Master of Timing

“Here, I got it.” Sid reached for her case, pretending to nearly drop it as if it was heavy. “Would you mind grabbing me a Gatorade?”

“Sure,” She nodded, turning away from him and back towards the kitchen. “What flavour?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He moved quickly to the back of his car to set her suitcase in the trunk, keeping his eyes on the door that lead into his house before she appeared, just as he was zipping it back up. He took the drink from her and reached up to close the door, putting the bottle on the step bar near his license plate. “Wait.”

She frowned, adjusting the bag on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” He said quickly, rubbing both of his hands on her arms. “I’m gonna do this now, since I won’t really be able to when we… y’know.” He paused, but didn’t have to wait long for the look of realisation to cross her face, smiling a little sadly when she shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not that I don’t want-”

“No, I get it,” She agreed, stepping closer into his space.

“Not that it ever happens, but everyone has a camera in their pocket these days and I’d hate for you to be caught up in all that, since people can get a little crazy-”

“Sidney.” She covered his mouth with her hand, raising an eyebrow. “It’s fine. I get it. And if you keep talking like this instead of kissing me like I’d hoped you would, I’m going to end up missing my flight - which, no. It’s not an option.”

He rolled his eyes but pulled her hand away anyway, dropping it to cup her face gently, looking into her eyes. He bent forward and kissed her, closed mouth and slow, waiting until he felt her hands slide up from his waist to his back before he pulled away to hug her tightly. As much as he felt like he was in some corny romance novel (and not like he’d ever admit it to anyone but himself anyway), he really didn’t want her to leave.

Sidney had woken up from many a dream of moments like this - thinking about what it would be like to be saying goodbye to her, over and over again. Except in every single one of those dreams, it was him that was leaving. Just on a road trip, only for a few days. He had no idea how his subconscious got from ‘kind of dating’ to ‘living together’ but he had accepted it a few weeks before that he was a little bit gone on her.

Nothing about their three days together had felt like it was new, like it was the first time they’d had a chance to spend some real time together. She slotted into his life almost as easy as it was to breathe and a part of him was terrified. A small part, granted, after he’d called his sister asking for advice. Not that he ever wanted to get dating advice from his sister (he knew Taylor could handle her own, but big brothers are supposed to be the caretakers, not the other way around), but she’d pestered him the whole time she’d been in town with his parents and it felt good to talk to someone about Lyndsey, someone that he didn’t see every day at the rink.

He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before - even though they had both done their best to wear each other out. She had tucked her arms under her pillow when he’d slipped out of bed to get some water from the bathroom, lying on her stomach, her face turned towards his side of the bed - which was actually the side she had been lying on the past two nights but he was willing to give it up, no question. Her brown hair was a half tangled mess (he had forgotten how much he loved having a women’s hair wrapped around his hands when he had her in his bed), falling down her shoulder and back, a few inches above where the sheet she’d haphazardly pulled over herself was resting low on her waist.

He stopped himself from looking around the room and trying to see her there with him. It was crazy, really. To think about her that way when he’d only slept with her for the first time a little over 24 hours before. But it felt right. She felt like she belonged there - her make up taking up way more of the bathroom counter than he could possibly imagine, having to empty out the ‘her’ side of his his n’ hers walk in robe, just so she’d have somewhere to put all her shoes.

Shoes she didn’t own yet. Things he wanted to buy her, spoil her with.

He’d taken a big gulp of water at that point. They’d only known each other for the better part of 6 months, realistically. But in other ways, especially when he’d stay up late after a rough game and talk to her for nearly an hour on the phone when she wasn’t working, he had to remind himself that she’d hadn’t been in his life forever.

There was no way he could have put it all into words, not without scaring her and making sure that she deleted his number as soon as she was on the plane and in the air, so he pulled her in to him a little tighter, his fingers gripping her around her ribs probably a little harder than she was expecting, because she gasped into his neck, her fingers pulling on his sweater slightly.

He kissed a quick apology into her shoulder, standing up to his full height and dropping his arms from around her body, brushing her bangs away from her eyes slightly. She stepped to his left without a word, brushing the backs of their hands together briefly as she walked towards the passenger seat, leaving him to pick up his drink and dig his keys out of his pocket.



Lyndsey could see the lights on the living room before she’d even reached her driveway. It wasn’t late at all, so she knew that her Mom was probably watching NCIS or a re-run of Criminal Minds. When it came to TV shows, they were both like two peas in a pod.

