Jasper had let her put it off until after coffee, but before she'd start getting ready for work, to chase her with the phone. He must have told them she'd call, the phone didn't ring very often.
"Bebe – talk to me," her father's voice gives her a slight sting – he's multiple states away and he sounds as soft and as comforting as ever.
"He didn't love me, papai," she tells him quietly. Maybe that isn't the whole truth, and maybe she could have explained more, but she did have work today, and she couldn't go in with a crying hangover.
"You want to come home?"
Rosalie shoots down the idea immediately. He didn't need to know her trip to the Smoky Mountains left her on shaky footing at work. She's one more absence away from being written up as an a completely useless, emotional female. "No, no, I have Jasper," she looks at up where he sits at the kitchen counter, sipping his coffee. He looks up at his name and tilts his chin at her, but not much else. "He's taking care of me."
"Good boy. Mama wants to talk to you."
"Yeah," she murmurs, catching Jasper's eyes and pointing to the phone in her hand 'your mom', she mouths at him. Jasper rolls his eyes but doesn't offer much else.
"Hey hija, you just kick him to the curb and leave him there!" the woman cheers in her ear immediately, "You want us to come up?"
There's a slight rustle on the phone, and Rosalie can just hear the clash of Portuguese and Spanish that meant the two were having a quarrel. Rosalie had a feeling that mama might have been put on the phone just to ask her.
She shoots them down as soon as she can. She didn't really have the time for the two of them to come over and try to scheme something up – whether out of revenge or good will. "No thank you" –she clicks her fingers desperately at her brother– "Jasper, says he wants to talk to you."
"Oh, did I?" Jasper asks, watching Rosalie march over brandishing the phone. There was a vague pleasant surprise from his mother, as Rosalie presses the phone into Jasper's face. He grabs it from her with a smirk and his voice immediately becomes two times twangier. "Hey mama, no mama, please. Put the old man on the phone – no, old man!" Jasper barks, Rosalie rolls her eyes. Jasper went from calling her dad 'sir' to 'old man' in six months and hadn't deviated since. She goes to get ready for work, but she can still hear him from her room.
"You stay in Texas! You'll just come here and complain that it's notyour New York!"
After work, Jasper and Rosalie pull out a tiny photo album their mother had made for their move up from Texas. For Rosalie, it might have been a homecoming back to the city she was born in, but it was also the first time she lived by herself, or mostly by herself.
They flick through their parents wedding photos, laughing at Rosalie's painfully early-aughts hair, remembering the way Jasper led his mother through the first dance with a ram-rod straight back, while tears streamed down his face.
They watch a stupid movie while on opposite ends of the couch, sharing a large throw blanket and too lazy to pull out the futon to sleep properly.
They both woke up curled on their respective armrests, complaining about their sore necks.
I love a blended family as their own happily ever after, its so sweet.