Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (19 page)

“I’m happy to remind
you,” I tell him and smile, putting the key in the ignition. “What do you want
to do now?” I ask.

“I’m still pretty beat
from the gym,” he says. “Would you mind if we just relaxed with a movie or
something?”

“Okay,” I tell him. “If
you want, we can go to my place. Jana’s at work for the next little bit and my
only class for the day got out before I came and got you. It doesn’t really
matter to me, but it’s an option.”

“That sounds good to me,”
he says. “I’m kind of glad to get out of the house for a while.”

We chat a little bit and
the tensions of the last while are finally starting to ease. It’s hard to say
what caused the change, but we’re talking and laughing in a way we really
haven’t since Chris’s arrest.

We continue to enjoy each
other’s company right until the moment we’re at my apartment and I’m opening
the door to find two people I didn’t expect to see sitting on the couch.

I immediately close the
door, but the jig is up.

“Darling?” that grating,
affected voice comes wafting through the air just like that expensive perfume
she may as well bathe in, and Mason’s looking at me not having any idea what’s
about to happen.

“There are some things I
need to talk to you about,” I tell him quietly as I hold the door closed just a
few more seconds. “First, I’ve got to deal with this.”

“Who is that?” Mason asks
in a whisper.

“That’s my mom,” I
answer. “Excuse me,” I correct, “that is my
mother
.
I promise I will explain everything, but for right now, I just need you to go
to my room and wait for me for a little bit. I know this is weird, but—”

“We should probably open
the door now,” Mason interrupts as someone, undoubtedly Jana, tries the knob
and then knocks on the other side of the door.

“I’ll explain everything,
okay?” I ask, hoping for some sort of reassurance. Maybe I can use it as armor
against whatever humiliating position my parents have gotten themselves into
this time.

Probably not.

“Okay,” he says easily...
too easily. I may have overstated my enthusiasm about explaining whatever’s
about to be explained to me.

I let go of the doorknob
and the door comes open with Jana holding the other side of the knob.

“What was that about?”
Jana asks.

“Sorry,” I say, trying to
avoid eye contact. “I just had to tell Mason something.”

“Your mom’s here,” Jana
says, grinning at me.

I hate this moment so
much. Jana loves my mom, but not for any good or even decent reason. Mom, love
her as I’m genetically programmed to do, is basically a walking advertisement
for old money, though that’s not actually anywhere in her background.

Her name’s not even May
Weese.

Jana and I have known
each other for a very long time, and in that time, my esteemed roommate and
friend has also gotten to know my parents. She doesn’t like my dad. He’s too
dry and whiny—Jana’s words, not mine—but mom, Jana loves mom.

There hasn’t been a
conversation between the two of them that hasn’t yielded my friend some kind of
ammunition to throw at me for her own twisted amusement. Judging by the fact I
could count her teeth from the size of the smile on her face, I’d say she’s
already achieved that goal.

“Mason?” I ask.

He stands there a second
before saying, “Oh, right,” and walking past the three of us and going to my
room, closing the door behind him.

Good boy.

“Jana, as always, I
appreciate you getting my mother to tell you embarrassing stories about me, but
you’re supposed to be at work right now, aren’t you?” I ask.

“Actually, the boss gave
me the day off,” she says.

“Say, Jana, you’re
supposed to be at work right now, aren’t you?” I repeat.

She finally takes the
hint.

“Fine,” she says, “but
you and I have a couple of things to talk—” she bursts into laughter. Over the
next painfully long thirty seconds, she tries again and again to finish the
sentence, but every time, she just starts laughing again.

“Just go,” I tell her.

As I hear her laughing
even after she’s left the apartment and is walking down the hallway, I realize
I haven’t done a very good job inspiring fear around this place. That’s
something I’m now rather eager to change.

“Why are you here?” I
ask.

“Oh, good heavens,
darling,” mom says in her aristocratic tone. “The way you speak sometimes…”

“Mom, it’s just you and
me. You can drop the stupid voice,” I tell her.

“It’s not stupid,” she
says in her natural and refreshingly boring voice. “We haven’t spoken since you
called me back, and I was concerned you might attempt to do something silly
like make a statement against your father and I.”

“How can I make a
statement about it before I know what you’ve actually done?” I ask.

“Sit down, dear,” she
says. “There are a few things I think you should know.”

“I thought the best
approach is plausible deniability,” I answer, but I do take her advice and sit
down on the couch. “If you’re willingly telling me what’s going on, that must
mean—”

“You act as if your
father and I are so predictable,” she says, tinges of that almost raspy, almost
British voice creeping in at odd intervals. “This is quite serious, I assure
you.”

“Tell me you left me out
of it,” I say. “Tell me you didn’t involve me in whatever scheme the two of you
have been working. That’s my boyfriend in there. We just got back from court
where his brother was remanded for more than a few dozen things, and I’ve just
about had my fill. What’s worse, I’ve been so nervous to talk to him about this
that I never got around to it, so he’s totally unprepared for any of this. Just
tell me you left me out of it,” I repeat.

“Well, dear,” she says,
her phony voice now dominant, “it should reassure you that your father and I
never intended to involve you in our business ventures, as we know you don’t
agree with some of our more unique practices.”

“Save it, mom,” I tell
her. “If you didn’t drag me into this somehow, you’d be saying that you didn’t
involve me, not that you ‘never intended to.’ Can we skip the PR and just get
this over with? I'd rather be doing just about anything right now, and I even
have plans for some of it.”

