you really will get a spanking.”
11
Jordan
I flew through the editing way faster than I’d meant to, but even after I got myself all ready to go it was still too early to leave, so I called Nic.
She didn’t answer.
I glared down at my phone, seriously considering being a dick and re-calling. She knew she had to answer if I hit her up more than once, because hello, emergencies fucking happened, but… shit. She’d also been really into this weekend thing her and Scott had planned, and technically, me feeling like I was going to bounce out of my skin with too much time on my hands and no idea what to expect once I got to Andy’s wasn’t an emergency, so… fine. I’d deal on my own.
I fiddled with one of my earrings... then thought about switching them out to another pair... then got caught up staring at some of the stupid Christmas decorations I still had up from that series I’d filmed with Dev... then, before I even knew what I was doing, I’d pulled up my mother’s contact info for no fucking reason at all and hit the call button.
“Shit,” I said, stabbing at the screen to shut that shit down as soon as I realized what I’d done. Like, what, I was going to wish her a Merry Christmas just to pass the time? We only ever talked a few times a year, which was basically whenever she decided to call me out of the blue because the whim had struck her. In other words, the same reason she ever did anything. But still, hearing from her was never about shit like holiday wishes or marking any occasion or whatnot, so there was no reason for me to bug her just because I was suddenly feeling antsy and had been hearing stupidly sentimental Christmas music everywhere for the last few weeks.
I dropped the phone, rubbing a hand over my abs and really fucking hoping I didn’t get sick, what with the way I suddenly didn’t feel so great and all. But no fucking way was I going to let that happen. I was not cancelling on Andy—fuck, I wished I was already there right now—so I sucked in a few deep breaths to try to calm the jitters, then focused on remembering how to do that hippie breathing calming thing Nichol was such a fan of.
What would probably work better was being ass up over Andy’s knee again, but since that wasn't an option, I closed my eyes and took a breath through my nose, inflating my diaphragm and then holding my breath for a count of—
“Fuck,” I snapped when my phone rang with my mother’s ringtone, breaking my concentration. I swiped to answer, my knee starting to bounce. “Hey, Meredith.”
“Jordan,” she said over the sound of something loud in the background. Loud and outdoors, if I had to guess. “I saw a missed call from you?”
“Just a butt dial,” I said, fiddling with a stray piece of shiny Christmas garland on my desk. “Where you at, anyway?”
She laughed, sounding as free as a bird and loving life, as per always. “An outdoor market!” she said. “It’s in Morocco. Didn’t I send you a postcard? You’d love it here, darling. It’s divine.”
I rolled my eyes. She figured I’d “love it” everywhere she went. Just not enough that she’d actually wanted to take me with her twenty years ago, back when she’d decided that marriage and motherhood were too stifling and that she needed to go follow her dreams and find herself without being tied down to social constructs like “family” or "giving a shit."
Whatever, though. I was over it.
“You planning on staying there through Christmas?” I asked, flicking the garland onto the floor and spinning my chair away from my desk as I reached up to fuck with my earring again.
I should definitely change them out.
“Oh, we’ll see,” she said airily. “I haven’t really made any plans for that yet.” Of course she hadn’t. “They don’t celebrate Christian holidays here, but I guess it is coming up soon, isn’t it? What are you and your father doing for Christmas?”
Me? Fuck-all. Dad? Fuck if I either knew or cared. I’d had more than enough of him telling me what a piece of shit I was by the time I’d been eighteen, and since both of us were sick and fucking tired of me being such a goddamn burden on him by then—which he insisted I’d somehow managed to