Page 10 of The Music of Us
Dear Jacob,
This is Luciana Melrose, an acquaintance whom you might remember from your previous residence in Somerset. I regret to inform you that—
Something behind me shifted, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Bubbles had jumped onto the back of the couch. She stared down at the blinking cursor on my phone, her eyes reflecting the glow of the screen. She sent me a questioning look.
“It sounds wrong, doesn’t it?” I started backspacing. That wasn’t how you’d talk to someone you used to tell your deepest secrets to. “It’s too formal. I sound like I’m inviting him to a funeral and there’s been no death.” Bubbles gave me a judgmental look. Then mewed. “Well, yeah, aside from my social skills. But you don’t need to mention that.”
Draft deleted.
It needed to be casual and to the point.
Jake,
The Tiny Tiger’s in trouble. Remember how you said you’d always be there for me? Did you mean it?
I pasted a link to the café’s page with the donation links and reservation form, then stared at the blinking cursor, wondering if I needed to add or delete anything. I either had too much to say to him or too little, it seemed.
I guess that was just the story of us.
My thumb moved over the paper airplane button before retreating once again.
Did you mean it?A question, an accusation, and a dare all in four words.
Should I really do this?
I looked back up. At the adoption board’s photo of Mom when the café first opened. At the cats around me who needed this place. At myhome.
I looked back down at my email.
Then I hit Send.
***
You have no new messages.
It’d been two days since I wrote Jake, and he still hadn’t replied.
I might have to face the fact there’d never be a reply. What were the odds that Jake would help, or that he even still checked his old account?
Or maybe he’d seen it and was ignoring me.
Irritated, I tossed my phone back down onto the counter.
Guess it’s down to just Mom and me again, like always.
I never knew my dad. He and Mom had a good relationship at some point, I guess, but he left when she got pregnant at twenty. He couldn’t handle the idea of a family and dealing with all the day-to-day life problems. Mom dropped out of college, had me, and opened The Tiny Tiger, building her new world from the ground up, all by herself.
Mom spent my whole life making sure she was always there for me and filling my world with so much love that I never felt a void or spent much time wondering about my father. But he was still a life lesson—I promised myself I’d always be there for the people and things I cared about, and I wanted the people in my life to do the same. Good people stuck around when life got tough and everything went wrong, not just when things were good or easy.
That’s the type of person I thought Jake was, once upon a time.
Sighing, I stood and checked the clock. It was past closing time, and I knew I should lock up and go home. Mom had left hours earlier, since she still got exhausted easily, and Amber had left too. But I couldn’t bring myself to go just yet.
The café was my happy place. It’d been that way forever—I was the kid who always begged to stay for just five more minutes.
But what would I do if—
Thunk.
