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“You’re late.”
My heart skips a beat, startled by Bree’s voice behind me. I turn on my heels, meeting her unphased glance. She’s wearing her usual hoodie and gray leggings that cling to her legs like a second skin. For a split second, I’m distracted by her. I clear my throat, recovering from that moment of weakness.
“Sorry. My mom called and lost track of time,” I excuse myself.
“Well, well. Who would’ve thought that you’re actually a momma’s boy?” Bree muses with a hint of laughter. “C’mon.” She cocks her head for me to follow her, and I do it without thinking about it.
My ears warm up with embarrassment by the way she says it because I know that I totally am, but I don’t need to be exposed this way. It’s normal to be close to home, even if people want to pretend otherwise.
“Shut up,” I mumble through clenched teeth.
My gaze drops to her butt for a solid minute as we walk to one of the private rooms. I realize that gray leggings are probably the equivalent of the gray sweatpants for us becausefuck meif it doesn’t hug her tight ass in all the right places.
Bree giggles, dragging me out of my trance. Fucking hell, my mom inserted a parasite in my brain that shouldn’t be there. I need to get rid of it as soon as possible.
“Oh, you are a momma’s boy. I never would’ve guessed it,” she says and pushes the door of the room, keeping it open until I enter it.
The room is empty. There’s only a laptop on the table and a backpack on the floor. A wave of confusion hits me, and I’m grateful because it vanishes the other inappropriate thoughts. I thought that we were meeting up with her cousin.
“And your cousin?” I ask with a frown.
“She’s going to be here… virtually. The truth is that she only needs to see the scanned papers of your assignments, and she’ll give you the right answers. So, we won’t be that long. At least today,” Bree explains briefly and sits down in front of the laptop.
I nod, sitting on the other side of the table to keep my distance from her. Distracting myself from the memories of her ass, I take out the documents that she mentioned and hand them out to her.
Bree does her thing, scanning the papers one by one with her phone and taking her time to airdrop the document to her laptop, typing something before she puts it away.
My eyebrows furrow. “That’s it?”
She nods.
“Now, we wait for her call.”
“Okay.”
Once more, the silence takes over the place. The whole atmosphere surrounding us is tense, thick, and weird. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter that we could hold a civilized conversation yesterday; we’re not friends. We’re unfortunate strangers with a problem in common; allies at most. Our interactions are awkward when we don’t have topics to talk about.
“How’s the phone thing going?” Bree interrogates in a whisper, breaking the quietness in the room.
“It’s going. Ryder’s working on it,” I respond in the same way.
My eyes try to find another distraction in the room. The white walls are unsettlingly perfect. They stand around us like giant murals that threaten to lock us up. Who can study here without feeling like they’re part of an asylum? In a way, I think it’s appropriate because there’s some madness in here.
“Oh, okay,” she mumbles and bites her bottom lip, moving her head up and down. “Are you close to your parents?”
I’m surprised that she took the first step to initiate a conversation. I didn’t expect it from her that she would want to know something about me. Even though I’m curious about what pushed her to talk to me.
“Yeah. More than anyone,” I respond with a simple nod.
Bree’s lips draw a genuine smile on her face.
“That’s good. I’m close to my family too, but sometimes it feels like a madhouse,” she shares, letting out a soft laugh.
“I get that.”
My mom is a crazy woman herself.
“Do you see them often?” Bree’s tone is curious, and although I know she means well, her question darkens my mood. The memory of the conversation I had earlier with my mom creeps back to my brain. Part of me doesn’t want to continue having this conversation.