She’d already figured out what she was going to say. Lyndsey used her rare long weekends off to her advantage anyway, so Lorraine didn’t seem all that fussed when Lyndsey had told her she was going away with Jackie and Koby for the weekend up to Jasper to look at the mountains and snow. Her mom never spoke to Jackie anyway, and it gave her the cover she needed to leave her car parked at the airport for the weekend, long term costs be damned. There was a small part of her that felt weird for lying to her mother, but that didn’t come close to the frustration she felt when she thought for a second just what she’d say if she was going to tell her the truth. It gave her a headache, and what Lorraine didn’t know wasn’t going to kill her.

It wasn’t like Lyndsey had spent the weekend doing something stupid and reckless like take ecstasy and party at a festival, for example.

“Hey,” She called out, poking her hands through the railing to scratch at Sadie, who was wiggling her tiny pug tail as much as she could, sniffing Lyndsey’s hands excitedly. Her phone buzzed in her hands, Sid responding to her Just got home x text.

“Hi. How was your weekend?”

Lyndsey swallowed. “Good. I’m going to go put this downstairs.”

She had barely put her hand on the handle of her case before the TV was suddenly silent, the only sound in the room coming from the dogs who were still chasing each other in the excitement of someone being home.

“Come here for a second.”

There was something in her Mom’s voice that made her pause, her tone not the usual one she uses when she’s calling for Lyndsey to do something.

“What’s up?”

The dogs were all jumping up not the couch next to her, scrambling across her lap to say hi, to lick any and everything they could get their noses and tongues into. It gave her something else to focus on, not the death glare she was getting from the opposite side of the room. For a split second, Lyndsey thought that someone had died.

“How was Jasper?”

Lyndsey frowned. Lorraine was looking at her with an eyebrow raised, her arms crossed against her chest, waiting impatiently without saying anything like only a mother can. Honestly, they must have a school for it - no one could just glare like that at their own kid without having had some kind of training.

“Oh,” maybe she could get through an absentminded explanation - drawing on when she was last there, when Kate had been travelling around and stayed with her and her Mom for a few weeks, Jasper National Park being somewhere they’d gone just to see the Rockies covered in snow for the first time. “Freezing. But there were no clouds when we went on the gondola thing, so Koby had a blast running around in the snow.”

Lyndsey smiled brightly, trying not to let the hesitation show on her face. When Lorraine nodded, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten away with it.

“So, you were playing in the snow with Koby when I saw Jackie at Walmart, yesterday?”

Maybe not.

“Uh…”

“Or did you just offer to baby sit for the weekend? Because, when I asked Jackie just what she was doing here, she told me she was just doing her grocery shopping.” Lorraine was sitting on the edge of the sofa at that point, her voice raising with each word that the dogs were settling down, Sadie crawling and hiding her head behind Lyndsey’s back. “Oh! And that she had no idea she was supposed to be in Jasper this weekend.”

“Mom-”

“So, I’d really appreciate it if you tell me just where the hell you’ve been for the last three days, if you don’t mind.”

Lyndsey felt the moment she blushed - the layers of clothes she’d worn on the plane were suddenly overbearing and she unzipped the jacket she’d been wearing. Forgetting altogether what logo was on the breast of the jacket. Lorraine hadn’t seemed to notice, yet.

“I… I don’t know how to say this, it’s-”

“Open your mouth and form words.”

“Uh, wow. Okay, Mom - there’s no need to get pissed.”

Lorraine’s eyes widened like dinner plates, the remote for the TV smacking down onto the table beside the sofa when she threw it there.

“My daughter has been gone for three days and no one knew where she was, and you have the audacity to sit there and tell me ‘not get pissed’?” Lyndsey knew she was in deep shit, Lorraine making air quotes and everything. She swallowed down the apology that wanted to come tumbling out of her mouth.

She hadn’t meant to worry anyone, but there was no way in hell she was going to say sorry for the weekend she’d just had. It was too important to just be brushed away.

“Okay,” She held her hands up in submission, “I’ll explain everything, I promise. Just. Please calm down.”

Whether it was the tremble in Lyndsey’s voice, or the fact that Lorraine heard what she wanted to, she sat back against the couch and crossed her arms again, clearly waiting to hear what her daughter wanted to say.

Lyndsey couldn’t look at the judgemental slash furious look on her Mom’s face. She suddenly felt like a teenager all over again. But, she figured that the best place to start was at the beginning, so she took a deep breath.

“I was in Pittsburgh.”

She was met with silence. But even that couldn’t draw her attention away from the way her hands were wringing. She started to fumble with her thumb ring again.

