I was heading out of my hotel room when my cell phone rang. Seeing the name on the caller ID caused me to tense, and for a moment, it felt as though I had no more breath in my body. He was a blast from the past. Someone I hadn’t heard from in years.
“I can’t do this right now,” I said into the phone. “I can’t talk to you, Lucas. It’s not a good time.”
“Sure you can,” Lucas said. “Try.”
His voice sounded exactly the same as I remembered. I wondered if he thought the same about me.
“Joslyn, you still there?” he asked.
“Don’t call me that. In fact, don’t call me at all.”
I pushed the end button, tossed the phone onto the bed. Twenty seconds later, it rang again, just like I knew it would. I watched it buzz once, then twice. On the third time, I cursed at the phone and then answered it. “I said not to call me.”
“If you don’t want to talk to me, why do you keep answering?”
Unnerving, irritating ass.
“What do you want, Lucas?”
“You decide if you’re coming to Clay and Court’s wedding next weekend?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Maybe not. Wanted you to know, if you wanna come, it’s fine by me. I actually think it would be a good thing.”
“It’s fine with you?” I said. “I don’t need your permission.”
“Saw your mom today at the store. She seemed upset, said she didn’t think you were gonna make it. She is really hoping you’ll be here.”
I envisioned the rendezvous between Lucas and my mother in my mind—how it went, how they talked to each other, how many times my mother mentioned things like how sorry she was when our marriage ended. After all he’d put me through, the fact she still had a soft spot for him irked me.
“My conversations with my mother are also none of your business,” I said. “You shouldn’t be talking to her to me.”
“You have it all wrong, you know. She approached me, Joslyn. Not the other way around. I’m just sayin’, don’t stay away on account of me.”
“I don’t base any of my decisions on you. I stopped needing your permission a long time ago.”
“Good.”
“Good,” I said.
“Anyway, been a long time. It would be nice to see you again.”
I wanted to say, Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be good to see YOU. The words were right there, dancing around the tip of my tongue like a fighter dodging his opponent in a boxing ring. I opened my mouth then closed it. I didn’t need to do this. Nothing I said would change the past or affect the future. The “us” had dissipated long ago.
“If you’re worried about Kinsey being there, she won’t.”
“It makes no difference to me if she is or if she isn’t. Why would it?”
“I mean to say, she won’t be there because we’re not together anymore. We’re divorced.”
There it was at last. The clarity I needed for his unexpected phone call shifted into focus. He may have used my mother as the excuse for his call, but he had another agenda. He was alone, and being alone terrified him. “What are you trying to do by calling me—”
“I’m not trying to do anything. I thought ... I mean, I was hoping we could be friends.”
“Friends? We’re not friends, Lucas.”
“Why can’t we be?”
“A friend is someone I can count on. Someone I can trust. Someone who would never betray me. You’re none of these things.”
“Come on, Joss, I’m trying here.”
“I’m sorry. It just isn’t possible. After all that’s happened, I can’t let you back in. It would be too hard.”
I pressed the end button again.
And this time when the phone rang again, I exercised restraint.