Page 317 of His Virgin Romance Series
“Bye-bye,” I said brightly and hung up on him so that I could accept Mom’s call. “Hi, Mom,” I said, picking up.”
“Hey, honey,” Mom said, in a voice that suggested she was ready to talk things through and put the tension of our last fight behind us.
It was the nature of our relationship. We always fought and even when we tried to push through and pretend like nothing had happened, the tension would linger until we talked it out. Of course, talking things out never resolved much because we always ended up having the same arguments over and over again… but we had entered a pattern we would probably never break now.
Before going to Seth’s place, I had spent a night on Mom’s couch. But we had barely spoken while I had been there. She was obviously still recovering from her breakup, and I didn’t want to kindle the fragile peace between us by bringing it up. Of course, by the second day, I had decided to just go to Seth’s since I could never stand tension for too long a time. That had turned out really well.
“How are you?”
“Terrible,” she replied, with touching honesty.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said. “About the things I said to you the last time.”
“Me too, darling,” Mom said immediately. “I was just so disappointed about Cliff. I really wanted it to work out between us.”
“I know you did.”
“But you were right,” she said. “I do jump into things too fast. I settle. I don’t take the time to get to know these men before I invite them into my life and give them everything. I guess I just… I feel like I need to move fast because my life is flitting away and soon I’m going to be too old to enjoy anything.”
“For God’s sake, Mom,” I said gently. “Your life is far from over.”
“I try and tell myself that,” Mom said. “But I just… start panicking sooner or later. I just hate that I’ve set such a bad example for you.”
“Mom—”
“No, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, Zo,” Mom cut in. “And I realized that in trying to avoid my mistakes you’ve taken things to the other extreme. You might not end up making my mistakes, but you’ll make mistakes all the same.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t want to settle, darling, and I respect that,” Mom continued. “But no one is perfect and if you keep waiting for Mr. Right, well… he just may never show up, and you might end up living the rest of your life alone. You have got to put yourself out there. And I’ve got to slow down a little. We could both stand to learn a little from one another.”
I smiled. “Sometimes I forget how wise you are,” I said.
Mom laughed. “I hate when we fight.”
“Me too.”
“Let’s promise never to fight again.”
This time I laughed. “We can both swear up and down never to fight again for the rest of our lives, but we both know that’ll never happen.”
Mom sighed. “Ugh… you’re probably right.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “That’s what we do… we fight and we make up, and we fight again, and then we make up again. It doesn’t matter because at the end of the day we’re there for each other, and we love each other no matter what… right?”
“Right,” Mom said fervently. “I love you, kid.”
“Love you, Mom,” I said.
I don’t know why, but at that moment Miles popped into my head, and I thought about the situation with his parents. It must have been awful not to have someone to fall back onto. It wasn’t about money either. I had a mother and a brother I loved and who loved me and yet I knew I couldn’t burden them with my financial needs. But at least I could talk to them; I could turn to them when I really needed to. But who did Miles have?
He had friends and parties and not much else as far as I could see. He was a good guy; I knew that much. He was passionate about his work; he was hardworking and kind. He had taken pains to make sure I was comfortable in the apartment this time around, and things had been going really well. He had even texted me this morning to ask if it was okay that he had a couple of friends over. It wasn’t even going to be a party, just a few people eating dinner and shooting the breeze.
I was glad that we had been able to reach a happy compromise. I only hoped that Miles didn’t feel like he was missing out. It must have been a little annoying to have to check in with a roommate suddenly after simply doing what you wanted when you wanted to, and I appreciated the effort he was making.
“Zo?”
“Sorry, Ma,” I said. “I was… somewhere else. What did you say?”
