One of These Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

building up immunity thanks to their regular arguments.
    So much for that.
    â€œJason, are you still there? Who—”
    A thought occurred to him then, just a wisp of an idea stamped This Might Work. He grasped at it like a drowning man confronted with the bobbing remnants of a shattered ship. It might not be enough to save him, and Zoe would probably kill him anyway, but what choice did he have?
    â€œThat’s Zoe, Mom.” He saw her look up sharply from where she was petting Rosie.
    â€œOh?” It was a loaded question, and he knew it. He could hear all the other questions running just beneath the surface of that single, simple word. Zoe rose and came to stand before him, one hand on her hip in a stance he was well acquainted with by now. The arched eyebrow meant she was curious, but the hand on the hip? It didn’t bode well for him.
    Maybe she’d cut him some slack because he was injured. He was also desperate. And so while Zoe stared at him, he told Molly Evans the biggest lie since she’d been on the front porch at two a.m. asking his seventeen-year-old self whether he’d been drinking. “Yeah, well, she’s been helping me out. That’s why I’m not sure about all these plans you’ve got going. . . . I mean, I’d love to have everybody for the rest of the summer, but my place is pretty small and she’s, you know”—he scrubbed a hand through his hair—“around a lot.”
    Zoe’s mouth dropped open.
    Yep, I’m dead.
    To Zoe’s credit, she didn’t hurl the potted plant in her hands at his head. She looked like she wanted to, but she didn’t. Instead, her storm gray eyes full of fire, she mouthed,
I will kill you.
    There was a moment of dead silence. Then his mother spoke: “Well,
finally
!”
    Her laugh, her voice, held so much relief that any hope that his relationship status had ceased to be a topic of interest in the family evaporated. They still talked about him—poor, lonely, brokenhearted Jason—because of course they did. Because of Sara. When the divorce had been finalized, he’d assumed she was gone for good. He hadn’t known that just the idea of her would continue to give him problems four years on. And as hard as she’d been at the end, he didn’t think this was what Sara had intended, either. She’d just wanted to go. In the end, he’d let her.
    He just wished everybody else would, too.
    As Zoe’s jaw tightened and the hand at her hip curled into a claw, Jason tried to tell himself that what he’d just done was no big deal. A girlfriend, even an imaginary one, would make his mother quit worrying and save him from weeks of having a social life forced on him when all he really wanted to do was convalesce and brood. It might keep Tommy Evans, Local Superstar, down in Miami where he belonged instead of up here showing off. Zoe didn’t even have to be around. Hell, he’d invent a different Zoe if he had to, and then send her on an equally imaginary vacation or . . . something. But no matter how he tried to sugarcoat it, he couldn’t escape the fact that he’d just dragged the real Zoe into his life in a big way, without asking permission, and with a whole lot of potential ramifications that she seemed fully aware of. That was why she was going to kill him. He probably deserved it.
    But that was still a more appealing thought than having his family pile in on him for a month.
    Damn. This is a new low.
    His mother’s voice chirped happily in his ear, pulling him back into a conversation he had no idea how to participate in. Not with Zoe’s death stare fixed on him. He held up one hand toward her, tried for an expression that he hoped was somewhere in the vicinity of too-pathetic-to-annihilate, and mouthed the words,
Wait. Please.
    â€œHey, Mom, look, I’ve gotta go.” Jason hoped he didn’t sound as panicked as he felt.