Tease by Sophie Jordan Page A

Professor Martinelli’s voice in my ears. And then I saw those eyes. Shaw’s eyes. It’s like I was possessed . . . and someone else, the “possessed” me, had painted those eyes.
    At my door, I fumbled with my keys, but it was suddenly yanked open. I looked up, expecting Georgia, but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Pepper.
    It was my mom.
    There wasn’t much difference in her appearance now at age forty-eight versus how she looked when I was nine. Except her face looked kind of waxy. She’d had some work since I last saw her. And her hair was longer. She wore it in a sleek braid down her back with several shorter layers escaping to frame her face. I squinted. I’d never seen her hair this long and I suspected it was due to extensions.
    She never seemed to change outwardly. Or, for that matter, inwardly. When I was little she used to do the whole PTA-room-mom-thing. But once she and Dad divorced, she stopped pretending. She stopped trying to be the best mom on the block. She moved to Boston and began her quest for husband number two.
    And she found him in my stepfather.
    She looked me up and down, her nose wrinkling. “What’s all over you? You’re a mess.”
    “Paint,” I replied. No greeting. No hug. This was normal.
    “You always did have a unique sense of . . . style.” Typical passive aggression. When she wasn’t being outright aggressive.
    I stepped past her into my suite. “How’d you get in here?”
    “Your RA. I told her I was your mother and she let me in.”
    I’d have to talk to Heather about that.
    “What are you doing here?” I dropped my bag on the floor and sank down on my bed.
    “You’re not returning my calls.”
    Wow. She must be desperate to come here. “I already told you. I’m not going.”
    “Emerson, would you stop being so selfish for one moment? You’re family. How’s it going to look if my own daughter doesn’t attend her stepbrother’s wedding? You already missed the showers. I want you at the rehearsal dinner and wedding.”
    “No.”
    Her lips compressed and she crossed her arms. The action pulled her shirt dress tightly across her upper body and I marveled at how thin she was. Thinner than the last time I’d seen her. She must be down to four saltines a day.
    “You know the embarrassment this will cause me. You just want to hurt me.”
    Shaking my head, I stared at her. She really thought this was about her. About me wanting to hurt her and not what might or might not be comfortable for me. “It hasn’t once crossed your mind that this isn’t about you?”
    She stared at me, blinking in something akin to bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
    “Justin,” I spit his name out like it was venom in my mouth. “I wouldn’t go to his wedding if you held a gun to my head.”
    “Oh!” She tossed her hands up in the air. “This is still because of that misunderstanding.”
    I surged to my feet. “There was no misunderstanding.”
    She held up a hand as if to ward me off. “You were always guilty of an overactive imagination. You flighty artist types—”
    “Mother!” I snapped. “I imagined nothing.”
    “Fine!” Mom grabbed her bag from where it sat on my desk and marched toward my door. “Cling to your bitterness and this ridiculous agenda you have against Justin. You haven’t even seen him in five years. When are you going to grow up and move on, Emerson?”
    “Oh, I’ve been quite grown-up for some time.” The hard realities of my youth had guaranteed that.
    “Don’t call me. Don’t text.” She stabbed a red-nailed finger at her chest. I almost laughed and reminded her that she was the one who called and texted me. “Not until you learn to accept me. You never have. Not since I married Don.”
    “That’s not true. I don’t have a problem with Don.” Honestly, I didn’t. I met with her and Don several times a year for dinner. Even joined them for Christmas one year in Paris—true, I felt safe doing so because Justin was spending the