His Saving Grace.

Chapter 27.

"Mom, have you seen my charger?" I shouted from the top of the stairs. "Living room," came her faded reply. I skipped down the steps and grabbed my charger from the coffee table in the living room. I popped my head in the kitchen and saw my mom busily chopping some vegetables on the chopping board.

I walked to the counter and plopped myself in the seat facing her. "Thanks," I grinned, holding up my charger. It's been a long time since I had a real conversation with my mom, what with her taking care of Nana and all. They got back two weeks after mine and Hunter's pool date.

"How is everything with you and Hunter?" Mom asked as she continued chopping some onions. "Well, we've been dating for five months now and it's been going great. I really like him," I said while playing with my charger. Mom looked up at me with red rimmed eyes and gave me a small smile.

Upon seeing her face, I jumped up from my seat and rushed to her side. "Mom, why are you crying?" She gave me a baffled look and started laughing. Like, full on-clutching-on-her-stomach laughing. I gave her a confused look and she breathed out heavily, trying to sober up. "Oh honey, it's the onions. Your declaration of love for your boyfriend is not enough to bring me to tears," she said in a teasing tone and scraped the chopped onions in a heated pan.

"Ha-ha. Very funny, Mom," I said flatly. "And I don't love Hunter, yet," I added quietly. My mother gave me an I-can-see-right-through-your-lie look and I rolled my eyes and turned to leave.

"Oh honey, why don't you invite Hunter over for dinner. We barely see him anymore around here," she called as I was at the doorway. "Sure."

Plugging my phone in to charge, I sent Hunter a text.

'Mom wants you to come over for dinner. Are you free? -G'

I put the phone down after I realised that I wasn't going to get any reply. I sighed and grabbed my laptop from my bedside table and opened it to Netflix. I searched it for any interesting movies and decided to watch Flipped. I've already seen it but I just needed the distraction.

As I watched Julie sitting on a branch of the old sycamore tree, trying to convince Bryce to join her and him ignoring her, I was reminded of these past few weeks that Hunter has been ignoring me too. After our pool date four months ago, Hunter has been the perfect boyfriend. We went out on dates and did all those couple-y things. Some days we would just laze around the house and watch movies all day and we would never get tired of being around each other too much. But I guess that was the point in the relationship where it was all just fun and easy going. Basically, the high wore off, mostly for Hunter.

He's been real busy lately with God knows what, and I've been seeing less of him at school too. After we started dating, he's been trying to make an effort to maintain an average attendance but for the last two weeks, he'd been slacking off again. And I'm worried.

I'd asked him about his whereabouts the other day and he gave me a shoulder shrug and an 'I'm just busy with work'. I didn't even know he had a job until he mentioned it. I figured that he would tell me if something's wrong with him on his own time and will because that's just who he is, so I let it go.

I glanced at my charging phone and was disappointed when I didn't see any messages or calls. Guess he's busy, again. I sighed and turned back to the screen of my laptop, blocking out any thoughts of Hunter and his whereabouts and concentrated on the movie.

I was at the part where Julie overheard Bryce and whats-his-name talking in the library about her and her family when my dad's head popped in at the door. "Sweetie, dinner's ready." I looked up from the screen and mumbled an 'okay.'