Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
I opened my eyes to see the illumination of approaching headlights skating over the faux-wood paneling. “Mom’s home,” I said with a resigned sigh.
“The point of coming here was for you to see your mother, and now you’re trying to avoid her?” He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair. “Do I look like I was just ravishing you?”
“No, you’re fine. Except…wipe my lipstick off your mouth.” I brushed my thumb over the smudge of MAC Pre-Raphaelite that stained his lower lip.
The door opened and Mom stepped in, faked normal at the sight of our close proximity, and held out a huge Tupperware bowl. Neil stepped over quickly to take it from her.
“Potato salad,” she said as she handed it to him. “I think that’s the wrong color on you, Neil.”
His blush was kind of cute.
“Do you need us to bring anything in from the car?” I asked as she slipped off her coat and hung it on the pegged shelf beside the door.
“Nothing that can’t keep until morning.” Mom pushed her sleeves back. “I want to get some quality time in with my daughter, if that’s okay.”
This time, when she hugged me, it wasn’t a stiff armed, suspicious hug. She was also faintly alcohol scented, so I was so glad she’d been driving.
When she stepped back, she called to Neil, who was trying in vain to find room for the giant Tupperware bowl in the tiny galley kitchen, to ask, “Are you hungry, Neil? Do you need something to eat?”
“No, thank you, no. Still quite stuffed from this afternoon.”
Mom smirked at me and mouthed, “Quite.”
I mouthed back, “Stop.”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to stop doing, but I had this horrible feeling that what I’d meant was, “Stop finding my boyfriend cute.”
“How about drinks, then?” Mom suggested. “Neil, put that down, I’ll find a place for it in the fridge. What are you having?”
“Oh, um…” He stepped into the living room and let Mom past; the kitchen of a single-wide trailer was really a one-person show. “What do you have in the way of scotch?”
“I don’t know about scotch, but I have a fifth of Wild Turkey,” Mom offered. The bottles in the refrigerator door tinkled, and I heard stuff moving on the shelves. “And I’ve got some Jack.”
Neil looked like my mother had just asked him if he wanted to drink gasoline, but he managed to choke out, “I-I think Jack Daniels would be fine.”
“Rocks?”
He nodded, then, remembering she couldn’t see him, said, “Yes, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Have a seat before you fall down,” I murmured, steering him toward the couch. His sudden case of nerves was a combination, I thought, of his claustrophobia in the small trailer and the realization that we were all alone with my mother. It was only five o’clock, and she had plenty of time to ask us whatever she wanted.
When I’d first met Neil’s daughter, Emma, it had not been under the best of circumstances. She’d come home unexpectedly and overheard her father and I having headboard-slamming, obscenity-shouting sex. I’d felt so super awkward around her for longest time after that, so I couldn’t help but feel that Neil’s discomfort around my mother was a little bit of life balancing the scales.
“Thank you for letting me stay in your home,” he said, trying again to break the ice.
“It’s no trouble at all,” Mom replied, coming into the room with a glass of Jack over ice for Neil. “You let my daughter stay with you for, what, has it been a year already?”
“It’s less ‘staying with’ and more ‘I live there now,’“ I corrected her.
“Do you want anything, Soph?” she asked, smoothly ignoring me. “I have Snow Creek Berry.”
“Ooh, I haven’t had that in so long!” I even clapped my hands a little at the thought of some good, old-fashioned, cheap as hell Boone’s Farm. “It’s going to give me a wicked headache.”
When Mom came back, she had two plastic tumblers of the gas station wine and handed one to me. “Okay. So. Neil. You’re dating my daughter, and I know practically nothing about you.”
“Yes, Sophie informed me on the drive here from Marquette that you had no idea the boyfriend you were going to meet was twenty-four years older than you were expecting. I wasn’t quite thrilled at that surprise, myself.” He looked to me with a lifted eyebrow, and I pointedly canted my eyes away as I sipped my drink.
“Well, tell me about yourself. I know you’re British, and I know you have family in Iceland. And you have a daughter I just found out about today, so you’re… I take it you’re divorced?” Mom sipped from her cup.
“Yes, but not from Emma’s mother. Emma was a happy accident with my girlfriend from university. We never married.” He grimaced at the taste of the whisky and was totally unsuccessful at hiding it. “I had just gotten divorced when Sophie and I reconnected.”