Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)(13)
I never made overtures, either. I can list few things that would have interested teen me less than a guy twice my age. After moving to the UK, I didn’t return overseas for a while, choosing to spend my holidays with Rose and her family, then with Alfie. I did briefly go back last summer, between my third and fourth year, but I must not have crossed paths with Hark, because…
Frankly, I’d forgotten that he existed.
“Did you think I was Mayers something or other?”
“Yeah. Be nice if you introduced yourself at the start of a call. Maya.” He sounds annoyed, which perfectly matches my recollection of his temperament. Bit of an asshole seemed to be his dominant personality trait.
I’m not the type to crumble under the weight of a rude reply, but right now I’m not at my most emotionally regulated. “Okay, well…Can I talk to my brother?”
“His plane just took off. It’ll be a while.”
My stomach drops. “Is there any way to get in touch with him?”
“You can text him, but after he boarded the pilot announced that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working.”
I might have to scream. Or not. I’ll have to wait and see. “How many hours is the flight?”
“No clue. Twenty?”
“Twenty?”
“Might be more. Or less. I’m not a licensed air traffic controller. But there’s this new tech you might use to figure it out.”
“What tech?”
“Google, it’s called.”
I close my eyes as tears start trickling out once again. I cannot deal with—I can’t. Not right now. “Well, if you hear from him before I do, please tell him to callmebackatthisnumber.” I barely manage to spit out the last few words before hanging up and bursting into a fresh bout of tears.
I sob for a few seconds, then fold over to bite into the ball of my denim-covered knee. Fuck him. Fuck him, and fuck all fucking men. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be sitting in a fucking park past fucking dark—
My phone rings. I pick up, too hopeful and bleary-eyed to check the caller ID. Stupidly ask, “Eli?”
“Are you crying?” It’s Conor Harkness.
Again.
“No,” I snarl. Between hiccups.
“You are crying.”
“What do you care? Why did you even call me back?”
“Because you are Eli’s family. And you are crying.” He sounds accusing. Like he is being personally victimized by the worst week of my life.
“Can we please just hang up? You have a Mayers to talk to, and I would love to not go through this shitty moment with someone I barely know.”
“Why shitty? What’s wrong?”
The question is…whatever the opposite of solicitous is. “Why would I tell you?”
“Because your brother is unreachable, and I’m a fucking adult, and you aren’t. It is my civic responsibility to make sure children aren’t being abducted, or some similar horseshit.”
“Children? Are you for real? Do you even know who you’re talking to?”
“Aren’t you Eli’s baby sister?”
“Baby sister? How old do you think I am?”
“You’re thirteen, or thereabout.”
I exhale, shocked. “I was thirteen. Seven years ago.”
“What? You’re not twenty.”
“I sure am.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Christ.” He mutters something sweary about the passage of time, and I roll my eyes.
“Now that I’ve caught you up with the rotations of Earth around the sun, goodbye.” I make to hang up, but—
“No, not goodbye.” His speech is short. Authoritarian. It’s painfully obvious that he’s used to people doing as he says, no questions asked. “Tell me why the hell you’re crying, so we can establish that it’s just a load of inconsequential shite, and I can hang up the call with a clean soul.”
What a piece of shit. “Okay, first of all, your soul has never been anything but coal smeared. I bet you burned ants with magnifying lenses when you were a toddler, back during the Protestant Reformation.”
“That is patently libelous, and I do not deserve—”
“Secondly, I do not see why I should be wasting my time on you, an absolute no one in my life who clearly thinks I still play with Polly Pockets despite the fact that I’ve been registered to vote for two dozen fucking moons. Dude, I barely know you, and what I’m discovering is not flattering. So forgive me if I don’t share my life story and tell you that my boyfriend of over a year dumped me last week for a girl who not only happens to be my best friend’s cousin, but also my roommate. And yesterday, when I came back from the gym, the three of them were waiting to give me some kind of makeshift intervention and tell me that it would be infinitely selfish and evil of me to stand between their whirlwind, star-crossed romance. And since they were ganging up on me, I got so angry that I forgot to do my stupid breathing exercises, I forgot the counting, too, and then I yelled that they could go at it on every surface of our apartment for all I cared, and that I wished them a life full of painful, pus-infected STDs. And this m-morning when I woke up they were there, in the kitchen, watching a panel show, making out under my cupboard, where I put my emotional-support Tunnock’s wafers, and they t-told me that I should be ashamed of my behavior last n-night, that they are afraid of my anger and of my d-disproportionate reactions, that I am the one at fault for being aggressive, and I couldn’t s-stand it anymore so I ran out of the d-door and now I never ever want to fucking g-go back.” The last part comes out as a weepy, babbling, maniacal screech. I can tell from the way passersby turn my way, and from the fact that Conor Harkness, clearly not one to ever shut up, has fallen quiet.