Ecstasy

Zara

“You look great,” Mom tells me, picking at her salad. “Less…tired,” she finishes with, eyeing me as she drops her fork, giving up. I don’t blame her. It’s a fucking garden salad without dressing. At a restaurant in Falls Creek, just a little bit away from Caven, known for its pulled pork.

I think she picked the wrong place to diet at. Of course, Mom doesn’t need to diet. She just does. She always has.

I look at my own burger that I’ve taken two bites out of. But my orange juice is drained, and even though Mom looked at me like I was high when I ordered it, it was damn good.

I play with the paper napkin in my lap. “Thanks.”

She leans back in the rickety wooden chair, tilting her head as she eyes me. Her big blue eyes are full of something like suspicion, and if she accuses me of being on drugs right now, I might throw this napkin to the damn floor and walk right out.

But she doesn’t.

She accuses me of something worse.

“Zara Rose Henderson,” she chides me, but there’s something playful in her words. She leans forward, her hand on the table, and I see her wedding ring glinting in the lights overhead, the gold band etched with roses, pretty on her slender, manicured fingers. “Are you in love?”

My mouth falls open, and I ball the napkin up in my hand. What the actual fuck?

She smiles, small little wrinkles pulling at the crease of her eyes. She tosses back her shiny blonde hair, sitting up straighter and giving me a self-satisfied smirk. “I knew it. You are.” She sighs, blinking at me. “Well, go on. Who is he? God knows you’ve had to deal with a whole hoard of men from me, so I think I should at least get the lucky guy’s name.” She shrugs her shoulders, the tan sleeves of her silk blouse bunching up a little as she does. “Is it that boy you brought to the engagement party?” She narrows her eyes. “The one with the tattoos?”

I feel sick just thinking about him. “I’m not in love,” I manage to say, way too fucking late.

She stares at me, a scowl on her face. “Come on, Zara. Don’t lie to me. I’m your mother.” She smiles, and it’s genuine for once which is kind of weird since it’s directed at me. All I’ve done the past few years is disappoint her. Probably get in the way of her love life. “And obviously, I know a thing or two about love. Or how to fuck it up.”

My eyes go wide, jaw dropping. She just made a self-deprecating joke. She just said the F word. Is this my mother? Has she always been like this and I was just too high to see it?

I laugh, shaking my head a little, relaxing into my seat.

The waitress comes bustling over, glancing at our still-full plates. “Still workin’ on that?”

My mom doesn’t break eye contact with me, as if she’s willing this moment to stick. “Yes,” she says curtly, and I hear the waitress kind of huff at my mother’s tone—and probably the fact that my mother looks a little like a bitch—but she walks away without another word.

“I know,” Mom says suddenly, tapping her nails on the wooden table. We’re tucked into a table in the corner of the restaurant, far from the door—Mom insisted, so none of her clients would “recognize” her, which I had no words for—but she still leans in close to the table and whispers, “It’s that really tall boy I saw you with at the grocery store. It’s him, isn’t it?”

I laugh a little, but I can’t even manage a good denial. Despite the orange juice and the sex that I had and texting Alex and telling him I loved him, I’m still exhausted.

Or maybe all of those things are making me more exhausted, despite my mother’s words about looking “less tired”.

“He was hot, Zara,” she says, leaning back in her seat. “Really tall, and really hot.” She quirks her mouth to the side. “What was his name again?”

My cheeks are growing warm and I kind of want to start talking about him. I’m surprised she even remembers, but she’s always been good at paying attention to me, even in her absences. But I’m glad she doesn’t remember his name.

There’s the article about him breaking that guy’s nose on the field, and the shit about his dad in the papers. No, thanks.

Even though, between the two of us, I’m the fuck up, Mom wouldn’t see it that way.

“It’s not him, Mom,” I lie, even though I’m desperate to gush about him. To talk about his thick hair and his dark eyes and God, he is so fucking tall. And how kind he is and what he wants to do with his life and how he’s helping his mom and how he sounds kind of like a dick sometimes, but he actually has the most forgiving heart of anyone I’ve ever known.

Yeah. I want to say all that shit, but I don’t say any of it. Besides, I still have to work out my own shit before I can think about having a stable, steady relationship with Alex Cardi. We might have said we loved each other, but that was in a sex-induced haze of lust.

I see you.

I hear his words in my head, and I can’t stop the little smile on my lips. I avert my gaze from Mom, but she already saw it.

But then again.

Eli said those same words.

“Oh, hon,” she says, her words a breathless sigh. “I wish you’d talk to me about him. Unless it was the tattooed boy. You can talk to me about him too though, you know?”

I flick my gaze up, my stomach twisting into knots thinking about Eli. Thinking about that night at the beach. But Mom must read something else in my expression because she says, “Zara, don’t tell me you have feelings for him too.”

“What?” I ask, taken aback. “No, I don’t, I—”

“Two boys, Zara?”

My face flushes, and I feel uncomfortably warm even though I’m in jeans and a white tank top twisted into a knot, exposing the lower part of my waist. I pinch the thin material of my shirt between two fingers, fa

“I’m sure only one of them really wants what’s best for you. They can’t both love you equally, Zara. And you probably can’t love them both either.” She sighs. “Two boys are trouble, hon. Trust me.”

“Mom, it’s not like that.”

She shrugs her narrow shoulders, tapping her nails again against the table beside her plate of salad. “I know things, Zara. It’s why I’m the top agent in Monkey Junction.”

I mean, I guess I can’t argue with that stat, so I just keep quiet.

“Do they know each other?” she asks, quirking a brow.

“Mom, it isn’t…” I trail off, glancing out the wooden blinds beside us. The sky has grown dark, and I take in the cars in the parking lot beyond the rocking chairs on the covered porch outside.

I blow out a steady breath, turn to face her again. I don’t love Eli. But I can’t really tell her what happened between us, and Alex. I can’t say all that shit. But I guess I could go about it in a roundabout way. See what she thinks of it all.

It wouldn’t hurt to confide in Mom. Not everything, obviously, but getting a little advice couldn’t hurt.

“Yeah,” I tell her, straightening in my chair, elbows on the table, hands clasped together beside my barely touched burger. “They know each other.”

“Are they friends?” she pries. There’s no judgement in her eyes, and considering her marriage track record, I guess there wouldn’t be.

“Yep.” At least they used to be. Until me.

She shrugs. “Well, I might not know exactly what’s going on, but speaking from experience, I can tell you this.” She leans in closer and my heart pounds in my chest. “One of them doesn’t want you, Zara. One of them only wants to see if he can take you away from the other. That’s part of the appeal.” She levels me with her gaze, and I feel her next words like an arrow to the heart. “Once he gets you, he’ll drop you, and it’ll hurt like hell when he does.”