Page 9 of Call You Mine
My skin prickles with the need for order, wishing I could do something other than hold the steering wheel with my hands right now.
My mind drifts to my sisters. I need to call Phoebe and Jasmine and fill them in about Mom, but I want to get Georgie back to my apartment first. She doesn’t need to hear the three of us discuss what happened—what needs to happen moving forward.
While she’s our mom too, the three of us each hadverydifferent versions of her growing up, which has led us all tohave our own complicated relationships with her—while I kept the lines of communication open with my mom, more for Georgie’s sake than my own, Phoebe and Jasmine both left home and never really looked back.
I also need to call Emerson.
My current roommate is one of my best friends, and I know she would support me in my decision to get Georgie out of that house, but she deserves a heads-up before I bring my little sister to our two-bedroom apartment.
Fuck, I wish I knew how bad it had gotten with my mom.
I would’ve been there the second she started drinking again. I’m only twenty minutes away, for fuck’s sake.
Ishouldhave been there.
“What about school?” Georgie asks, and I’m thankful for the small reprieve it gives me from my thoughts—even though her question just sends me down another black hole of anxiety.
“Do you want to go?” I ask, struggling to find an answer to her question.
“Yes,” she responds. “It’s Friday,” she explains. “We’re doing a Valentine exchange in my reading class at the end of the day. Mom was supposed to get me valentines to give out.”
Well, I’m sure she didn’t do that, I think to myself.
I glance at the time on my dash—ninety minutes before I need to be at Hey Honey’s to get the opening duties done before we open at six.
“Tomorrow’s not Valentine’s Day.” I don’t know why I say it, not that I care when the stupid holiday is anyway—it really could be tomorrow for all I know. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware it’s Friday.
“It’s on Sunday,” Georgie replies with an attitude, as if it’s beneath her to be explaining this to me. “We don’t have school on Sundays, in case you didn’t know, so Ms. Mullins planned it for Friday.”
“And you don’t want to miss it?” I ask carefully, surprised.
“Not really,” Georgie fires back. She’s only functioning on adrenaline and whatever else keeps thirteen-year-olds awake these days—probably all the angst—so I don’t take her response personally.
I may not understand why this Valentine’s Day exchange thing in her reading class is important, but if it’s a priority for Georgie, then it’s one for me, too.
She’s had little to no say about what’s happening to her since my mom decided to pick up the bottle of vodka again, and I don’t know how much of a say she’ll have moving forward—once I figure out what the hell I’m going to do about all of this.
So, if she wants to go to school, she’ll go to school.
“I’ll figure it out,” I tell her, because what else am I supposed to say?
And I will figure it out—I always have; I alwaysdo.
CHAPTER 4
ANDERSON
Thank fuckI don’t work today.
After freezing my balls off, watching Ava’s car until it disappeared into the night, I couldn’t fall back asleep—not with the way she raced away after hearing whatever the person who called her said.
I tossed and turned until I finally decided just to cut my losses and start my day.
Turning the speed up on the treadmill, I ignore the urge to check my phone for the millionth time this morning, hoping to hear from Ava.
I texted her the second I was back in my bedroom last night.
Everything okay?
