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)
Oh, fuck you, Neil. He knew that casual “reconnected” was going to open a can of worms I wasn’t interested in digging into.
“You two have known each other for a while then?” Mom looked to me, and so did Neil.
“Okay. I get it. This is my punishment for secret keeping.” I took a gulp of my Snow Creek Berry. “I met Neil seven years ago, at the Los Angeles International Airport.”
Mom blinked. “Seven years ago you were here. And then you were in New York when you left for college.”
“She made slight detour,” Neil said quietly.
“I was heading to Japan.” When Mom still didn’t look like she was getting it, I added, “I was running away.”
“You were going to run away to Japan and you never told me?” Mom shrieked, leaning forward so fast the Lay-Z-Boy creaked.
“I didn’t make it to Tokyo. My flight was delayed, we spent the night together, and Neil stole my boarding pass. I had no other choice but to go to New York.” I shrugged off Mom’s look of horror at my open admission of teenage sex-having.
“She told me she was twenty-five,” he said uncomfortably. “And I didn’t strand her when I took her boarding pass. I left her four thousand dollars.”
“Ah. So you had sex with my eighteen-year-old daughter and left her four thousand dollars on the nightstand?”
The question hung in the air like the worst balloon since the Hindenburg, and I held my breath.
Neil didn’t apologize. Not for sleeping with me, not for stealing my ticket, not for any of it. “It was the only way I could think of to prevent her from going to Tokyo and throwing away her chance at college. Or, her chance at an advanced degree, since she’d told me she was going for her Masters.”
There was no ammo there for my mom to strike back with. If he hadn’t intercepted me at LAX, I would have run away to Tokyo. She was backed into a corner.
She chose to go for the aerial attack, dive bombing him with, “So…this was while you were married?”
I lunged into the fray again. “Neil wasn’t married when we first met. After our one-night stand, he went on and met someone else, then six years later he got divorced and—”
“I was her boss.” He wasn’t going to let me tiptoe around that, either. “I took over for Gabriella Winters briefly when my company bought Porteras and the magazine needed restructuring.”
“But Sophie was fired from Porteras.” I saw the pieces click together in Mom’s mind, in the completely wrong way. “Did you fire Sophie so you could date her?”
“No, we were a bit unprofessional, I’m afraid. We had something of a secret office romance for a few months, and then a situation arose in which I had no choice but to terminate her,” he said, taking another sip from his glass.
“He really did have to do it,” I assured her. “I was in the wrong, and it would have been impossible for me to continue working at Porteras after what I did.”
“Do I even want—” Mom stopped herself. “No, never mind. I don’t need to know.”
“It all worked out,” I reminded her. “Hello? Soon-to-be-published author? At twenty-five?”
“That reminds me, how did the interview go?” Mom’s mode shifted from interrogation to genuine caring and curiosity. I know a part of her excitement about my audition for Wake Up! America was the fun she would have going back to work and telling everyone about her daughter on TV.
“It went really well.” I was pretty sure it had. Everyone in the room had seemed enthusiastic about my ideas for possible segments, and my on-camera audition had been amazing. “I guess I look great on TV, so if it doesn’t work out, I could always be an anchor or something.”
“You do have a degree in journalism,” Mom said in her always-look-on-the-bright-side voice.
“So, Rebecca,” Neil began, reaching over to take my hand and squeeze it. He knew how nervous I still was about the audition, and the brief touch was welcome, as was his proposed change of subject. “Tell me about yourself. Sophie told me you work at the hospital?”
“I’m a monitor tech. I’ve been there since Sophie was knee high to a grasshopper,” she said with a fond smile at me. “Sophie is the first person in our family to go to college.”
“I must congratulate you on raising such a wonderful woman.” Neil sipped his whiskey. “And thank you, as well. It must not have been easy, doing it on your own.”
“Neil’s a single parent, too.” I was pleased to land on a subject where they had something in common.
“A single father who had nannies and only part-time custody,” he reminded me. “I know Sophie’s father wasn’t in the picture. It must have been very difficult.”
“It was. But it was worth it,” Mom said. “I kind of like this kid.”