Early Saturday morning, I stirred before Jake and thought about surprising him with a trip to the pharmacy to get some condoms, but then I thought how embarrassing that would be to actually have to face the store clerk when I was buying them.

Jake took deep but soft breaths as he slept. I rested a hand on him and felt his heart as his chest rose and fell. His upper body featured several tattoos. One was in Spanish, and another was in English. Both appeared to be mirror images, just like Amy had said. It was strange. I wanted to ask him why he had gotten them and what they meant.

But that nagging voice entered my head again, and I began to question my sanity about all of this.

Who the hell am I, considering a morning trip to the store for condoms?

I hadn’t slept with Grant when we were dating, and we had been together for almost a year. Yet here I was, considering sleeping with a man I’d known all of one week.

I felt so comfortable around Jake, and I wanted to open up to him even more. Despite his reputation, he had made it clear that he respected my boundaries, whatever I decided they were.

I was technically still a virgin, although I didn’t like to make a big deal out of it. The few people I had told had suddenly treated me like I was some sort of science experiment. They couldn’t believe it when I tried to explain that, although I’m sure my religious upbringing surely had something to do with it, I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything like that. I simply hadn’t found a guy who made me feel comfortable enough to do it.

Apparently my subconscious was now telling me that Jake was that guy.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I rolled over to check who would be bugging me at this early hour.

My heart dropped when I saw that I had four missed calls from my mother.

I shot up in bed and pressed the call back button. She picked up after one ring.

“Mother?”

“Yes, Andrea, I’m here. I flew in this morning. Where are you? Why haven’t you been picking up your phone?”

“Wait,” I said, putting my feet on the ground. I opened my dresser and took out some underwear, a bra, and a dress in full panic mode. “You’re here?”

“Yes, here,” she said, sounding a tad annoyed. “Grant called me last night and told me what happened, and I came right away.”

“Grant called you?” The nerve, the absolute nerve.

“Well, to be fair, he texted me. I guess some thug hit him in the face and broke his jaw! Don’t you see what you’ve done to the man, Andrea? You’ve broken his heart!”

Ugh. Why was Grant still texting my mother? But I knew why: another way to control me. I slipped into my undergarments while holding the phone. Once again, I was regretting that I had never told my mother the whole story about how Grant and me broke up, but now was not the time to get into it.

“Mother, please, let’s not go there. I really can’t get into this right now.”

“Well, let’s go out to coffee and talk about it. I’m out in front of your building.”

If my heart hadn’t already exploded, now it had.

“You’re here here?”

“What on earth did you think I meant? Haven’t you heard your doorbell?”

“The buzzer’s broken.”

“Well let me up, for God’s sake.”

“I’ll buzz you up in a moment. Hang on.”

I hung up the phone, threw on my dress, and crouched next to Jake on the bed. I pressed one hand on his shoulder and another on his leg, shaking him with panic.

“What are you doing?” he groaned, his voice throaty.

“Jake, my mother’s here.”

“Well, you certainly move fast. Makeout-hookup-meet your mother. Hey, that’s fine though, I can deal.”

“Jake! This is serious! She will freak if she sees me in here with a boy.”

She had never known me with anyone who wasn’t Grant.

“I don’t see any boys in here,” he growled back with a slight smile. “Just a man.”

Looking over his naked body in bed, I had to agree.

“Figure of speech. This isn’t a drill, though. I seriously need you to—”

I heard a fist pounding on my third-floor door. “Drea! What on earth is taking so long? What are you hiding?”

I gasped. Someone must have let her in. “Get in the closet!” I whisper-yelled as he sprung to his feet and put his boxer briefs on.

“Are you kidding me? That thing is tiny!”

“If my mother sees you, she’ll never let this go!”

“Andrea Jane! You open up this instant!” my mother shouted through the door.

“You’re twenty-three, your mother will get over it!”

I swung my arm around in a motion similar to a windmill as I directed him to get into the closet. Finally, he agreed, and I pushed his head in and tried to close the door.

“What, no goodbye kiss?”

I rolled my eyes and finally closed the door, then went outside to get my mother.

“Sorry, Mother! These locks can be tricky.”

“Lockity schmokity,” she said as she walked in.

My mother and I were somewhat opposites in our looks. I was tall and dark-haired while she was short with lighter hair. I had her eyes, though. And had inherited her uptightness. She was in her favorite pair of black loafers and a paisley brown dress—conservative, practical, and safe. Her long hair was in a severe bun, and she wore no makeup or accessories. She was still a beautiful woman, but the divorce had made her even more uptight and rigid in her thinking.

She briefly hugged me before she breezed past me and into my apartment, dropping her bag in the process. She walked around like a dog sniffing about a new space before settling in, looking for anything that might be out of the ordinary. “If you lived in Sugar Tree, you wouldn’t need any gosh darn locks.”

