Loud. Insistent.
“Oh, for…” I muttered, fumbling for the phone. “Hang on, someone’s at the—”
“I should let you go,” he said quickly.
“No, it’s…”
“It’s fine,” he explained.
The bell rang again.
“Drew—”
“Night, Mel.”
“Drew, just hold on...”
I yanked open the door, half expecting a neighbor, maybe a delivery driver.
Instead, there stood my mom holding a Nordstrom bag the size of a small child and wearing an expression that saidI was in the neighborhood,which was a lie because she lived an hour away.
“Mom?” I said, still clutching the phone.
“Surprise!” she said brightly. “You didn’t answer my text, so I thought I’d come check on you. I bought you a new sweater. Holiday red, very flattering. And I need to hear about your trip up north.”
“Of course you do,” I murmured, giving my mom a hug and letting her step inside.
She breezed past me, hanging her coat neatly on the hook and taking in the apartment with the careful eyes of someone who both approves and judges simultaneously.
“Well, this is cozy,” she said. “You actually decorated this year. That’s new.”
Behind me, the phone glowed faintly in my hand with Drew’s name still written on the screen.
I thumbed it off speaker and whispered, “I’ll call you later.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
And we hung up.
Welcome to long distance, whatever this was called.
My mom turned around just as I set the phone face down on the counter. “Who was that?”
I forced a smile and reached for the Nordstrom bag like it might save me.
“No one important,” I lied, because saying his name right now might make me break.
“Hmm,” she said, unconvinced but too polite to push. “Well, I brought wine too.”
Of course she had.
As she pulled out a bottle of merlot and started talking about the holiday traffic, I stared out the window at the glittering city below with horns and lights and chaos, and wondered if Drew was still on the other end of that silence, wondering the same thing I was.
How something that had started with a simple phone call could already feel like a goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Drew
