In the morning, I got ready for work and left him with a kiss and a spare key. I didn’t know how long it’d take Jenna to become reasonable again toward her son, but I was sure she would and hoped it wouldn’t be long. He said after his class today he’d make plans to start looking for his own place.
Which was important to him. Although I wanted to spend every spare moment together right now, I understood and supported the idea. The honeymoon phase for me was incredibly strong and deceptive.
My day at the office was challenging. A show promoter we’d contracted with wasn’t responding to emails or phone calls, and the drummer of one of the bands I repped had gotten arrested for a DUI last night.
At lunch, I’d unblocked Clark’s number and attempted to call him, but it rang once before going to voicemail, and I hung up, not knowing what kind of message I would leave. We needed to have a conversation. Obviously, he had something he wanted to say to me bad enough he’d decided to come by the house, and I wanted to give him a piece of my mind about that.
I thumbed out a message.
Me: We need to talk about yesterday.
As I was finishing up at the office, I checked my phone and he still hadn’t read my message. I tried calling him again and got the same result.
Oh, how the tables had turned, he must have thought. Now my ex was the one not taking any calls.
I’d just put my phone in my purse when it chirped with a text message.
Troy: Got a second to talk?
I punched his number, waved goodbye to Charlotte, and walked out the office door, my footsteps crunching on the leaves the wind had gathered on the front porch. “Hey. What’s up?”
“So,” he said, “I just got done putting my shit back.”
I missed a step coming down the porch onto the sidewalk and nearly fell. “What? You’re moving back in?”
“Temporarily, yeah.” He sounded tired. “My mom called and asked me to come over so she could apologize.”
“Oh.” I pulled my eyebrows together, unsure how to feel about this. “I take it you went?”
He wasn’t tired—he was emotionally drained. “Yeah. I was still pissed off, but she was in bad shape. When I got there, she looked like she’d been crying all morning.”
His words cut through my heart. She’d been crying because of me. I’d known getting involved with Troy was going to carry huge consequences, and yet I’d still done it, her feelings be damned.
“Bill was there too,” he said. “And I told them I was done. I needed to live my life and if they wanted to continue being a part of it, shit had to change. Like, right now.”
I was tense just hearing it secondhand. “How did that go over?”
“It . . . went. I told them it’d mean a lot to me to have them there on Saturday. But if she didn’t believe in me and how I want to pursue music, then she shouldn’t bother coming to my show.” There was the sound of chair legs dragging across a hard floor, and I pictured him sitting down at his kitchen table. “So, she apologized and cried some more, and then Bill cried, and it was rough.”
I pressed my hand to the center of my chest. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, and don’t be sorry. It was good.” He sounded cautiously optimistic. “I laid it all out there, said all the things I needed to about her smothering me, and I think she finally, really listened.” He let out a long breath. “I’m still moving out, but I’m here until I get my own place, and they agreed to give me my space in the meantime.”
I bit down on my lip. “Do you think they’ll be able to?”
He paused. “She’s still really upset about us, so yeah. I think she’d like to go back to not knowing, but since she can’t . . .”
He didn’t have to say it. She wanted to pretend I no longer existed.
“I tried telling her this isn’t your fault,” he said. “I was the one who went after you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure she liked hearing that.”
There was no way she’d assign blame to her son over me.
“No, it didn’t help,” he admitted. “She just needs more time.”
I wished that were true, but it was doubtful.
“So,” he forced lightness into his voice, “I’m back to crashing at my place. Don’t let me forget to give you back your key.”
I’d reached my car and unlocked it but hesitated before opening the door. I’d loved last night.
I was greedy and wanted more nights like that.
My voice was breathless, excited to take the risk. He’d said he wanted me, and now I could make my own declaration for him. “You can hang on to it.”
“Yeah?” I pictured him with a sexy smile on his face. “Cool.”
I tugged open my door and slid into the driver’s seat. “Do you want to get dinner together? It might be one of my last chances before you’re a superstar.”
While Stella’s tour bus wouldn’t arrive from Atlanta until Friday, she’d quietly slip into town tomorrow afternoon to try to avoid the paparazzi. She wanted a lowkey night out with her friends and team, which of course included Troy. It would be a fabulous opportunity, and I hoped he could find a moment to sweet talk Stella into mentoring him.
“I could do dinner,” he said. “You want to pick me up? It might give you and my mom a chance to talk.”
Was he kidding? “You just said she needs time. It doesn’t sound like she’s ready to talk.”
“No,” he said, “but . . . she’ll come around. Trust me.”
I hoped he was right.
Friday morning, Charlotte was surprisingly helpful, offering to help me sift through contracts so I could find the information I was looking for, allowing me to go on to the next thing on my never-ending to-do list. Stella’s concert was tomorrow, and I wanted all my ducks in a row so I didn’t have to work tonight or tomorrow.
I could focus entirely on Troy.
He hadn’t texted me yet to tell me how the evening with Stella had gone last night, but Ardy had looked haggard when he’d arrived at the office, mumbling about him being too old to be this tired.
Once he was tucked away in his office, I smiled at Charlotte. “Late night?”
She nodded. “I heard from Becca the bar stayed open an extra hour.”
Meaning if Ardy and Troy had stayed to the end, it’d been three or four in the morning. I glanced at the clock on her computer screen, which read nine-forty, and sucked up the impatient urge to text my boyfriend and potentially wake him up. He had a huge day tomorrow and needed all the sleep he could get.
Charlotte scrolled through the contract she had pulled up, highlighting the clause I was looking for.
“Awesome, thanks.” I straightened to go back to my office, but hesitated. “Hey, can I ask you something? Do you like working here?”
She looked up at me with confusion. “Sure.”
My question had been too broad. “I guess what I’m asking is, if you could do whatever you wanted, would you be here working for your dad?”
Watching what Troy had gone through with his mother gave me new perspective. Maybe Charlotte disliked her job and I hadn’t been fair to her. Ardy had a dominating presence, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume he’d encouraged her to work at the business he’d built and ran.