Are you in Vegas?” Mom asks. She talks slowly, enunciating every word to make sure I listen. This is how she always speaks when she's unhappy with me.

Great. I’ve got not one, but two women angry at me.

“Mom, I don't know what you're talking about,” I say calmly into the phone.

“A, you know I don't like it when you lie to me,” she says. “Have you forgotten that we're friends on Facebook? I saw the pictures someone just posted of you.”

I knew those fucking cameras were trouble.

“A?” Mom says when I remain quiet.

“Mom, you remember Earl?” I ask.

“What does that have to do with anything? Are you or are you not in Vegas?” she demands.

“That has to do with everything. And I’m sure you remember Earl. He was this kid a few years older than me. He used to bring us food whenever his aunt came to visit with her baked goods. You liked her blueberry cookies.”

“Greta. She was a great baker, but I didn't like listening to her talk for hours about her boring life.” Mom says. “I remember Earl. Now, I’ve answered your question. How about you answer mine now?”

“Well, my question was the first part of my answer. The second part is, it's Earl’s wedding.” I give it a dramatic pause. “You know how close we used to be. I hadn’t seen him again since he moved to Vegas years ago. Today’s his wedding, and I couldn't have missed it.”

The line goes quiet except for Mom’s breathing, which grows more labored by the second. Even though we’re in completely different cities, separated by hundreds of miles of brown desert, the intense silence turns my whole hotel room cold.

“So you are in Vegas?” Mom asks again.

“Mom, I don’t want you to worry. I’m not drunk driving or burning my entire savings at the casino. I’ve just been spending some time with old friends. It’s just a wedding. It’s completely safe.

“You remember how scared Earl’s aunt was of crossing the road, and yet she’s here in Vegas too, and she seems to think things are great.” I speak slowly.

I don’t mean to treat her like a child, but she’s irrationally afraid of this city, and I feel like I need to spell everything out to her if I want the slightest chance of putting her mind at ease.

Mom stops hyperventilating enough to quickly say, “I can’t believe you’re in Vegas.” She takes three urgent breaths. “This is—” two more breaths “—the only thing I asked from you.” Her voice shakes. “You cannot be in Vegas.”

“Mom, I know bad things happened to Dad when we were living here, but I’m not him, okay? I’ll stay safe.”

I don’t know if it’s a good idea to bring up my late dad into a phone conversation where my mom is already on the verge of hysteria, but I don’t know how else to get her to listen.

She still doesn’t say a word.

“Mom, I’m telling you I’m perfectly fine. The wedding’s already over, and I’m going home first thing tomorrow anyway.” I check my watch. “Look, it’s already late. You probably have work early in the morning. You should take your pill and go to sleep. I’ll be there when you wake up, okay?”

I swear, the moment I start making good money, I’m sending Mom to a shrink. She needs to get this phobia under control. She can’t expect me to live my life governed by the same fear.

“Stay away from your old girlfriend,” Mom says all of a sudden in a clear voice.

My heart races. “Who?”

I have a few ex-girlfriends in Vegas, even though I moved away at sixteen. What can I say? I grew up pretty fast.

“The rich one. The one with the doctor dad,” Mom says quietly. Her voice is small.

“Aubrey?” For some reason, I’m not surprised. Aubrey was the girlfriend I had when we moved away.

“Maybe. I don’t remember her name.”

“Why?” I ask. My head hurts. I raise my hand up to my face to massage my temples.

“She…” Mom lets her voice hang in the air, her sentence unfinished.

“She what?” I insist.

“She’s bad luck.”

Of course. That’s her answer for everything, especially after Dad’s deadly car crash.

“Mom, you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep telling me not to do this and not to do that, when you don’t have a good reason.”

When Mom speaks again, her voice is shaking, like she’s terrified. “Oh, no. You’ve already met her, haven’t you?”

“Mom, she doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Dad. I know you think everything’s interconnected, but Aubrey has no idea the accident even happened.” I know I’ve said the wrong thing when I hear her sharp gasp.

“You’ve talked to her,” she says in an accusing tone.

“Mom, I don’t know what the problem is. You never showed any signs that you didn’t like her.”

“Stay away from her,” she says sternly.

“Mom, I’m not five. You can’t tell me who I can and can’t talk to.”

