She grunted. Then she looked up over my shoulder and wrinkled her forehead. “Is that… Amber?”
I turned in my chair to see my mom walking down the hallway, a brown paper bag in her hand.
“Did you know she was coming?” Maddy asked.
I smiled. “No.”
Mom had never visited me at work before. She spotted me and her face lit up. I watched her make her way over.
She looked like a Greek goddess wearing a dark blue maxi dress with gold sandals. Ankle bracelets that jingled while she walked.
“Hey, girls!” she said, setting the bag on the counter.
“Hey,” I said brightly. “This is such a nice surprise.”
“Meeting Neil for lunch,” she said, twisting to look around.
I felt myself deflate. “Oh,” I said. “He just went into surgery.”
Now her face fell. “Oh. Well, how long does that take?”
“Hours,” Maddy said. “Depends what it is.”
“Huh.” Mom chewed on her bottom lip. “He missed dinner last night, and so I just thought—” She looked around like she might see him.
“That’s really nice of you to bring him lunch,” Maddy said, her tone a little dry.
“Yeah,” Mom said distractedly. She put a thumb over her shoulder. “Hey, when I came in, I told that nurse with the blond hair who I was and she didn’t know me. Neil talks about me at work, right?”
Maddy glanced at me. “I mean, not really.”
“He doesn’t really talk to the nurses,” I said.
Mom chewed her lip again. “Okay.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Do you want me to give this to him when he’s done?” I asked, nodding at the bag.
She seemed to snap out of it. “Yeah. Yes. I baked him some zucchini bread. There’s a mushroom frittata, a cucumber feta salad—I mean, we’re living together. That’s a little weird, right? That nobody knows he has a girlfriend?”
Maddy and I looked at each other.
“I bet the other doctors know,” I volunteered.
“Oh, totally,” Maddy said, nodding.
“I don’t think he gets into his personal life with the nurses,” I said.
“We’re small beans,” Maddy added. “The doctors have their own lounge. There’s not a lot of mingling.”
Mom nodded, but she still looked off.
“Okay. Well, I gotta go,” she said. “See you girls at the house.”
We watched her walk out.
Maddy took the bag from the counter and peered into it. “Funny she brought him lunch and didn’t think to make any for you.”
I went back to my keyboard, trying to act like she didn’t just say what I’d been thinking.
Maybe it was unfair to expect more from Mom. I was a twenty-eight-year-old woman, capable of making my own lunch. She didn’t have to do that for me. Maybe she’d only had enough food for Neil. Maybe she didn’t know I’d be here. Yes, she could have texted me to ask, but maybe she thought I’d already packed food and she knew Neil didn’t so she only brought enough for him.
It hurt my feelings anyway.
“She hasn’t spent any time with you since the Lobsterfest, right?” Maddy asked, breaking into my thoughts.
I shook my head. “No. But she’s been trying to get me and Justin to hang out with her and Neil. It just hasn’t worked out yet.”
“She’s inviting you for Neil, just so you know.”
I looked at her. “What?”
“It makes her look bad that she ignores you so much. Neil probably mentions it. That’s why the only time she invites you anywhere is when Neil’s gonna be there.”
I stiffened. “No. There was the time she invited me to dinner when he was at work.”
“So he would come home and see you there. Or because she was bored and lonely. FYI, Amber only ever calls you when it serves Amber,” she said.
