Last Call (20 page)

M
ariah

T
he weekend is finally over. After our fun-filled, yet my emotionally filled day with Jason on Saturday, Royce and I spent Sunday doing nothing. I didn’t leave my bed unless I absolutely had to, and Royce seemed to be in the same kind of funk as me. We lay under the blankets, watching movies and wallowing in our own self-pity.

When I asked him why he looked so sad, he told me he had fun with Jason and wished we lived closer to the beach so he could hang out with us all the time. The look on his face and the sound of his sad voice shattered my insides to rubble. I told myself I was going to break it off with Jason, and I will do it, but I’m not sure how I will accomplish it.

Before our weekend of fun, I only ever talked to him if he wanted to hook up. Mostly, it was Jason initiating that, so maybe the best course of action is to take the coward’s way out. I will ignore his text messages and phone calls. He’s a smart guy; he’ll figure it out. However, then I think about how infuriating it would be to have a man break up with me like that. I would have sicked Shelby on him to cut off his balls and shove them down his throat.

I will just need to put my big girl panties on and break it off with him. Actually, I will probably need to wear my nighttime granny panties. They would be suitable for big girl panties.

The more I think about, though, the more I don’t want to stop seeing him, even if it’s only for our sex-capades. I’m not ready to throw it all away and be without him.

I flop my head down in my handson the steering wheel and decide I will wait another day. I need to give myself one more day, and then it will be done.

Well, six days has gone by and the conversation I was so sure I was going to have on Monday has yet to happen. I followed up with the doctor and he told me my ankle is on the mend. I can walk on it semi-normally now, but I have to keep it wrapped for another week. It’s slowed me down at work, but I refused to call in absent because I needed the distraction of customers to keep my mind focused away from Jason. It was the only good part of my week. Every other second was filled up with Jason and growing my courage to break it off with him.

I managed to convince myself each day with an excuse not to make the dreaded phone call. However, the sad part is, I haven’t heard from him, either. Normally, he doesn’t let a day go by without some sort of invitation happening. Now, there’s nothing. Not a text or a call. Nothing. My theory of him not wanting to be with someone as plain and normal as me has probably caught up with him.

Who am I kidding? This is Jason Cain, Miami’s hottest and most eligible bachelor. He doesn’t have time for the average, single mother who makes as much in a year as he makes in an hour. The time we’ve spent together has run its course, and now, Jason is done with everything we had.

I spend every minute of my life trying not to be upset, and most of the time, I fail. I will mourn him quietly and look forward to the time I’m going to spend with my sisters and mom for a very distracting and fun girls’ weekend.

I’ve been scrambling around my house for the last couple of hours, making last minute preparations for the girls’ weekend with my family. My mother is fabulous, but there is a certain part of me that wants to make sure she’s not seeing my house a mess. I bust my ass to get my house to Dawn’s level of cleanliness. I am always nervous when my parents come to visit. Although my father wouldn’t care too much if there were toys haphazardly lying around my house, my mom… Well, that’s a different story. She would never say anything, but I don’t want her walking around toys or eating around the collection of mail that always accumulates on my dining table.

I’m not sure why I care about the condition of my apartment so much, maybe it’s because I don’t want to disappoint my mother. She’s an amazing woman, a super woman, if you will. Raising five kids and running a flower shop, she had little to no time on her hands. Yet, instead of sitting down to take a break, she was folding laundry, scrubbing something, or washing dishes. I’m not sure how the hell she did it, but she did.

I know it won’t bother her, but I feel like a loser when I have a less demanding job and only one kid to clean up after. In all rights, I should not have a messy house. I should have an immaculate house. My apartment is never dirty. It’s just got shit lying all over the place, the toys and laundry being the worst of it.

While the ladies are bonding, my dad and brother are going to take Royce on a little boys’ outing so we can camp out at my house and hang out. We’ve never really done anything when we all get together. All of us are entirely too busy with our own personal lives as working moms to have any desire to party. We simply sit around; play board games, gossip, and drink. There’s always a ton of laughs and inappropriate conversations.

Jerrica’s wedding is in two weeks, and everyone wanted to meet up before all the craziness consumes us. It seems like my sisters and I can only get together without our children whenever there’s a major event happening, and we’ve planned it many months in advance. Each one of us is in dire need of a family bonding night. The last time we got together was before the birth of my nephew two years ago. Oh, man, was that a night.

I finish shuffling through my tiny two-bedroom apartment, picking up random things and placing them in the most logical place. Granted, the normal person would not have a dirty laundry basket hanging out in the living room, but I find it convenient considering my son will only dress in front of the television. However, I can understand the uncertainty of walking into someone’s house, and sitting just inside the door is someone’s dirty underwear.

I move the basket away from the wall and push the heaping pile of clothes farther inside the basket. When I mean push, I actually mean sitting on the overflowing pile of dirty laundry and bouncing up and down to smash them as tightly as possible into the hamper. If I was talented enough and my ankle wasn’t too sore, I’d stand on the arm of my couch and jump into it.

