Silence ensues for a moment, and I impatiently dig my nails into my apple as I wait for her to answer. She takes a deep breath. “Well…” she starts, slightly hesitant, “while you’ve been gone I’ve been talking to a few people. I joined a dating website.”
This takes me by the utmost surprise. Mom…dating. It’s something I never thought I’d witness, simply because for three years straight she has drilled me with the fact that men are the spawn of Satan. “Are you playing a joke on me?”
“No.” She laughs a little, but I can tell she’s slightly nervous, most likely embarrassed too. “This summer has made me realize that I don’t want to be living on my own when you go off to college and that I really, really need to throw this divorced ass back onto the market. I’ve been talking to this really nice guy for over a month now.” She waits for a second, presumably to see if I have anything to say, and continues when I remain silent. “His name’s Jack. And guess where he lives? Culver City. Fifteen minutes away from where you are.”
I know where Culver City is: it’s where Tyler and I just so happened to end up at the police station. “So you want to move here because you’ve been talking to some guy for a month? He could be a total creep, Mom.”
“God, Eden, no.” She heaves a sigh, and I can hear her jingling around a set of keys, and it makes me wonder what she’s doing and where she is. “More like I head down to meet him over coffee, and we’ll take it from there. Who knows? It could go really well, and you’ve already made friends there, and it would make starting a new school less daunting. It’s a good place to start for both of us.”
Less daunting? School with Tiffani and school with Jake and school with Tyler? I can’t think of anything more anxiety-inducing than that. “I don’t know,” I murmur as I chew my lip and toss the apple into the trash can, barely eaten, and then run a hand through my hair. “It’s such a huge thing.”
“I think it could be good for you,” she adds. “You won’t have to deal with those girls again. The ones with the stuck-up parents.”
“Alyssa and Holly,” I tell her, but my words escape as a mere whisper. I try to ignore the churning in my stomach and the pounding of my heart, focusing instead on Mom’s warmth as it radiates across the line.
“I passed them in Walmart the other day,” she says roughly, “and do you have any idea how bad I wanted to hurl my bag of onions at them?”
I laugh, and it feels good to be giggling at her humor and ability to lighten up even the worst of moods, and it feels nice knowing she’s on the other end of the line. “I’ll bet you did.”
“Look,” she says, but then she pauses for a moment as a door swings open. I recognize the familiar creaking, the annoying oil-deprived hinges of our front door offering an irritating greeting every time we open it. “It’s just an idea. We’ll talk about it when you get home. Deal?”
I’m about to say “deal,” but before I even get the words out of my mouth, the front door slams shut, loudly echoing across the connection. Following it, there’s the squeakiest of barks.
My eyebrows shoot up. “Was that a dog?”
“Damn it,” Mom mutters. “She was supposed to be a surprise.”
Chapter 30
By Friday, I was getting pretty tired of moping around waiting for Tyler to come back. I just wanted to see him, even if it was only for a few seconds while he came home to grab some more clothes. But he never did show up for the week, and he never did reply to my texts, and I never did see him.
It pissed me off a lot more than I thought it would. I knew I’d miss not seeing him every morning, but I never thought I’d grow frustrated and mad at him. It didn’t make sense for him to completely cut me off. When I asked him if he wanted to meet up at the Refinery for coffee (as stepsiblings, of course), I heard nothing back. When I asked him if he was doing okay, I heard nothing back. When I asked him if he even remembers what happened last weekend, my phone had never been so silent. Tiffani probably has him wrapped around her finger.
Tiffani, who absolutely hates me.
Tiffani, whose house I’m about to turn up at uninvited.
Tiffani, who’s most likely going to burst into flames when she sees me.
“Are you going out?” a voice asks from over my shoulder, and I swivel around from the living room window to meet Ella’s curious eyes. She runs them over my outfit, which doesn’t exactly qualify as attire for lazing around the house.
“Am I grounded?” I have a feeling I might be, but Dad’s never mentioned it, so I’m praying he’s letting last weekend slide. Even if I am, he’s not here to reinforce it.
“No,” Ella says. “Where are you going?”