Sometimes I wish we had enough money for me to move out and live on my own, but my mom would still be the same volatile person. And instead of putting an end to this kind of talk, I’d just be forced to calm her down over the phone like I’m doing—which, by the way, is harder than just doing it in person as usual.

“You can’t see her,” Mom says, not even acknowledging what I just said.

“Mom, I couldn’t not see her. She’s the maid of honor at Earl’s wedding. She’s the bride’s sister.”

“You saw her dad, too?” Mom asks urgently, terror in her voice.

I weigh my options. I can lie, but she’s going to see right through it. Or, I can tell her the truth, but I have a feeling that’ll freak her out even more.

Why all this fuss about Aubrey anyway?

Mom’s always been weird about Vegas, but she’s never said much about Aubrey until today.

“I saw her dad from a distance, I guess. He was at the wedding, but we didn’t speak much,” I say.

Also, he hates my guts and Aubrey tells me to stay the fuck away from him, I think to myself. But I keep this information to myself. I don’t want to agitate Mom even more.

“Stay away from that man,” Mom says, her voice trembling.

The way this conversation is going, I feel like I’ll end up being forbidden from seeing anyone ever again.

“Mom, I don’t intend to talk to the man. But you can’t keep telling me what to do and who to talk to.” I let out a big sigh. “Listen, we’ll talk when I see you at home, okay?”

Our schedules don’t always sync up because we’re both always busy working, so we don’t see each other every day even though we live together.

But as soon as I see my mom, I need to finally persuade her that we can afford therapy for her, despite our shitty insurance. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a necessity at this point. Her paranoia is taking over both our lives.

“Stay away from that whole family,” Mom repeats like a broken record.

“Yes, Mom. I told you. The wedding is over, and I won’t see them again tomorrow. I’ll be driving back to San Francisco and coming home, okay?”

The line stays silent.

“Mom . . . I’m coming home tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” she finally says.

“I’m hanging up now and going to sleep because it’s going to be a long drive tomorrow. You should do the same, too. It’s late.”

“Okay,” she says again. “Come home quickly, A.”

“I will. Good night, Mom.”

“Good night,” she says, almost as a reflex. She quickly adds, “And don’t talk to that whole family.”

“I know. Bye, Mom.”

“Bye. I love you.”

“Love you too.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I finally hang up.

That was a difficult phone call. I think she’s fine now, although I had to end the phone call with a lie.

I’m definitely going to see Aubrey again, seeing as we’ll be interning at the same hospital. But, I don’t know if she’ll ever want to talk to me again.

I press the Home button on my phone and check my messages. Still nothing from Aubrey. Just my own texts staring sadly back at me.

Since I haven’t received a reply in hours, the answer’s probably “no.”

I sit on the nice hotel bed and let my body fall backward until I’m staring at the ceiling. I’m glad I’m alone at least. I wouldn’t be able to mope around in peace with David around. I wonder if he found some chick to spend the night with.

I wish I were spending some time with Aubrey. We don’t have to sleep together, or even touch—just her presence alone electrifies the air. And she’s hot as fucking hell, but what I really want to do is talk to her, straighten some things out.

I had no idea she went to our meeting spot. I thought she’d instantly forgotten about me, since I’d never heard from her again after moving away from Vegas.

But what am I after here? What’s the end game?

I can’t bring Aubrey home. Based on the phone conversation that’s just taken place, seeing Aubrey would freak Mom out.

Maybe that means there’s no future for us. Or maybe that means we’ll have to wait until Mom’s gotten over her irrational fear. Maybe I’m a dumbfuck because all these considerations are irrelevant if Aubrey hates my guts.  

I can’t predict how Aubrey or Mom would react to my actions, but I know I can’t just leave things alone now.

The fact that Aubrey’s still angry at me, after all these years, means that she still has some feelings for me. Otherwise, she’d be indifferent and unaffected. She’d be laughing about it now.

But the emotions I saw in her eyes in the hallway just a few hours ago . . . They were raw, real, and as fresh as if everything had just happened.

I know it’s not just my imagination. She may not admit it, but at least a part of her heart still belongs to me. And I can’t just do nothing with that kind of knowledge.

At the very least, I need to kiss her again.