Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire #7)(10)

“Amanda? Is that you?” Mom’s voice is a mixture of concern and anxiety.

“Who else would it be?” I say, realizing my mistake as the words come out.

“Who else? You could be a robber,” she answers, outraged at my insouciance. “A rapist. Someone trying to steal that nice computer your boss gave you.”

“Right.” The less said, the better. Did I mention what my mother does for a living?

She’s an actuary. Working right now on terrorist insurance for large corporations. It’s like having Josh Duggar work in costume design for Hooters.

Nothing like picking a line of work that feeds into your greatest source of weakness.

“It could be Tommy Lee Jones,” she says.

“Right—wait, what?”

Mirth fills her voice. “Hah. Gotcha.”

One joke. One little, not-funny joke is all it takes for me to understand her mood. I’ve cultivated a series of coping strategies for understanding where she is emotionally at any given time.

“You got me,” I say, walking over to her old vinyl record player and putting on some Thelonius Monk, the neat, orderly steps for starting the machine done by rote memory, a soothing ritual that cuts through today’s craziness.

Mom’s passion of vinyl carried over to me. The scratches and bumps make the music gritty and real, and jazz helps her to mellow out.

“What were you doing?” she asks as the music provides a backdrop for our talk.

“Kissing a billionaire,” I blurt out.

“Really? There certainly are plenty of billionaires going around now. Shannon got one. Are they handing them out like free samples at Costco now?”

“Hah,” I pivot. “Gotcha.”

She believes the lie. Wouldn’t you?

“Oh, Amanda,” she says, moving with great effort. Where I’m taller and rounder, Mom is a pixie. Tiny and high-strung, she says the fibro turns her into blocks of concrete shoved inside a flesh set of tights. Her pain level must be manageable today.

Some days, she can’t even joke.

“You’ll find your billionaire some day, honey,” she says, yawning.

I already have, I want to say. I pinch my own forearm, willing the thought to go away.

Spritzy runs into the room, collar clanging.

Mom winces. “We need to do something about that collar. The metal against the metal makes my silver fillings hurt.”

Sound sensitivity comes with her fibro, too.

I pick up the little teacup chihuahua, giving him some love. Spritzy shakes in my arms with an unremitting joy that makes me wonder why on earth I keep spending so much time obsessed with worrying about whether I’ll ever find true love.

I’m holding it in my arms right now, all 2.7 pounds of it.

Too bad you can’t really date your dog. At least, your dog’s personality.

“I can order the plastic tags, Mom. He doesn’t need the metal ones.” As if he agrees with me, Spritzy nods his head. Then I realize he’s licking my hand over and over, his head bobbing. He must taste rescue cookies.

Verbal Mistake Number 2 with my mother. We’ve been through this before, and....

“It’s a waste of money to swap them out. I just need to learn to live with the sound.”

And 3...2...1...

Cue a big sigh.

Am I callous for thinking about her fibromyalgia in terms of a rubric? It’s like when I create and implement a new mystery shopper’s questionnaire for a new marketing campaign. Study the objective. Determine the best way to meet the goal. Meet customer expectations. Exceed customer expectations.

And always, always, manage expectations.

But the true measure of success comes in predicting what happens next.

“I can see you’re having a tough time, Mom,” I say. My compassion is real. I remember the mom she was before the car accident. I know she doesn’t want to be like this. I know pain can change a person.

“I am,” she says. Her voice is filled with a thousand regrets and a million feelings she wants to convey but can’t. I get it. I understand. I’m a fixer. I can detect nearly any problem in a person’s voice, in the way they bounce their legs, in the nervous twitch of an eyelid.

In the taste of a man’s kiss when he’s trying to silence me from detecting exactly what I’m trained to do.

Spritzy’s licking my face now. It’s cute, but he’s no substitute for Andrew.

“Can I help? Heat up a rice sock for you? Run you a bath?” I ask Mom.

Her voice starts to tremble, the ripples of sound an apology for something she feels sorry for, though it was never her fault. “Thank you. The rice sock sounds lovely.”

I plunk Spritzy down on his impossibly-tiny dog bed and make my way to the kitchen. It is spotless. Crumbs on the counter are like germs in an oncology ward: carefully exorcized and kept at bay at all costs, as if the punishment for a breech is death.

In my mom’s world, it is.

The rice sock has lavender in it, and as the microwave performs its magic, I lean against the counter and take a deep, cleansing breath. The adrenaline from the night’s events drains out of me, the mild rush now turning into the mind-racing of the damned. The entire evening replays itself like a digital film reel being edited on a computer, going in reverse in 2x, 4x, 16x. Then back to the beginning with Ron the Dog Butt Masseuse, to my own massaging of a much more appealing ass.