“I know. I saw. Do you … have any plans with your break?”
“Yep.” I turn to him, meeting his eyes in the dark. “I plan to spend every single minute of it with you.”
Chapter 17.
TJ
I straighten a pillow on the living room couch.
A chair at the brunch table is turned ever so slightly, so I most definitely fix that.
I wipe off the kitchen counter with a cloth, then realize it was already clean, the cloth coming up empty.
Then I stand in the foyer, wondering what else I can do.
Check my phone.
On a ladder in the study, I rearrange all the books by height. Decide it looks wrong. Arrange by color. Decide that’s worse. Then settle on organizing by genre. What genre is a thesaurus?
I adjust the picture frames down the hall, all of them looking crooked because either my eyes or the leveler is lying to me.
Check my phone.
Walk into each guestroom with a dramatic sniff, testing if they smell fresh or not.
“What’s all this for, sweetheart?” asks my mom, noticing me in the two and a half seconds I flit from one room to the next, and I go, “Not now, Mom.”
Check my phone.
“Are you—?” she asks. I cut her off with, “Cleaning,” as I dash into another room with a dust rag. “We have people for this!” she calls out sweetly from the hall.
I adjust another picture frame.
My bed and my desk and my floor become covered with every shirt and every pair of pants or shorts I own, and literally nothing is good enough to wear. “Too casual,” I mumble, holding up a set in the mirror, flinging it aside. “Too uptight.” Then: “Trying too hard to look cool.” Then: “Not trying hard enough.”
It takes a lot of effort to look effortlessly good.
“Enough,” says my mom, stopping me at the top of the stairs. “What in the ever-lovin’ heck is going on?”
“Austin,” I answer. “He’s staying here for two weeks.”
Her face registers like I literally said nothing.
Then her eyes flash. “And you’re telling me thisnow??”
Ten minutes later, I’m on a ladder by the back door trying to dust a chandelier in the late afternoon sunlight while my mom is on the phone with a caterer friend asking advice on lunch meats.
I’m in the bathroom counting toilet paper rolls and my mom is in the upstairs study organizing the books by author.
“Should we redecorate the guest wing gazebo?” she asks from across the house, fussing with her poinsettias by the sliding patio door. “He’s arriving in half an hour!” I shout back from under the dinner table, tightening a nut or two that keeps making it squeak. “That’s plenty of time!” she sings back.
I’m straightening window curtains when my mom lets out a hoot of excitement from behind me and cries, “This means he’ll be here for my Fourth of July Boomin’ Barbecue!” I can’t even when I shout back, “I thought the Strongs were doing it!” She laughs me off and cries, “Nadine’s gotwaaaytoo much on her plate as Mayor. I took it off her hands. What’s that look on your face for??”
I should’ve told her already. Days ago. I meant to, I really did. But it just kept turning into this big nightmare in my head I kept telling myself I’d deal with later. And now it’s later.
The last thing I needed wastwoof us spiraling. Nevertheless, here we are. Like mother like son, or something?
Then my phone dings. My mom and I both pop our heads up from opposite sides of the guestroom bed we just remade.