Virtual Attraction [COMPLETE]

29| And He's Back

When I woke up on Sunday afternoon, my mother was home. I heard her fumbling around the kitchen, before there was a soft, tentative knock on my bedroom door.

"Blaze," she said, opening the door. Her eyes gleamed with an expression I couldn't quite recognize. Was it guilt?

"Save it," I said, rolling my eyes. "I know you didn't come home all weekend."

"Well good morning to you too," she quipped back.

"Do whatever you want Mom, it's your life." I wasn't about to argue with her about this anymore.

It was time I found something better to do, than losing sleep over something I could never change. Even if Mom and Mr. Philipps hadn't gotten together, she'd have bamboozled her way into another relationship with a rich man. This was the cycle, the natural way of life. It was always going to be this way.

The words she said next felt like a sword through my chest. "He's going to leave his wife for me."

I looked up at her, remembering that I'd seen Mrs. Philipps at Carl's Grocery Store. She had looked frazzled and disoriented, with two children hanging off her shoulder. "When?"

"As soon as his son turns a year old." I remembered the two children I'd seen on her arms at the grocery store. I hadn't known the Philipps had three children.

"Oh my God, mom, how could you fall for this?"

"I'm not falling for anything. It's time you begin to accept Ron, because he's not going anywhere."

"When does his child turn a year?"

"In a year," she answered.

I rolled my eyes again. "Until then, what are you going to do? You're already pregnant with his baby."

She looked at me with shock. "How—

"You left a pregnancy test on the floor in your room. I can't believe you just left it lying around." A pregnancy test strewn over her messy bedroom floor was the worst way I could've found out. Had she forgotten that she had a daughter? When would she ever realize that the world didn't exist just to please her.

"He doesn't know," she said, softly. "But as soon as I tell him...I'm sure that'll speed up his plans. I know you don't think so, Blaze, but he really loves me. And I know I've been sort of busy lately, but I want you know that you'll always come first. No matter what."

I let out a bitter laugh. She'd never put me first in her life before. What made me think she was suddenly going to do that now?

The next day at school, Adam ignored me.

At lunch time, I grabbed a tray from the cafeteria and topped it with some roast beef and sweet potato fries, then began searching for a seat. Just as I began towards a table at the far corner of the room, I felt my food tray topple out of my hands as my body followed it to the ground. Slamming my right cheek on the floor, I looked up to see a group of guys who were standing over me, laughing uproariously. They were making obscene gestures and movements, just like the ones I'd made on the dance floor at Caden's party.

Just then, I noticed Adam standing behind the group of boys in the entranceway to the school cafeteria. His dark brown and blond hair swooped over his eyes, and he winked at me, then he was gone.

Ugh. We'd spent the whole weekend kissing, and this was how he treated me? Wait, I had spent a whole weekend kissing Adam Godfrey? What had my life become?