Faking It (Losing It, #2)(33)

“Sadly, neither.”

Before I could invite him in, he’d already passed by me and plopped down on the futon in my living room.

I laughed and closed my door.

“This isn’t still fingernails scrape tinow about that Bliss girl, is it?”

It felt good to be able to say, “No, it’s not about Bliss.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve already gotten your heart broken by some other chica. I only left you alone for a day.”

“No, no broken heart. Just an unavailable girl.”

Milo stretched his legs out in front of him and nodded. “Ah, you know the cure for that don’t you?”

“What?”

“An available girl.” Laughing, I made my way to the fridge and held up a beer in offering. Milo nodded, and I grabbed one for each of us. He said, “I’m serious. I happen to have it on good authority that you picked up a phone number the other night. Forget the unavailable girl . . . both of them . . . and call the blonde from the other night.”

That wasn’t a bad idea.

Dating was the solution to my Bliss (and now Max) problem.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I told him.

I picked up my phone to find her number, and he said, “Whoa! Whoa! Don’t do it now, hermano. You’ve got to give it a few days. You know the rules.”

I rolled my eyes. Right . . . Milo had rules for just about everything—drinking and dating beingul Cad te could be her





20

Max

My phone rang so early the day after Thanksgiving that it should have been labeled cruel and unusual punishment. I reached out toward my nightstand, knocking off who knew what until my fingers finally closed around my phone.

“What?” I grumbled.

“Good morning, sweetie.”

Ugh . . . it was way too early for this.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Your father and I are at the airport. Our flight has been delayed.”

Oh no. If she said that they were going to stay even longer, I would go crazy. I had to get back to the band and back to work, and I had reached my crazy quota for the week.

“I’m sorry, Mom. There’s no chance they’ll cancel it, is there?”

“Oh, no, honey. Just something about the pilot’s plane being late the night before, so they’re required to give him so much rest. We’ll be back in Oklahoma by this evening.” Thank God. “But your father and I were talking, and we just wanted to tell you again how much we liked Cade.”

I was pretty sure that was already abundantly clear, thanks.

“You know, we’ve been worried about you. Your father and I had a lot of difficulty with your decision to drop out of college.” A lot was an understatement. I wouldn’t be surprised if they discussed having me committed as mentally unstable. “But we came around.” After a year of fighting, yeah. “We’ve been helping you pay your rent so you can afford to spend time doing your little music thing.” God, I was going to break out in hives if she called my career and lifelong dream a “little music thing” one more time. “It’s just . . . you’ve been here so long, and your father and I were starting to feel that perhaps it was time to face the facts and grow up.”

No. Please no. I was so close. I could feel it. The gig next weekend at The Fire was going to be huge for us. We were even doing a live recording of the set.

It wasn’t like they didn’t have plenty of money. They both had high-paying jobs, and the insurance money from Alex’s death had made our already wealthy household even wealthier. They gave me five hundred bucks a month to help pay my student loans from those pointless two years at UPenn that they’d been the ones to insist upon. You’d think when they were the ones pushing me to go to college, that they would have at least paid for it. But since they hadn’t helped Michael, they didn’t help me. Some bullshit about making my own way. Too bad it had only ever been their way.

Five hundred to them was nothing, and to me it was the difference between doing what I loved and dreaming about doing what I love. I just needed a little more time.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “You’re going to stop helping me? fingernails scrape in her owI wondered if ”

“Eventually, yes.” Shit. I was going to have to double my shifts at the Trestle. Between that and my job at the tattoo parlor, I would have zero time for singing, much less writing my own stuff. “We were going to talk to you about it while we were here, but then we met Cade.”

“What does Cade have to do with it?”

“Well . . . you’re obviously getting your life together. You’re dating a nice, respectable boy and finally starting to take things seriously. Your father and I are so glad you’ve left behind the negative influences you were spending time with before. So, since you’re obviously trying, we’re going to give you a few more months.”

“A few?” I asked.

“Well, we’re going to play things by ear. But as long as you keep taking your life seriously, you don’t need to worry about it.”

AKA . . . as long as I kept dating Cade.

I wanted to scream.

At her.

At the world.

At myself. For being too damn cowardly to tell her exactly what I was thinking. I should have told her the truth about Cade. I should have told her that she was full of shit. I had been taking my life seriously.