“Why not?” She pulled the phone back to study the picture.
“Right now, you’re just a cute girl I met. If she sees that, you’re suddenly this girl I’m taking pictures with and—what are you doing?” She was doing something with my phone.
“Sending the picture to your mom. I’m assuming she’s the contact marked ‘Mom.’ Wow, you call her a lot.”
I ripped my phone away from her, but I heard the send swish sound. “Why did you do that?”
“You said you wanted to make your mom happy. That’s the picture that will make her happy. I mean, look at it. How cute am I, and how cute are you noticing how cute I am?”
“Right. Thanks,” I said in a clipped tone. The delivered note displayed by the text mocked me while I started trying to figure out how to explain the picture to Mom and defuse the situation. I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “I’ll see you.” I started back down the street. I made it like two steps before Jolene pulled me to a stop.
“Pissy much? It’s just a photo. It’s not like I was licking your face or anything.”
“You don’t get it.” I tried to shake her off, gently at first, but with a little more force when she persistently hung on. “Can I have my arm back?”
“So you can storm back to your apartment? No.”
I raised my eyebrows at her as if to say, Are you serious? In response she raised her own eyebrows.
“Get over yourself for two seconds and explain why you’re all butthurt that I sent that innocent picture of us to your mom.”
“Of us,” I said, relaxing my arm so that she might follow suit. “She’ll think you’re more than just the girl next door.”
“Are you saying I’m not?”
I felt my face heat. “I appreciate the photo, but that picture... It was supposed to be of you, not us. You were just supposed to be a distraction so she wouldn’t dwell on the fact that she was alone in our house for the first time since—” I swallowed, feeling needles behind my eyes. I puffed out a breath, focusing on the chilly air when I refilled my lungs until I got myself together. “This is way more than that now, or it’s going to look that way to her.” I pulled out my phone again and brought up the picture. “You really don’t see the problem?”
Her eyebrows drew together and she tugged on her bottom lip, studying me, not even glancing at the phone. “You’re saying I should have licked your face?” Then she laughed when my jaw tightened. “Wow, you’re uptight. I’m kidding. And yes, I see your probably too-anal point.” At last she dropped my arm. “So you’re in a pickle, and it’s my fault.” She eyed me sideways for confirmation. I folded my arms. “Honestly, I think you’re taking a much too narrow view of all this. You want to distract your mom. Great. Cute girl next door—” she pointed to herself and gave a little curtsy “—in and of herself is good for, what, two weekends of distraction, maybe three? What happens when the novelty of my mere existence wears off? Granted, I am awesome and very cute, so maybe you eke out four weekends, but even I have my limits. So what’s your plan after that?”
She barely paused before continuing. “See, this is why you need me for more than my off-the-charts photogenic properties. Me alone, I have a limited shelf life. Me and you—” she bounced her palm between our chests “—us, why, the sky is the limit.” She leaned into my side and waved her hand across the sky as though arcing an invisible banner above us. I was smelling her hair like a complete psycho so I jerked away, feeling my face flush.
When I just stared at her fake sky banner, she dropped the showman facade. “Look, all I’m saying is that maybe I did you a favor. If your mom is really having a rough time, then the idea of a reciprocated crush is going to do a lot more for her than your one-sided one. You wanted to give her a picture. Instead, you gave her a story.”
I couldn’t help but consider the potential upside when she put it like that. Things were only going to get harder for Mom as Jeremy and I spent more weekends away. Maybe that picture wasn’t such a bad thing.
Jolene smiled wide when she knew she had me.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, I think.”
“Oh, but I am not done with my benevolent acts for the day.”
I started to object when she pulled out her camera and pointed it at me, but fair was fair, so I let her film me, then her, then us, talking and framing her shots all the while.
“Even though you offered, I decided that giving you lung cancer just so I can piss off my dad and Shelly is perhaps a tad on the petty side.”
I laughed. It startled me. A couple minutes ago, I had nearly gotten lost in a memory that would have broken me right in front of her. “I didn’t really mean the petty thing. And I get it. Having met Shelly, I get it. But yeah, that’s good.”
She angled her head to the side of her camera, and I watched her chew her lip before a sudden grin forced her to stop. “You’re actually kinda sweet, Adam.” When my face heated, she moved back to my side and held the camera out in front of us. “And look at me being all nice.”
My mouth kicked up on one side and I gestured at the camera. “Are you one of those post-every-second-of-my-life-on-social-media types?”
“No, I’m one of those capture-the-moments-so-I-can-tell-the-story-I-want types, aka a filmmaker.”
“Right,” I said, remembering Shelly mentioning something about a film school program the night before. “So you make movies?”
“I make great movies. Just short ones so far, and nothing scripted—more slice-of-life type stuff—but full-length feature films are my future.” With a sigh she lowered her camera. “Real but better, because I get to control the outcome, cut out what I don’t like and frame the rest the way I want.”
“Wow, that’s cool.” Because it was, but also somehow sad. I gestured with my phone. “And thanks again. For being nice, and not just to me.”
“The famous mother. Tell me something, why do you care so much about making her happy?”
“Besides the fact that she’s my mom?”
Jolene nodded, scrutinizing me in a way that made my answer more transparent than I intended.
“She thinks all of this—our split-up family—is her fault. It’s not. My dad is the one who walked out.” I closed my eyes, thinking about that morning he’d left and wishing I’d done more. “She hasn’t been happy in a really long time, and more than anything, I want that for her.”
Jolene’s sigh brought my attention back to her. “I want to preface this by saying I’m still trying to be nice here. Try not to take it personally if you can’t make your mom happy.”