Page 55 of Exchange of Heart

Nora’s chest rose and fell, preparing the speech we’d gone over back at my apartment.

‘Great, Mum. Diploma almost done and dusted, Dad signed on a bunch of new clients, what more could I ask for?’

I’m normally so busy putting on my game face, that I’d never noticed the sorrow in Mum’s eyes. As though she knows.

‘Are you happy?’ she asked.

Nora blinked, and her gaze darted to me. Mum had a way of conjuring unexpected questions out of the blue.

‘You look different tonight. Is something going on?’

Mothers’ intuition, Nora would call it. Only a mother could look at her son and recognise it wasn’t him. Nora believes entirely too much in karma, and positive thinking, and all sorts of hippy woo-woo thinking, but she appeared to be right about this.

‘Why wouldn’t I be okay?’ Nora’s eyes watered after taking her first sip of whiskey.

Such a diplomatic response, but she glanced to me, her gaze pleading for help.

‘Corey, I’d love a tour of this beautiful house. I noticed there’s a pool outside.’ I beamed with her pearly whites on display.

Dim lights glowed through the window, the clear water beyond glistening. Nora smiled, grateful for the excuse to leave my mother’s interrogation and placed her glass on the coffee table.

‘Sorry, Mum. You’ll have to excuse me.’ Nora stood and whistled at me like a dog, motioning with her head for me to follow her.

My mother gasped, and her hand clutched her chest. She’d never seen her son treat someone so poorly. Mainly because she’d never seen me at work, I suppose. Surely that would ensue an immediate case of cardiac arrest.

‘Seriously?’ I hissed at Nora around the corner. ‘Whistling at me?’

‘Well, I can’t imagine you’re much of a charmer, so it seemed about on par with your ability to romance. Didn’t want them getting suspicious or anything,’ Nora laughed.

‘You don’t know anything about me.’

‘You keep saying that, yet somehow, I know everything about you.’ She gestured to the bulge in my pants.

‘Don’t make me embarrass you when we go back inside,’ I threatened despite the grin taking over my face.

‘You’d only be embarrassing yourself once we switch back.’

I groaned. ‘Which we can’t seem to figure out how to do.’

We crossed the patio to the perfectly maintained lawn. The scent of freshly cut grass lingered in the air, thanks to their seventeen-year-old gardener, Gregory, a kid who worked at the golf club on weekends. Dad overheard him mention he needed more cash and jumped at the opportunity to underpay him.

‘Holy shit, you have a fountain in your pool.’ Nora’s eyes sparkled in awe.

‘It’s not a fountain, it’s a water feature.’

‘Whatever. You’re like, really rich. Even richer than I realised.’

‘I’m not rich, my parents are rich,’ I corrected.

‘Spoken like a true rich boy,’ Nora scoffed.

She crossed the lawn, opened the gate, and sat on one of the lounge chairs by the pool. Nora glowed under the lamps while the water feature trickled, and my black hair brushed my cheek from the gentle breeze. A real scene from a movie. The kind where I’d bring her out here for a glass of wine and sweet talk her into taking all her clothes off and diving into the pool. Except, if she took her clothes off, I’d only see my own body.

‘You know, you act like some tortured soul when you really have had your life handed to you on a silver platter.’ She spanned her hand around our excessive yard in demonstration.

Sure, if the platter had been tarnished beyond repair.

I shook my head. ‘You don’t have a clue about the things I want.’