“Here. I think you need these more than me.”
I popped one in my mouth and slumped back into the sofa. “I don’t know what was worse—being told I don’t have the calling for the pole or using those stupid store slogans that are chock-full of innuendos.” I moved off the couch to grab my package of Oreos from the cupboard. This day called for two types of chocolate. “I mean, seriously, ‘I hope I fulfilled your every office supply need?’ What next? Let me unjam your stapler?”
Payton snorted. “Or how about: Can you punch my hole?”
“Do you need your paper reamed?”
She raised a conspiratorial brow. “I bet some of your customers might ask for that.”
I chucked a coffee bean at her. “Perv.”
I was about to say another corny line when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I rolled my eyes when I read the number on the screen. “I have to take it. Parental unit check-in.”
She nodded and went back to studying a running mag that came in the mail yesterday. I hit the accept call button and locked myself in my room, ready for the daily mental probing.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Juliette. How are you today?” Since I’d gotten out of rehab, Mom and I had this awkward dance, always skirting around the real reason for her call. Instead, she’d ask me about my day or about school. It wouldn’t bother me if there wasn’t a personal agenda behind it.
Really I just wanted to say, Come on, Mom. Ask me what you really want to know.
Even if I’d get some short-term satisfaction out of saying a smart remark like that, I knew that snark wasn’t the way to go. If I wanted them to start treating me like an adult, the way I deserved, I needed to show them that I could act like one, at least when I talked to them. I didn’t know how people over eighteen were considered adults, because at twenty-two, I had no clue what the heck I was doing, like I was playing a game of house, one where I didn’t quite fit any role.
“I’m good. Worked. The usual.”
“That’s nice, honey.” Mom’s code for I don’t give a crap. After a long pause, she said, “Have you been studying for your classes next semester?”
“Mom. Classes don’t start for two months, I’m on break, so, no.”
“Isn’t Payton studying?”
“Yes, but she’s insane.” The girl didn’t know how to not study. She had two modes—reading or groping her boyfriend.
“Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her.”
Maybe I could. She was dead set on being a doctor, no hesitation whatsoever, whereas I second-guessed my decisions every time I signed up for classes at the beginning of each term. When I suggested that I wanted to explore other options to Mom, namely athletic training, she scoffed and told me I might as well have a degree made of toilet paper. So, here I was, on my way to being a doctor, following in her footsteps, the safe choice. “Were you calling about anything else?”
“I heard from Eric today.” Eric—my lowlife meth-cooking older brother. The one who sent my parents into a tailspin of helicopter parenting a few years back. “Did you know it’ll be five years this Sunday? He’s come a long way.”
La de freakin’ da. He didn’t have to deal with Mom and Dad’s total meltdown when he went to jail. The raid happened on my fifteenth birthday. Mom got the call, ordered all my friends to leave the most epic pool party of the summer, and we drove to the precinct to bail him out. My dad held my mom as she sobbed, my brother still strung out of his mind, yelling profanities at anyone who passed by. I sat on the bench, hugging my knees to my chest, my hair still dripping wet from the pool, caught between hoping he was okay and wishing he’d disappear. After Mom and Dad bailed him out, he continued to use drugs up until the trial that sentenced him to ten years for distribution. Seeing what that did to my parents, I never wanted them to go through that again. But the harder I tried, the less impressed they seemed.
I picked at my nails, biting back my irritation. She brought up Eric for one reason only— her passive-aggressive way of telling me to keep it together or I’d end up like him. She thought I was well on my way. “That’s nice.”
“Hopefully he’ll be able to hold a job when he gets out. Hasn’t held one since he was eighteen. Drugs do that to you, make you weak.”
I sighed into the phone. This conversation was a goner. We’d just run in circles until she sufficiently made me feel like dog poop on the bottom of her shoe. I heard Caesar, my mom’s hellion Pomeranian, yip in the background, agreeing with her. Stupid mangy rodent dog. I pulled a Payton and glared at her through the phone. My roommate had the most epic glare I’d ever seen, one that brought her six-foot hunkalicious boyfriend to his knees. “Yep. Good thing I don’t do drugs.”