“Pittsburgh? In the States?”

“Yes,” She whispered.

“What the hell for?”

Million dollar question. Lorraine was anything if not blunt.

There was no possible way for her to say it without sounding like she had officially lost her mind but at that point, Lydnsey couldn’t think of a different way to say it, other than,

“I went to see Sidney Crosby because he invited me there so that we could spend some time together.”

She covered her face with her hands, shaking her head. It sounded so stupid to say it out loud, Lorraine knew that the Penguins were her favourite team - but her explanation should’ve been enough for her mother to want to pack her up into her car again and take her the psych ward at work to have her evaluated.

“Excuse me?” When Lyndsey didn’t say anything, Lorraine tried again. “Oh Lyndsey. I knew you liked hockey, but this ridiculous, even for you. Sidney Crosby invited you to Pittsburgh?” The way she spat it out told Lyndsey all she needed to know - and she honestly didn’t blame her mother for not believing her. She still had a hard time believing it happened, and she had woken up to the warm, solid presence that was his chest against her back just that morning. It was real, she told herself.

“Okay, that was a really bad way to explain,” She admitted, dropping her hands and peeking a glance at her Mom, who looked a little hesitant to be having the conversation in the first place, one hand on the cordless phone as if she was ready to call the police or something.

“Well, you had better start at the beginning, young lady. What the fuck is going on?”

It wasn’t like her Mom didn’t swear all the time. Hell, she didn’t have the mouth of a saint either, but she’d never heard that kind of distain thrown her way before. Lyndsey was beginning to understand that she was in deep shit.

She sighed, pulling Sadie out from behind her to hold her close to her chest, needing something as a barrier between them, something to occupy her hands so that they’d stop shaking. But she took a deep breath and did what her mother said; started at the beginning.

She explained everything that had happened from the very first moment he’d been brought into the ER, Sam sneaking her into his hospital room, the whiteboard, the book. Even while she was explaining it, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a lifetime ago. So much had happened between them since then, she shook her head a little when she realised it had only been a handful of months since that day in the beginning of October.

Lorraine hadn’t said anything. Her hand was still on the phone.

Lyndsey paused when she nearly told her about the Skype calls. She didn’t think her Mom would’ve been particularly interested in hearing about Christmas or New Years.

“Is that who the flowers were from?”

Lyndsey looked up. “Yeah.”

Lorraine nodded, frowning. “This whole time?” Lyndsey took a beat to thank whoever was watching out her for, that her Mom hadn’t completely blown up and screamed the house down.

“Not… kind of? No, we- we went out to dinner after New Years Eve and, well. Things kind of went of from there.”

“New Years? It’s halfway through February! Since when do you keep secrets like that from me?”

“Would you have believed me? ‘Oh by the way Mom, I’m going out to dinner with Sidney Crosby, don’t wait up!’” Lyndsey scowled and shook her head.

“Drop the sarcasm. If I had known what was going on, yes I would’ve believed you. It might’ve been a stretch but I trust you, you know. Since you’re my daughter and ever since your father decided to do what he did I have stuck by you and you by me. Why did you think you couldn’t tell me?”

“I- Mom, I haven’t told anyone!”

“Anyone. At all.”

And then the guilt set in. Lorraine knew the answer to it before Lyndsey had even opened her mouth, and that just made her feel worse.

“… Well. Claire. And Kate - but she doesn’t count because she’s not here-” But she stopped when her Mom closed her eyes and held up a hand.

“Some friend you have from Australia knew about you going away to Pittsburgh to see only the most famous hockey player in the world and I didn’t? I’m really disappointed in you Lyndsey.”

“Why? Mom, he’s a great guy-” She stopped herself short, running her Mom’s words through her head once more. The realisation hit her like a truck. “This has nothing to do with Sidney, does it? You’re mad at the fact that I didn’t tell you what was going on.”

“Yes! What if something happened to you there? Did anyone know exactly where you were?”

“…No. I didn’t want to tell anyone because then they’d ask questions and it - If I talked about it, it would’ve been blown out of proportion and-”

“Did you sleep with him.”

“Honestly, I wa- what?”

“Did you sleep with him. Answer me.”

Her silence was enough. Lorraine wasn’t an idiot, she knew that her daughter wasn’t a perfect angel, but Lyndsey wasn’t just about to blab about a weekend that was going down in the record books.

“I see.”

“What does it have to do with you?”