As she was inspecting the kitchen, I looked to the left of the couch and saw Jake’s socks and shoes sitting out for the world to see. My heart began to thump fast and deep, like a tribal drum.

“I was just tidying up a bit when you got here,” I said, nonchalantly lunging into the living room and moving his footwear to the space between the couch and the wall before she could see.

She entered the room just as I hid them.

“Honey, I just don’t like it that the only reason I come down here is when your boyfriend has an emergency.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected her, rolling my eyes. For some reason, it had never completely registered with her that we had one-hundred-percent broken up.

“Oh, stop it,” she said as she ran her eyes around the couches and the walls of the living room, which were bare. Knowing that the internship was temporary, I hadn’t taken the time to truly make the space my own yet. “You really decorated the heck out of the place, didn’t you?”

She curved her lips upward in a smile that did not extend to her ears.

“Still have a little bit to finish off,” I said, defensive.

“Well, don’t bother.” She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at me. “Your room at home is still ready for you. And besides, Grant told me this morning that he wants you back.”

I let out a gasp, and she acted as though my shock was a surprise to her. “You went and saw Grant?”

“Well, yes of course, honey. Of course I saw him,” she said, as though that was the only logical conclusion possible. “And he’s very sorry about how things went last year. He’s ready for you now.”

Suddenly, I felt dizzy. Grant was a two-faced sociopath, and it wasn’t surprising that he was able to charm my mother. To get my mom to fly in just to see him and then use her so shamelessly? That went too far. In the year Grant and I had dated, he’d done things that, at the time, I had simply considered to be extra nice. He would bring my mother flowers, insist that she come out to dinner with us a little more often than seemed normal. In my naiveté, I had never once thought that maybe he was posturing for control over her. Now, thanks to hesitation in communicating the truth, I was facing a mother who thought I had broken up with Mr. Perfect. I hadn’t realized that she was having an even harder time registering the breakup than I ever had. With Grant, she saw me settling back in Sugar Tree, starting a family, having someone else to focus on, and pretty much running my life.

I just stared at her, beyond shocked. Ready…for me now. Seriously?! I wanted to explode, but I couldn’t. I was the peacekeeper of the family and her only daughter. “Mother, don’t you understand? He’s out of my life now. I don’t want Grant anymore.”

She frowned and walked toward my bedroom door, ignoring my comment. “Let’s have a look in your room, shall we?”

“Mother, no.” I walked briskly past her and put myself between her body and the door.

“Nonsense! I want to see how you’ve been living.” She frowned. “You’ll let me through this instant. Unless, of course, you’re hiding something?”

She arched an eyebrow, daring me not to let her in. It was like the woman had a sixth sense when I tried to hide something from her. It was incredible. If I caved and opened the door, I was down to my last line of defense: the closet. Dear God in heaven, please don’t let Jake screw this one up.

“Of course I’m not hiding anything,” I said as I opened the door to my room. The shame of my mother finding a half-naked man stowed away in my closet was something I could handle. I might lose a few years due to the embarrassment, but I’d make it through. “I was just worried that it’s a bit messy, and I know how you get when you see a mess.”

My mother, on the other hand, might just die of a heart attack if she found Jake, especially since she was clearly under the delusion that Grant and I would go back to being the same perfect All-American couple.

“Your bedsheets are a bit ruffled,” she said, fluffing my pillows.

“Yeah, the air conditioning was a little on-and-off last night, so I kind of had to adjust by using different layers of covers.”

She eyed me strangely as she continued slowly pacing the room. I tried to assume the least guilty pose I could think of with a gentle smile, standing between her and the closet. Perhaps I was subconsciously blocking her from getting at the space. If worse came to worst, I could physically stop her from opening up the closet door, couldn’t I?

“Let’s see the closet,” she said, slightly cocking her head in its direction.

“Oh Mother, please, I’d die of embarrassment if you saw how messy that was.”

She squinted at the closet, as if trying to use her x-ray vision on it.

“Open it.”

“No.”

She walked toward the closet and put her hand on the knob.

“What are you hiding in here, Andrea?”

“Nothing, Mother,” I said through teeth I tried not to grit.

She sighed and stepped back, away from the closet.

“Well then, I suppose this tour is over.”

I turned toward the door, and that second of hesitation was all it took for my mother.

She faked one step to the door, catching me off guard. Then she took two quick steps toward the closet, turned the doorknob, and whipped it open.

“Mother, I can explain!” I belted, my heart pounding.

Her jaw dropped as she reached an arm inside. I couldn’t see what she was looking at, but I wondered if Jake had at least managed to put a shirt on while he was hiding back there.

She pulled her arm back, holding a black-and-green cap with a J on it in her hand.

“Well, I should hope so! Grant plays for the New Jersey Bulldogs. Why do you have a Jaguars cap in here? Don’t you want to be loyal to his team?”

I was shocked. Did she not see Jake? She apparently had no clue that Jake was my client, either.

Finally, I walked around the open door so I could look in the closet.

Jake was gone.