Then I put the dirty clothes basket into my room and shove it in the closet when I spot Shelby’s sweatshirt I wore the night I met Jason. I instantly freeze and the ache I’ve been trying to mend comes back fully. When will I get him off my mind?

When I look at this sweatshirt, I immediately yearn for his hands all over my body or his mouth teasing my nipples as he takes little nips with his teeth. I stand in my closet and feel the heat generate, then warm as it gets my heart pumping. God, I love that man’s mouth. He has the softest lips and his tongue… it always expertly sends me over the edge whenever Jason finds his way between my thighs.

When I drop the basket on the floor, I open my eyes and think back to the premise of what Jason was really saying when he first approached me with this idea. Outwardly, Jason has this egotistical presence about him, and after the whore tip debacle, I wanted to wash my hands of him completely. However, that night, sitting in his SUV, Jason gave me the slightest glimpse into the man he may be on the inside. It was a moment of vulnerability when he looked down and basically confessed his loneliness. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I picked up on it immediately.

Rule number two was mine because I didn’t want him to know about my son or get to know me so he could break me down emotionally and look how that fucking worked out for me; not at all.

The moment we shared in his kitchen after I hurt my ankle was what finally broke me down. It was the moment I could not fight and the one where I knew Jason and I would never be what I hoped. His tough façade hiccupped for a mere second, just like it did when we first got involved. Then, when I last saw him, it was like he was sad to leave me. The more I think about it, it’s then I realized that is exactly what he was doing. He may have felt something for me for a moment, but he knew it wasn’t something he was prepared to have. The momentary look of sadness on his face should have been my big red flag, yet it wasn’t until now I really allow myself to absorb the feeling of what I hoped would happen and never did.

Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart jumps in my throat when I hear my dad beating on my apartment door. I scurry from the closet and yank the door closed. Shit, if anyone were to open this sucker, they’d see firsthand where I stuff shit when I’m cleaning in a hurry.

After I quickly walk down the hall and open the front door to my dad, Royce comes barreling from his room and plunges himself into my dad’s body, grabbing onto his waist. Royce doesn’t get to see my family as often as his cousins do and that makes me a little sad, but we’ve established a life in Miami. He goes to a great school, he’s exposed to a very diverse culture of people, and I have my best friends here. It would be impossible to leave.

“Hi, Dad,” I say when I walk up to him and slap him on the shoulder. “Are you ready for your weekend of fun in the big city?”

My dad just snuffs into the air. He’s not a tall man, standing at five-foot-ten, but he is stocky. I’m sure the years of construction attribute to his year-round tan and larger arms and chest, as the years of drinking beer and too much junk food attribute to his gut.

“Where’s everyone else?” I ask, observing only my dad at the door.

“Your brother is helping all those damn females with their shit. Your sisters are only staying two days, but I swear to Christ they packed their entire fucking closet.” My dad bends down and pulls Royce in his arms. “Hey, sport. Are you ready to hang with Papa and Uncle Brad?”

“Yes! Are we going to go fishing, Papa? Please, can we go fishing?” Royce begs as he stares directly into my dad’s hazel eyes.

“Fishing? Where the hell can we go fishing in this place? All I see is a bunch of young folks who wouldn’t have a clue how to wake up before ten o’clock and would have no idea what a hard day’s work is.” My dad is cranky when it comes to the city. He was raised in the country, only ever knowing the small town life. Today, my parents live in a slightly bigger town, but the max population is no more than fifteen thousand. Coming to Miami is not my dad’s favorite thing to do. “But I packed my gun. God knows who’s going to be creeping around the corner in this Godforsaken place.”

“Calm down, Dad. Don’t go all Dave-shit crazy because the traffic is slightly heavier than it is back home.” I say Dave-shit crazy because my dad tends to fly off the handle in a very loud, psychotic manner. I really don’t understand why he always freaks out when it comes to the city.

“Slightly heavier? Shit, darling, that’s an understatement and these assholes, you know they can’t drive.” My dad walks farther into my apartment and then puts Royce down on the couch about the time the cackling of my sisters begins to grow louder as they make their way up the stairs.

“Hey sister!” Jerrica, the first one in the door, opens her arms and gives me a big hug as she always does when we see each other. She has long, thick brown hair with blue eyes and an average build. She’s curvy in all the right places—well, we all are except Jami—and she loves to wear jewelry. She never leaves the house without at least wearing her earrings, a couple bracelets, and a necklace.

We never thought Jerrica was going to get married, being that she’s reaching her forties and has had nothing to do with dating or men, for that matter. I remember thinking she was a lesbian but hadn’t acknowledged it yet. However, I learned she was just as cynical or more about love than I am. She didn’t believe in the happily ever after and wanted nothing to do with getting involved on a permanent basis.

One drunken night, she told me she never had a boyfriend, but she made sure she didn’t go without the company of a man. So basically, she’s a slut. I remember thinking it must run in the family.

She is focused on her career as an interior designer, which has attributed to her single lifestyle. But then, Wilson happened and she fell head over heels without even realizing it. Now she is the happy-go-lucky, cheesy, lovesick puppy that she swore she’d never be. It’s fun to tease her and be happy for her all in one.