“Were you safe? Did you use protection?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Lyndsey, he is a hockey player. A very wealthy, very popular hockey player, if I’m understanding what TSN is always on about when they talk about him. You really think he’s just biding his time for when some random nurse in a city he barely comes to goes to visit him at home and that you’re the only one he’s thinking about?”

Lyndsey couldn’t stand. Her hands were shaking, her vision going blurry behind tears that she willed herself not to let fall. All she could hear in her head was his voice, resonating through her voicemail, begging with her to understand that he didn’t think she was just some random nurse in Edmonton. That she meant something to him.

Her Mom just didn’t understand.

She stood up off the sofa, Sadie scrambling before she fell to the floor, cutting off her Mom’s rant about how her daughter was going to wind up pregnant to someone who was never around - someone who would treat her the way her father had treated her mother. And she refused to listen to it anymore.

“Mom. Stop. What I do in my own life is my own damn business. Okay, not telling anyone where i was going was a stupid move - I’m sorry. I should’ve let you know. Probably should’ve let you know weeks ago that I was… that I’m.” She huffed, brushing her hair back off her face. Lorraine stood there in front of her, arms crossed and her lips pursed. “I have never met anyone like him in my entire life. All that bullshit you see on the TV couldn’t be further from the truth about who he is as a person. Do you want to know why I didn’t tell you about him, Mom? Because I see the way you’ve looked at, admittedly, the few guys who have been in my life sine Dad left- which was nearly 15 years ago, in case you’d forgotten. I didn’t tell you because I could see that look in your eyes, the same look you have now - you don’t want me to get hurt. And I understand that, trust me I do. I know it’s been you and me against the world for so long, but I’ve finally met someone who genuinely gives a shit about who am I, who stays up late after a back to back game to check in with me if I’m at work, who calls me at midnight on New Years Eve because he knew I was alone, who asked me to be his girlfriend this weekend and there wasn’t one single part of me that regretted saying yes.”

Lorraine blanched a little, and maybe Lyndsey hadn’t meant to admit that much but it was almost too late now.

“So there. You happy? If you want to be mad at him, be mad at the fact that he has been nothing but caring and sweet and proving to me that he is everything opposite of the man who ruined your life. I watched it happen Mom. If I thought for a second he’d be anything like Dad, he’d be out of mine. You raised me to know that there are men better than that asshole out there. And I found one. And he likes me. He cares about me. And I him and I’m sorry if that makes you upset but the only time I’ve felt sad about him was the past 5 hours I spent on the plane because it was the best weekend of my life and I wouldn’t change it at all.”

Neither of them moved from where they stood. Lyndsey unclenched her hands from where they had curled into fists, but no matter how long she waited, her mother wouldn’t look at her. And when Lorraine still didn’t speak, Lyndsey scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to bed.”

Her hands were shaking as she threw her carry on upon her bed, struggling with the zipper of her jacket as she tried to get it off once the room felt too hot. She’d never spoken to her mother that way before in her life. Or been spoken to by her, either. She shrugged the jacket off of her shoulders and threw it against the wall just as her eyes filled with tears, blurring the room.

A whimper escaped her mouth before she could help it, her hands flying to her face as she took a breath to try and calm herself. She had just had the most magical weekend of her life and within ten minutes she was at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Part of her knew that she was over-reacting - Lorraine had been genuinely worried, and she had been pretty stupid to fly to another country to spend the weekend with someone her Mom thought she hardly knew. If had been any of Lyndsey’s friends disappearing all of a sudden, she’d be cautious as well.

But, none of them knew him like she did. She had a good head on her shoulders, she knew that. She obviously wouldn’t have gone all the way there to see him if she didn’t trust him.

And especially if she hadn’t trusted herself.

“Stop. Stop it. Stop crying,” She chastised herself, brushing away the tears forcefully, turning around to sit on the edge of the bed while she took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. She was being stupid, but she couldn’t help the uncontrollable anger that was flowing through her veins. “Get it together.”

The flicker of light from outside her bedroom door that she’d left open drew her attention; Lorraine was obviously going to bed, if the sounds creaking through the floorboards above her were any indication. They’d never fought like that before, but obviously weren’t going to make up before the night ended, so she wrung out her shaking hands once more and toed her sneakers off, sniffling quietly as she undressed for her shower.

She calmed down under the hot spray, washing off the feeling of flying for hours and the cold reception. She was saddened by the fact she wasn’t in Sidney’s shower, hating that from that day forward she’d be unable to forget just what money was able to buy; the shower head alone in his bathroom was probably worth more than her car. Not that it wasn’t worth every penny, it was just that the tension in her shoulders wasn’t working itself out the way it had back in Pittsburgh.

