Public Relations

Chapter 17: Brett

I'm a man obsessed.

I spend the remainder of the day - the very, very long day - rotting away on my couch, reliving the same few minutes over again in my mind. The way she tasted like a cold drink of water, the way she pulled on my hair when I kissed her neck, the sounds she made when I did something right.

God, I'm in way too deep.

The hours pass like pages burning - quickly, with nearly no evidence of them having ever existed at all. The sun tucks herself below the horizon before I've snapped myself back to reality. It's nearly eight at night and I haven't eaten. I haven't worked, I haven't spoken to anyone. I've floated deliriously around the too-big, too-empty house, praying that Mia's scent never fades from my clothes, that her taste never fades from my lips.

It isn't until my mother calls that I come up for air.

"Hi, hi, sugar pie!" she exclaims, her voice syrupy and sweet.

A smile tugs at my lips as I seat myself on the furniture outside, enjoying the crisp evening air as the moon climbs to the top of the sky. "Hi, Ma."

A pot clangs on her end, followed by a bunch of almost swear words, like fudge and dang nabbit. She'd always prided herself on not using profanity unless the situation really called for it, like when our trailer almost burned down or when Aunt Tammy said I'd amount to nothing.

"How you doing?" she asks, and I can hear that something is in her mouth, most likely the hem of the apron as she folds it up to put it away.

"I'm fine."

My mother gasps. 

"What?" I ask, concerned. 

"Brett, who's the girl?"

I pause, my skin prickling with goosebumps. "What girl?"

She laughs, a hearty sound with a dash of sarcasm. "I'm your mother. I can hear it in your voice, baby. You are on a different planet today."

My feet graze over the stonework beneath them as I kick my feet off the side of the chair. I catch myself, though, the way I'm kicking my feet like a schoolboy with a crush. My shoulders pull back and I clear my throat.

She speaks before I get the chance to. "If you try lying to me, Brett, I'll post another one of your baby pictures to Twitter."

This gets a real chuckle out of me, which dies just as quickly as it comes. I swallow. "Oh, Ma. It's my publicist."

We spend almost an hour talking in a way that only a mother and son can. She has always known what I'm feeling before I do, and this certainly was no exception. She remains graciously quiet during my twenty-minute rant about how Mia sits with her legs tucked up in every chair, no matter how unreasonable. How she doesn't grab the attention from a room, she commands it, directs it. How she is passionate about her job to a fault, how it's unsustainable, how I worry about her.

It's not until I've stopped and taken several deep breaths, not until the silence floats back around me after disturbing it with such a rant, that she finally speaks.

"Have you told her this?" my mom asks, her midwestern twang stronger than usual, which is normally indicative of her being overworked or sleep deprived or both.

"No," I sigh, standing to pace. "She's made it abundantly clear that we are to keep this business relationship business professional."

"Has it stayed business professional?"

I melt back into the memory of kissing her, her kissing me, the way we enveloped each other so wholly. I'd conveniently left this detail out for my mother when detailing the series of events as they stand today. But moms always know.