The Wedding Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

had created out of tuberose and gardenia.
    “You too, Mom,” she said, already counting down the seconds until—
    “So you’re still in this place,” her mother said as she pulled back and looked around dismissively. “You have a good job, Phoebe. You could do so much better for yourself than this.”
    “I like my apartment, Mom.”
    “Really?” her mother asked as if that wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. “But if you had a house instead, then you might have civilized things like spare rooms for your mother to stay in when she comes over. In fact, if you had bought when the market was at its lowest—”
    “Then I’d be stuck with a huge debt I don’t want tying me down.”
    But Phoebe’s mother wasn’t listening. Instead she was moving to run her fingers over the leaf of a flourishing pink flowering bromeliad in the corner of the room.
    That particular love was one thing they had in common. About the only thing, it seemed sometimes. Which was why Phoebe knew her mother hadn’t just dropped by for a visit. After all, they’d been through this enough times by now, hadn’t they?
    She hated to see her mother’s face fall and her shoulders hunch as she dropped the leaf from her fingertips and sat back down on the couch.
    “David left me.”
    Phoebe’s chest clenched. It was so difficult seeing her mother like this. Phoebe never knew what to say...and when she did, she never felt like it was the right thing, or what her mother wanted to hear.
    She sat next to her mother and took her hand. “He left you, just like that?”
    “He said he wanted to be happy .” Her mother was tearing up now and Phoebe reached for the box of tissues on the end table. “I thought we were happy. We had just celebrated our one-year anniversary.”
    A year was practically a lifetime by the standards of her mother’s relationships. Why anyone would invest so much of themselves in something so brief, Phoebe didn’t know. She just knew that her mother kept on doing it, and every time it went wrong— every single time —they ended up here, having the same conversation they’d had so many times before.
    Her mother was struggling not to outright cry, which meant that any minute now she was going to try to distract herself from her emotions by—
    “You know, honey, if you are going to live in an apartment, you could at least make it look a bit nicer. Especially with so many great furnishing stores in San Francisco.”
    Phoebe pulled her hand back from her mother’s. “I like my apartment.” She gestured to the kitchen window. “Look at how well the orchids are doing in this light.”
    “The flowers look good,” her mother agreed, “but the rest of it…”
    Phoebe stood up. She loved her mother, of course she did, but on the days when she showed up needing somewhere to stay after a bad breakup, it could sometimes be quite hard to remember all the reasons why.
    “I’ll go get some sheets and things to make up the couch as a bed. You can take my room.”
    “Thank you, honey. It won’t be for too long, I promise.”
    After helping her with the sheets, her mother sat back down on the couch and gave her a look she dreaded as she patted the seat next to her. “Are you dating anyone?”
    Phoebe felt her cheeks grow hot as she shook her head. “No.”
    But she could be, couldn’t she? If she hadn’t freaked out over dinner, she could still be out on a lovely date with Patrick...and he might even be kissing her by now.
    Oh, the thought of being kissed by that sinfully gorgeous mouth.
    “Make sure you don’t end up like me, Phoebe,” her mother said in a hollow voice. “That’s why I worry about you so much. I know you think you have all the time in the world, but trust me, the years move past you faster and faster every year. You don’t want to end up alone.” Her mother paused a beat before asking, “Do you hear anything from your father these days, Phoebe?”
    Beyond frustrated with how her night had