Lyndsey was exhausted while she was drying the last drips of water out of her hair, stepping back into her bedroom, her bare feet padding across the soft carpet to her bed. She reached for her suitcase, wanting to sleep in the Oilers shirt she’d sneakily sprayed with a spritz of his Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gio. He’d worn the cologne every day she was there, she was rather impressed by his taste in labels, and at that moment she wanted to just snuggle into a pillow and close her eyes and not think until the morning.

She threw back the top of the case and paused - she definitely hadn’t put the navy blue covered novel in her bag. Dropping her towel to the carpet, she reached for the book, her eyes filling with new tears that didn’t really have anything to do with sadness.

She held it gently, letting the pages fall open in her hands, a uncontrollable smile coming to her face when she remembered the feeling of finding it in her office. She flipped to the page where she knew to find the inscription; instead, a piece of paper was sitting on top, folded in half once. Waiting for her.


Lyndsey,

Don’t ask me how but I got this for you. I figured your copy from high school could probably do with a break.

Miss you already. Come back to me soon.

Sid.

“Oh my God,” She whispered to herself, brushing her thumb over the pen marks. How had she managed to find the most perfectly perfect human on the planet? He was 2,000 miles away, her heart aching not for the first time that she couldn’t just run to him, disappear into one of his hugs until everything in her world was right again.

She’d waited for years to find someone who would treat her the way he did. She never thought that once she had him, she’d still be waiting.

She brushed another tear away from her cheek, refusing to let go of the book as she glanced around her room quickly to try and find where she’d thrown the Penguins jacket that had her cell in the pocket. She spotted it near her dresser, reaching for it and pulling out her iPhone to thumb open the lock screen, his message from earlier displaying Glad to hear. I still wish you could’ve stayed longer x.

“Oh my God,” She repeated, except this time she squealed it quietly into her room, totally not caring around the mini happy dance she did, clutching the book, the note and her phone to her chest. She felt like a teenager, obsessing over a crush, acting like one of those kids she judged at the mall every time they took it over during summer vacation.

Are you still awake?

Lyndsey looked back at the book again, reading his note and the message to her over and over until her phone buzzed in her hands, his name appearing on the screen, waiting for her to accept the FaceTime call.

She paused for it to connect, his face filling the screen after a couple of seconds, a bored stare looking above the screen before flicking back down and smiling instantly in recognition. “Hey,” He smiled and apparently that was all she needed to start crying again, trying to hide it behind a grin as she moved to sit on her bed against the pillows.

“I can’t believe you,” She whispered, the book resting next to her where she’d left it, unable to let go of the paper he’d written on. “Like, Sidney. This is-”

“Whoa, hey. Why are you crying?” She couldn’t look at his face, closing her eyes at the concern in his voice. “No, look at me. Wh- Is everything okay?”

She knew that the smart thing to do was to lie; he didn’t know that she hadn’t told anyone she was going away, so he had no idea just how mad anyone would be. She could’ve just blamed it on being surprised by the present, or the rush of emotions that came from his general extended presence or the fact that it was a Sunday, but she didn’t have it in her. By all that she could see, he’d been open and truthful with her all weekend, showing her a side of him she didn’t know existed, and she didn’t want to start lying.

She took a deep breath and shook her head gently, turning on her side to snuggle into a pillow, keeping one arm extended so that her phone was still in front of her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He offered kindly, his eyes boring into hers. She changed her mind on her position and leant up to get the shirt she was originally after out of her suitcase, hugging it close to her chest and taking a deep breath. His cologne comforted her instantly.

“I…” She had no idea what to say. No idea how to start. “I… Do your parents know about me?”

It wasn’t the direction she’d originally intended, but the question dawned on her so suddenly, she couldn’t think of anything else.

“Uhh, no?”

“Are you unsure?”

He cleared his throat and looked directly into the camera. “No I’m not. I haven’t told them about you, yet.” She nodded back to him, looking at the covers instead of the screen. That made what she wanted to say a little harder. “But Taylor does.”

“You told your sister?”

“Well, yeah.” She watched him shrug. “Only after she practically forced it out of me at Christmas, she was being nosy when I was texting- what does that have to do with you crying?”

So, he didn’t want to tell his family. Some of his team mates, sure. But not the people who he obviously considered the most important in his life. It made her feel only slightly less guilty about not telling her Mom.

“Is that why you’re upset?”

