Happy Monday! Here is an excerpt from the novel I'm working on. This scene is basically a dating fear--boyfriends' moms. Most are fine and normal. Moms are people just like anyone else. However, just like all people, some are awkward. Jaisa's ex-boyfriend's mom would definitely be one of the latter. It also includes two of my favorite things about high school: basketball and puff paint. 

I’m not so sure Mikah’s family loved me. He’s an only child and his dad drives a truck so he’s gone all the time and Mikah’s mom is hard to talk to. Like really hard. Once I rode with her to one Mikah’s away basketball games. Never did it again.

She picked me up. “Hi, Mrs. Craven. Thank you so much for picking me up,” I said, putting my seatbelt on.

“Hi, Jes-uh.” Mikah and I had been dating for two years at this point. Granted, this was only, like, the fifth time his mom and I’d talked, but she had been watching me run and hearing people scream my name at meets for two years, she should know how to pronounce it. Jay-suh. It’s not that hard.

Mikah had suggested I ride with her. I thought it would be a good idea. Help make me part of the family. Mikah had fit right in with my family the moment we started dating. Why wasn’t I a part of his? My family's really important to me and so was Mikah. I wanted both important pieces to know each other. Not the story on his side.

Riding with his mom, two blocks from my house: “Mikah said Louisville is pretty good this year,” I had said, trying to start a conversation. I looked down at my black shirt covered in puff paint. Some of the other girlfriends and I made the shirts the week before. Sideline Sweeties scrawled across the front and Craven 11 decorated the back. I picked at some of the puff paint.

She didn’t respond.

Ten blocks from my house we passed a new Scooter’s that was being built on one of Landview’s main streets. “I’m excited for the new coffee place. Do you like Scooter’s?”

“I just drink what we have at work.”

“I’m not a big coffee person, but when Mom and I go to Omaha to go clothes shopping she always gets a skinny vanilla latte and I get a green apple Italian soda. We’ll be heading to Omaha next weekend to get my Winter Royalty dress.”

Nothing.

A mile from my house: “So how is work?” I ask.

“It’s work.”

“I don’t quite know. Mikah said you do finances for Super 8?”

“Yes, he’s right I do.”

Two miles from my house. We were finally on the highway. “What do you do with the finances?” I asked.

“I do the hotel’s bills.”

Eight miles from home: “So, do you like going to basketball, cross country or track better?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re all the same,” she said.

“But don’t you like being outside for track?”

“Not when it rains.”

“So basketball.”

“They all have hard bleacher seating and it’s all the same parents.”

“Bleacher butt does suck.”

She didn’t respond. Ten miles from home I gave up and stared out the window for the next fifty miles. The ride home was just as eventful. When we first started dating, Mikah had been similar to his mom. I had to prompt questions. The more he started hanging out with my family, though, the more he got in on our conversation starters. At dinner, Dad, Mom (before she left), Bryce and I all go around the table and say our lows and highs of the day. After Mikah had eaten supper with us a few times, he and I started doing that on the phone at night. Toward the end he started to forget to ask. Maybe I should have seen the break up coming.