The Date

Chapter 3

Jay

"Jay Minster?" I answered my office phone rubbing my eyes, it had been a long day at the office.

"Hello sweetie!" I heard my mother's voice.

"Hello Mum" I moaned a little, not that I wasn't happy to hear from her just that I was tired and I just wanted to wrap this case up and go home to chill out and not have to think about anything. But if I knew my mother she never only phoned me at work if it wasn't important.

"You don't sound too happy hearing from your own mother" she complained.

"Sorry. Hello Mother, how is your beautiful self today" I said with a little more enthusiastic.

"No need to overdo it, dear"

"What can I help you with?"

"I'm just reminding you about this weekend's getaway for Rupert Anderson's birthday," she said. I curst in my head, crap! I forgot all about the damn party.

"Is this a reminder or are you telling me?" I said it was Tuesday I had three days... I was meant to find a date.

"I told you about it!"

"No you didn't" I snapped back at her, mother always said she did and said things when she didn't... I'd blame it on her age but Dad says she's always done it.

"Yes I did, I distinctly remember talking to you about it last week at coffee" great example of my last statement, we didn't have coffee.

"We didn't go to coffee Mother that was most likely one of my other brothers" I leant back in my chair wanting so badly to be asleep; I was not a night person. I could wake early in the morning and him happy as Larry but after a fall stressful day at the office, I'm an ogre.

"I'd have sworn you knew about it" she started to sound doubtful.

"No mother because I would have made up an excuse by now not to go" I hated parties where my whole family and friends we're involved, no one was themselves and it was just an excuse for people to gossip about each other. Or in my mother's case play cupid.

"You're going," she told me but she forgets that I'm not a child anymore, I'm twenty-eight years old I don't have to do what my mother tells me. I think...

"No, I'm not" I stated.

"Yes! You have to or my plans..." she started saying slipping out her big match-making plans.

"What plans?"

"Ah... what... I don't have any plans" she tried to dig herself back out of the hole she started, sometimes she acts like the child and I the adult.

"Mother?" I said telling her I wasn't stupid.

"Ok! She's twenty-six and loves art, just like you"

"Lots of people love art Mother" I groaned.

"Yes but she's lovely! Very beautiful, tall with..." she started rambling on before I stopped her.

"Mum you need to stop setting me up with women!" I laughed that awkward annoyed laugh people do when the moment isn't funny but it's all you can do.

"Well come on Jay, you're not giving me much to work on here, you've never had a girlfriend..."

"Yes, I have" I interrupted her, thinking of the many girls my Mother has seen me with.

"Dates Jay, their dates. You've never had a relationship that I know about" she sounded upset about that like she always did when she talked about my love life.