Oops. She must’ve spoken out loud. She didn’t trust her voice not to crack, so she settled for another nod, tucking her face down into her shirt. She tried to loosen the grip on her fingers, to stop her nails from digging into her palm through the fabric.

“I didn’t tell her where I was going on Thursday,” She started, still not speaking at the camera. “I said I was with someone from work for the weekend, and then she saw Jackie at Walmart and asked her what she was doing in town instead of being with me, but Jackie didn’t know she was supposed to be my cover and then my Mom just sat by and waited for me to come home and yelled at me as soon as I walked through the door and accused me of lying about you, about- about us and. We’ve never spoken to each other the way we did tonight and I just got so angry with her because she judged you before she even knew you and practically called me a slut-”

“Lynds, take a breath-”

“And I told her, I told her that she had no idea what it was like - that you were kind and gentle and amazingly caring and treated me so nice this past weekend.”

“Lyndsey-”

She ignored him. “And then I found the book - and I’m sorry, Sidney. I accidentally already saw it when I was in the study, I though that’s what you were mad about before you told me about the dementia stuff and it was just so sweet of you,” She was babbling, and crying, and one look at her reflection in the tiny box of the FaceTime call told her it wasn’t the attractive kind of crying either and she gasped, turning her face into the pillow beneath her head, forcing herself to shut up.

It took her a few moments to calm down. When she peeked a look at her phone again, he was frowning at her - more than before, which isn’t what she wanted at all because she wanted to see carefree Sidney looking at her, not one who clearly was unsettled at what he was hearing. Or seeing.

She wouldn’t have blamed him if he didn’t want to talk face to face for a while.

He offered her a sad smile when she turned back to face him, waiting patiently while she sniffled and dried her eyes with the back of her hand. She was still holding his note, although the paper was slightly more crinkled than when she’d first picked it up. She dropped it on top of the book anyway.

“Sorry,” She whispered, shaking her head when he opened his mouth to talk. “No, don’t. That was- you didn’t need to know all of that. About, my Mom. And me. And us?” She finished, hesitantly, cringing at her sudden lack of English skills. It had been an overwhelming day and she was tired and wanted nothing more than to be back with him, not having this conversation - instead, laughing over some stupid TV show while they finished off their glasses of wine from dinner.

Not thousands of miles apart, not knowing when she’d see him in person next.

“It’s okay.” Lyndsey didn’t quite think she deserved the gentle tone he was giving her. “Of course I needed to know. I… I’m sorry. I didn’t really think about how hard this would be on you - I’m used to keeping things in my life quiet from my family, at least until I know they’re real. I didn’t stop to imagine what it’s like from your end.”

She bit her lip and nodded, finally chancing a look at the screen, watching him frown. It wasn’t a good look. And she was starting to get a headache from all the drama she was inflicting on herself so she swallowed to clear her throat, brushing her hair back from her forehead before she picked up the book.

“Thank you,” She waved it at the screen, her smile still watery no matter how much she tried to calm down. “I should’ve lead with that.”

His warm laughter came through the speaker, washing over her like he was in the room, his smile just as contagious. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

“No,” She shook her head, a small laugh escaping her. “No more First Editions. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.” He sighed loudly but she raised an eyebrow, waiting until he agreed begrudgingly.

“Do you…” He bit his lip, something she wished that she could do instead and she had to look away for a second, trying to keep the disappointed look off her face. “Do you want to talk about it? Your Mom?”

“No.”

“Babe-”

“No,” She repeated, the vehemence in her voice enough to make him stop. “I know I had a moment of word vomit there, but. No. Another time,” She added, looking around awkwardly when he just nodded in return, the conversation effectively ending. There was a few moments of silence before the video paused, a ‘low battery’ reminder appearing on the screen.

She figured it was an escape as good as any.

Lyndsey clicked back to the video and sat up, switching it to her other hand. “My phone’s about to die, so…”

“Oh. I’ll uhh, I’ll let you go then.”

“Yeah.” When he didn’t say anything else, she smiled at him, but even she could feel it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Goodnight.”

He nodded, waving at her gently, “Night, baby,” coming through quickly to her before the call ended, leaving her feeling just as bad as she had before she got in the shower. It wasn’t at all how she’d imagine their talk going, and now she had to figure out a way to get her Mom to not be angry at her, plus figure out how to get rid of the sudden weirdness between her and her boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

“God,” She muttered, getting up off the bed to get dressed for sleep. “Can’t even get through the first week without fucking it up.”

It wasn’t the most restful nights sleep she’d had.