The Girl Who Wore Jordans

Chapter Thirty-Four

      “So, Eric, how are you?” she questioned sweetly, brushing past me to enter my room. “Liz, when was the last time you cleaned up in here?” Most likely, she was referencing the landfill of dirty clothes and miscellaneous objects I wasn’t aware I possessed, but Eric decided to take initiative and answer his query first.

      “I’m good, and yourself?” his simple and broad response only somewhat irked me, seeing as how I knew it would give my mom further to interrogate.

      “I’m fine, thank you. And how has my daughter been when with you? Has she been acting like the proper lady I know she is deep down inside?” she kept talking as expected.

      Eric glanced over to my motionless frame that was stuck by the doorway, and the foundations of smile jerked at the edges of his lips. “Liz has been wonderful,” was all he said.

      “So, why are you here?” she asked. “Not that I have an issue with it. In fact, I wish that Liz would bring more friends over— especially ones like you.”

      “What does that mean, mom? ‘Ones like you’? Is Eric truly any different than my other friends?” I immediately jumped on her emphasis choice.

      “I just meant that, now, at least, you’re always hanging out with the girls, and I think that it’s nice that you’re going back to—”

      “We have homework to do,” I interjected, stopping her before she could touch on my days of bonding with the solely the male gender.

      “I don’t see any books or papers,” she pointed out with a smirk.

      “We’re doing an oral presentation and were just practicing,” Eric supplied, almost causing me to burst out laughing like the immature thirteen year old I was at heart at the word “oral”.

      “I’m sure you were doing something that involved your mouths,” she muttered loud enough for both Eric and me to hear.

      “Okay, I think it’s time for you to leave,” I declared, needing to end the conversation before it got worse— if possible.

      “I know when I’m not wanted,” she sighed, melodramatically stomping back over to the entry.

      “Bye,” I waved a limp hand at her, anticipating her leave.

      “You should stay for dinner, Eric,” she said as what I thought to be parting words.

      “Well, I don’t kn—” Eric began.

      “Nonsense! You’re staying,” she declared in finality.

      “Oh, uh, okay,” Eric said for an absence of anything else to say.

      “Stay safe, kids,” she called, closing the door behind her. I started for the door to make sure my mom didn’t randomly pop in, when her voice rang down the hall and past the barrier the shut door had created, “Remember, sweetie, we don’t lock doors in this house!”

      And that was that. After our little encounter with Monica, the previous form of studying we had been doing prior to her arrival didn’t seem too appealing anymore. I not longer had a desire to observe the way Eric’s lips felt on my own, or how nice the connection with him felt. Thanks, mom.

I let out a yawn, wondering how I had achieved the unthinkable of actually accomplishing some amount of homework while within a five feet radius of Eric Wilson. Originally, I had thought that we would severely veer off topic from the dreary work that had been assigned over the course of the day, but we didn’t. We had somehow managed to stay on task the entire time with the exception of one irrelevant tangent led by me about why I didn’t think it was fair we were reading Shakespeare in English.