Never Fall in Love with the Fisher Boys

36- One Big Happy Family

“Are you sure that you don’t want to go?” Carter wondered a few weeks later on a Friday afternoon, right after school. “It’ll be really fun.”

“Dude, she’s sure,” Ethan insisted. All three of us were standing in Carter’s room as I was saying goodbye to him for the weekend. Carter and Ethan were about to fly to California because the Lakers game was the next day, the game that I’d gotten him tickets for as a Christmas present. But considering I can’t seem to get into the basketball thing, Carter was taking Ethan instead of me, which was my idea.

“Really, I am,” I assure my boyfriend. “You two have fun. And good luck, I hope they win.”

“Of course they’re going to win,” Ethan said, rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of my statement.

“Okay, well we have to go now to make our flight, so I’ll see you on Sunday,” Carter said, kissing my lips before all three of us start walking out of his room.

“Yeah, I’ll see you on Sunday. Let me know how it goes,” I said. He kissed me one last time before Ethan was eagerly pulling Carter away from me, excited to get to California and to be that much closer to the Lakers.

“I will. I love you!” Carter called down the hallway.

“I love you too!” I called back with a small giggle. Once they were out of sight, I took a few steps to my left and then went into my room to do some homework, which was probably what I was going to be doing all weekend. Sophie was there at the house but she was going to be spending the whole weekend with Andy. Paige was stuck babysitting her baby cousin too, so that left me alone except for Will, who would most likely be out of the house the whole time with Aster considering their date apparently went phenomenally and they are now actually together.

Their date was actually kind of funny because Will was so nervous about the whole thing, I had spent two hours in his room with him to help him get dressed. He spent half an hour trying to pick the perfect tie and then another half an hour making sure that his hair looked like the perfect combination between effort and effortless.

Meanwhile, Aster was doing the female version of all of that stuff at her house with Sophie to accompany her. They were basically made for each other.

Anyway, with everybody off doing their own thing, I decided to spend this weekend getting all of my homework and essays done so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them later, even though most of the stuff wasn’t due for a while. I could go offer my assistance to Anna and Tommy, who were spending most of their free time planning the wedding even though it probably wouldn’t be for a another year or so.

As I was listening to music on my laptop and plowing through my calculus homework, I was suddenly startled by the beeping music from Skype that told me that I had a Skype video call. It was obviously my mother considering she was the only one that used Skype to call me.

I almost considered ignoring the call because I was still so disgusted with our last conversation when she’d told me that she knew about her thirty-something friend sneaking into my bedroom every night when I was sixteen. However, she was my mother and I still missed her a lot. I hadn’t seen her in eight months and I hadn’t talked to her in a few months either.

With a loud sigh, I leaned over my calculus text book and pressed the green ‘answer’ button, causing my mother’s face to appear on my screen.

“Madison!” She squealed at me with a wide toothy grin.

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted her. “What’s up?”

“I haven’t talked to you in ages,” She said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. I noticed that it seemed lighter and I wondered if she dyed it but I didn’t ask. “How have you been, dear?”