old do you think I am?”
“Well, I’m not so sure. I didn’t raise you to make dumb decisions like this. I didn’t raise you to throw your life away. I was so much younger than you when I fell pregnant with you.”
I groaned inwardly. Here we went again. My mom never failed to tell me about how her life would have been different if she’d had me later in life.
“You have to look out for yourself, watch your back. You can’t trust him. He’s just using you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not fair. You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know everything I need to know,” my mom said, waving the article at me. “Any man that would do something like this to a woman, his secretary no less, is worth nothing.”
“I’m an executive assistant,” I said.
“After this, you’ll be lucky to be employed at all.”
My stomach turned. Was she right? Was this the end of the line for me? Was I doomed to give up my dream of having a career, and instead marry some man who would support me and dedicate my life to being a homemaker instead?
No. This wasn’t the end of my life. And Brett cared about me. Maybe not on the level my mom expected a man to care, but he cared.
“I am going to get through this, and I am going to live my life,” I said firmly. “One day, this will be behind me and I’ll look back at it and laugh. It could have been worse, you know.”
My mom narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t even want to know what that means.”
She shook her head and turned to the side, staring at my window. The curtains had been drawn—she had done that of course. Usually, I would have been pissed off that she’d attempted to make my space homier than I could make it myself, but tonight I was relieved. There were probably reporters out there waiting for Brett to visit me and add to the scandal. I didn’t need my fight with my mom on page two of the newspaper either.
“You can’t keep seeing him,” my mom said.
I glared at her. “You have reached your expiration date, Mom. You don’t get to tell me that anymore.”
“It will ruin your image if you do. You have to cut him off.”
“He’s my boss. What am I supposed to do? I can’t just shut anyone out who doesn’t fit into my life. Or rather, who doesn’t fit into yours.”
“He’s using you,” my mom said. “Can’t you see that?”
That was it. The final straw. I was officially pissed off. It had been a long, testing day. It had been hard to suffer the consequences of something I knew was my fault, and it was hard not to stress about the future. I wasn’t in the mood for my mom trying to tell me what to do on top of it.
“Please leave,” I said to my mom.
“Don’t kick me out. When it’s all said and done, I’m the only person who will still be in your corner.”
“Yeah? Well, I want you to get out of my corner so I can have some alone time. I want to be alone. I need you to go.”
My mom opened her mouth to argue, but she shut it again without saying anything. Maybe it was the look on my face that told her I was done arguing. I sure as shit didn’t have the patience to be nice anymore. If my mom stayed any longer, I was going to say a hell of a lot that I would regret later.