“I wish you would call me
mother,” she says, seeming to ignore everything else altogether.

“Say what you have to
say,” I tell her.

“Well dear,” she says,
“over the last few years, we’ve been following what we thought was sound
business advice, only to find out we’d been led into crime by the greed of
others.”

“I’m trying to count how
many times you deferred the blame in that one sentence,” I tell her.

Mom says, “We were
approached by a man we thought was a friend, and we trusted him. We trusted
that—”

“I’m going to kick you
out of my apartment and tell the news that you’re guilty of whatever you’re
about to be accused of if you don’t spare me the prepared material and get to
the point,” I tell her.

She holds up her hand
lazily, saying, “Oh, Ashley, you have so much fire in you. I don’t understand
why you can’t make it work with a man.”

“Get out,” I tell her,
standing and pointing toward the door.

“I’m telling you,” she
says. “Calm yourself.” She takes a breath and starts again. “Your father and I
are about to be accused of being involved in a real estate scandal,” she says.

“Specifics, mom,” I say.
“What did you do, how much time are you looking at, and am I involved somehow?
The answers to those questions are the only thing I care to—”

“I am your mother, and I
will not be spoken to in this way!” mom says. Her protest probably wouldn’t
seem so hollow if I haven’t had to say similar things so often in the past.

Still, she continues.

“We purchased a number of
houses in decent areas throughout the state,” she says. “We didn’t know the
realtors were accepting multiple offers and then absconding with their
ill-gotten gains.”

Of course they knew, but
I’m not going to interrupt when she’s giving me the closest thing to the truth
I’m ever going to get out of her on the subject.

“What’s even more
outrageous than that is that these horrible people are now saying that it was
us who had instructed them to do these terrible, terrible things,” mom says.
“When they gave us the money from the sale of the houses, we just assumed that
everything was accurate, that the amount we were receiving was legitimate. How
were we supposed to know this sort of thing was going on?”

“First off, nobody’s ever
going to buy that. It’s just about the stupidest explanation I’ve ever heard,”
I tell her. “How much money did you spend on the houses? All put together, what
was the total?” I ask.

“Six or seven million,”
she answers. “Your father has the exact figures.”

“And how much did you
make from the
sale
of these homes?” I
ask.

“The money isn’t what’s
important,” she protests. “What’s important is that your father and I are being
slandered by people trying to get out of taking responsibility for their own
actions.”

“I’m sure they’ll say the
same thing about the two of you and you’ll both be equally right,” I tell her.
“How much did you make off of the sale of the houses?”

“Again, your father would
have the exact figure with him,” she stalls. I don’t respond. I just glare at
her until she finally answers the question, “I believe it was somewhere between
forty and fifty million.”

I whistle when I hear the
sum. “That sounds like a pretty glaring problem,” I tell her. “How are you
going to convince people you didn’t know what they were doing? Even with your
claims of innocence peppered throughout everything you just said, upon hearing
it, I’m absolutely convinced that you not only knew what they were doing, but
you put them up to it.”

“You always think we’re
capable of the most horrible things,” mom says. “Your father and I truly
believed that the amounts we were receiving were reasonable profits.”

“You’re still missing
something,” I tell her. “You told me what you did and I can figure out what
kind of time you’re going to get as a result of that. The internet’s great for
that sort of thing. But you still haven’t told me why you’re here. I know I’m
involved somehow, otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me any of this.”

“Dear, you know that your
father and I have put a lot of our money into the charity,” mom says.

“What does that have to
do with anything?” I ask.

“Well,” she starts, “I
don’t know if you’re aware of this, but we’ve been experiencing a bit of a
financial crisis over the past few years—what, with so much of our money going
into the charity.”

“Oh, can we please stop
referring to you and dad’s bank accounts in the Cayman Islands as ‘the charity’
and just tell me?” I ask.

“In order to purchase the
last house, we needed a little extra money—you know how your father deplores
bringing too much money back without some sort of respectable reason,” mom
says. “Respectable-looking” probably would have been more accurate. “So,
keeping in mind that we never intended for any of this to happen, we may have
used your name and information to apply for a few loans from our bank which
could help us pay off the last couple of houses.”

“How many houses were you
trying to cover?” I ask. “You’re not agreeing with yourself. And what kind of
loans can you apply for in someone else’s name?”

“Well, that part
was
an oversight on the part of your
father and I,” she says. “I wanted to come here and warn you personally that
you may be audited when you get your taxes back. You would have been unaware of
a few of the student loans that are in your name, and so wouldn’t have
mentioned any of them on your taxes. They check that sort of thing, you know.”

“Student loans?” I ask.

“Yes, dear,” mom answers
as if it’s a perfectly rational thing.

“Student loans,” I
repeat.

Mom says, “Ashley, are
you feeling quite—”

“How about you don’t call
me Ashley and I don’t call you mom?” I interrupt. “Ash and mother, can you live
with that?”

“Fine, dear,” she says. “I
know you’re upset, but we only did this with your best interests in—”

“How is implicating me in
your crimes by forging my signature and getting student loans I never applied
for, much less saw any of, in my best interest?” I interrupt again.

She’s covering her mouth
with her hand as if it’s my behavior that’s shocking. “We were going to
surprise you by paying off your college with our profits off of the houses,”
she tells me.

“I can’t believe this,” I
tell her. “I really can’t believe this. I mean, I know you and dad have done
some idiotic things in the past, but—”