Page 15 of Can't Take Moore
He must have left me more flustered last night than I realized because shortly after I woke up, I heard a ringtone that shouldn’t have been possible. Rolling over with a groan, I stared at the phone on my bedside table. It wasn’t the burner I’d been using since I arrived in Mooreville. Instead, I had apparently plugged in my old phone…and powered it back on.
Grabbing a pillow and smashing it against my face, I screamed, “Nooo!”
Before the ringtone registered in my not-fully-awake brain, I’d thought maybe Dean was demonstrating those manners his mom had taught me by calling me first thing the day after our date. Not many people had the number for my new phone, and I wouldn’t have minded hearing from any of them. But odds were quite good that the same couldn’t be said for the call coming in right now.
When the ringing stopped, I yanked the pillow away from my face and took several deep breaths to calm my nerves. Then I reached for the phone, letting out a little shriek when it rang again as soon as my fingers wrapped around the device. “Crap.”
I grimaced when I saw my sister’s name flash across the screen. I didn’t even need to look at the previous call to know it had been my mom. They must have been desperate to reach me if they were up this early trying to call a number that had gone directly to voicemail for the past six days. Not that I was surprised. I’d expected them to completely freak out once they realized I left Chicago and was unreachable.
I waited until the ringing stopped—I didn't click the button to send my sister’s call to voicemail because now that it had rung twice, she’d know I was near the phone if I didn’t wait it out—to scroll through my notifications. There were a lot of them, and all but one was from my mom and sister. It was a sad testament to how little I socialized with anyone anymore that nobody else wondered where I was by now.
After skimming the last few messages from each of them, I decided it wasn’t worth listening to the voicemails. They were bound to be just as scathing as the texts. There was no point in listening to messages of them ranting at me when they were also bound to do it when we spoke. Which I might as well take care of sooner rather than later, now that I knew they were ignoring my wishes.
My movements were jerky as I jabbed my finger against the screen to pull up Nadia’s contact information. I was already second-guessing my decision as I hit the button to call her, and the feeling only intensified when she answered.
“Where in the hell are you, Vienna?” she screeched. “You can’t disappear into thin air like this. People depend on you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Who? You and Mom?”
“Yes,” she hissed. “But not just us. Brands are waiting for you to submit videos for their approval before I post them to your account. Which I can’t even do because you fucking locked me out of them before you disabled them. You need to give me access before someone notices they’re down and you ruin everything we’ve built.”
“Did you read the note I left?”
I wasn’t even a little bit surprised when she ignored my question. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? I don’t have time to talk about your dumb letter. This is an emergency, Vienna. I’m surprised I haven’t already gotten frantic calls and emails asking me why your account is down already. The clock is ticking, and this whole mess you created could blow up in our faces any minute.”
“Put me on speaker mode,” I demanded as I slid off the mattress.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Pacing back and forth in front of my bed, I pressed the phone to my ear. Physical activity was a comfort to me, but this was the best I could do for the moment because I needed to concentrate on this conversation. “I’m not going to talk until Mom can hear what I have to say, too. I’m not doing this twice.”
“But she’s—”
“Don’t even try to say she isn’t there. Mom called five seconds before you, which tells me she told you to try after I didn’t pick up.”
“Fine,” Nadia huffed before muffling the speaker to tell my mom something.
I rolled my eyes when she came on the line and said, “I’m here, Vienna. Right where I’m supposed to be. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for you.”
“Don’t try to talk to me about being where I ought to be,” I scoffed, shaking my head as my strides quickened. “Not after what happened at the Olympic qualifiers. Filming that stupid video almost made me lose my spot on the team.”
“As I said then, the Olympics don’t pay the bills, being an influencer does.”
“Thanks for proving yet again how little you listen to me.” I heaved a deep sigh. “I tried telling you how much my skating means to me. So many times. That I didn’t want to spend so much time on my social media stuff because getting the gold was more important.”
“I don’t understand why you’re bringing this up again,” my mom complained. “You won the gold, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“And now even more brands want you as an ambassador,” she continued without letting me finish. “We need to strike while the iron is hot. There’s no way to know how long your popularity will last. Now is not the time to act like a child running away from their responsibilities.”
I thought about the balances on the statements I’d sent to Dean to buy the house I was standing in, which were much higher than I had expected them to be. “I already have more than enough to pay the bills for the rest of my life if I’m smart about it.”
Her laughter drifted down the line, but it was more mocking than humorous. “Don’t be silly, dear. You can never have enough money.”
“And it’s like you’re literally setting piles of cash on fire right now,” Nadia added. “Shutting down the accounts means we’ll lose money for the sponsored posts we have coming up.”
I cringed at the thought of letting someone down after I’d made a commitment, even if I hadn’t been the one to say that I would do the post. “Like I said in the notes I left for you, I need a little space to figure some things out.”
