Hard Sell| ETHMA

11

ETHAN
Monday Afternoon, September 25

It's been a day for distractions. Alarm didn't go off. Spilled coffee on my shirt. Couldn't get a cab. Lost another client. Worked through lunch.

It's not even five o'clock yet, and the day's not done with me. The distraction currently headed my way is perhaps the worst yet. Or at least the most annoying.
Unfortunately, it's also unavoidable.

I pick up my phone. "Hey, Mom."

"Hi, honey!"

My mom's always pretty cheerful, but the borderline manic happiness in her tone confirms she's calling for the reason I'd suspected.

She's heard the news.

"How are you?" she asks, her voice too casual.
I sigh and lean back in my chair, rubbing my forehead.

"Well, shitty, actually. The whole Vegas thing isn't dying down as readily as I hoped it would." I say.

"Oh, it will," she says breezily.

I clench my teeth against irritation. My parents had called, separately, the day the Wall Street Journal news broke last week. And though there'd been the token concern and sympathy, my mom hadn't wanted to discuss the topic for longer than two minutes.

She's a nice enough woman, but she tends to determinedly ignore anything she deems unpleasant that doesn't impact her directly. So I know she's not calling to check up on that bit of news. She's calling about the other news.

"How was brunch yesterday?" she asks in a gleeful, teasing tone.

Yeah. There it is.

Besides getting the face time I'd hoped for with my bosses, Emma predicted our see-and-be-seen brunch date yesterday would result in plenty of press. Not quite Wall Street Journal–level press, but it had gotten picked up on enough society blogs that I figured my mom would have heard about it through her vast gossip circuit. My parents live in Connecticut, but my dad was a Wall Street guy, so they're still pretty plugged into the scene.

My scene.

Lucky me.

"Brunch was fine."

"Looked a bit better than fine. You were feeding her, Ethan."

Only to shut her up.

"She's gorgeous," my mom gushes. "Emma, was it?"
I give a grim smile.

"Like you haven't already googled everything about her."

"There's not much," my mom says with a touch of sulkiness. "Her social media accounts are private, and though she's connected to plenty of powerful people, I couldn't find any information about her."
Exactly as Emma likes it.

"She's private."

"Well. Whatever. You looked happy."

I grimace. "How many pictures were there?"

"Just a couple. But I could tell by the way you looked at her that you're crazy about her."

I roll my eyes.

"Is she the one?" my mom asks with the slightly desperate tone of a woman who, by her estimation, is long past due for grandchildren.

The fact that my mom thinks there's ever going to be "the one" is laughable. Though I wouldn't hurt her by telling her outright, she and my father are pretty much solely responsible for my skepticism on all things monogamy and happy relationships.

A lifetime of seeing just how jacked up marriage is will cure a guy of any happily-ever-after delusions pretty quickly.

"We're just dating, Mom." And not even for real.