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I quietly open the sliding glass door to the balcony, shutting it behind me. Grateful that the cordless phone’s signal is strong enough to reach out here, I make the call.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”
I rest my forearms on the railing and look out at the water. “Hi, Mom.”
She lets out a little gasp of happiness. “Ellie! I thought you said not to expect to hear from you until you got sent home.” Suddenly her voice shifts. “Oh, honey. Did that boy send you home? That can’t be—you’re so pretty and he’s so handsome.”
I smile, because it’s so Mom.
“No, I’m just sneaking in a phone call when I shouldn’t,” I say, not wanting to explain that I’m not exactly following the rules of my contract. “And you know I’m not allowed to talk about the elimination process.”
“Damn, I know. But…Hold on, let me just get this pizza out of the oven…”
I hear some banging, then a muttered curse, probably because she always forgets that her old hot mitts have holes, and inevitably loses every new one I buy her.
“Sorry, honey. Just making a late dinner.”
Only my mom would consider frozen pizza at one in the morning “a late dinner.” When I was a teenager, this sort of flaky disregard for normal patterns caused much frustration—and hunger.
Now, though, I can’t help but smile. My mom makes me crazy, but with adulthood comes a bit of distance, and with distance comes fondness for the things that once drove me nuts.
“So, I know you can’t tell me much, but…what’s he like?” I hear her blow on the pizza, then noisily take a bite.
I look over my shoulder to make sure Gage isn’t lurking at the door, horror-movie style. But the room is dark, nothing but stillness inside.
“Ellie?”
I look back out at the water. “I never actually did this with the intention of marrying the guy. You know that.”
“Right, I know,” she says. “It was…what did Marjorie call it? Viral marketing? Have the other girls liked your T-shirts? I bet they have, they’re so flattering. I told my haircutter about it, and she definitely wants one.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I rub my eyes. “And I haven’t really pushed the shirts on the other women; I just try to wear them on camera as much as I can.”
She makes a happy little squeal, muffled by a mouthful of pizza. “I can’t wait to see you on TV. When does it air again?”
“It’ll start in a couple of months. They’ve talked a lot about wanting to keep the gap between filming and air date as short as possible.”
“It’s going to be so weird to watch yourself, isn’t it!”
“Oh, God, I’m not watching,” I say, feeling a stab of horror at the very thought.
“I watched you on that ‘meet the groom’ special, and you were very sassy! Everyone’s been talking about how much chemistry you have.”
Yeah, well, chemistry alone does not happily-ever-after make. I’m not even sure love results in a happy ending. Depressed by the thought, I change the subject. “How are things there?”
“Oh, same old. Hugh likes to spoil me, and I don’t complain!”
I blink. “Who’s Hugh?”
She laughs as though this is obvious. “My new sweetheart!”
“What about Tim? You told me right before that you two went ring shopping.”
“Eh.” I imagine her waving her hand, dismissing Tim and the fact that a month ago she’d been planning to marry him.
I don’t even know how my brain still has the knee-jerk reaction of surprise. She’s been this way as long as I can remember. And though I don’t begrudge her choices—not anymore—I’d be lying if I said they didn’t affect me.
See, it’s a little hard to believe in happily-ever-after when you don’t have any real-life examples. On one hand, I’ve got my mom and her serial dating—she’s in love with love, but never the lasting kind. And Marjorie’s married, but happily? I don’t know. She and Steve aren’t miserable, but she’s more or less confided that having a baby was a last-ditch effort to reinsert the magic into their relationship, which…Well, I don’t know that I get to judge, and they seem to be reasonably content. It’s just not exactly the way the movies make it seem like it could be.
