And at the bar, Darryl and Morrie dealt with the lunatics who sniffed out the Denny Lowe trail because they were fucked in the head, not only to protect me from that shit, but also to protect Feb and Colt. But that message had been sent frequently, and after all these years, those nutjobs were few and far between.
Like Trent being back in Ethan’s life, no one knew about the phone calls. They didn’t need to worry about Trent being a part of our lives. And they definitely didn’t need the Denny Lowe shit dredged up. And last, I didn’t need yet another way for people to feel they needed to take care of me.
I could take care of myself. I’d done it since I was eighteen, and I knew it was my lot in life to do it until I died. I might have forgotten this that morning for one crazy, stupid, hopeful moment, but then I’d been reminded.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate a man like Merry in my life.
I would.
And I would more than any normal woman because I knew how precious having someone to look after you, someone to share the load, someone who gave even a single solitary shit actually was.
Which was ironic, since I was one of those girls.
One of those girls who would appreciate it.
One of those girls who would take care of it.
One of those girls who would beg, borrow, and steal in order to keep hold of it.
And one of those girls who would never have it.
* * * * *
“Would it kill them to stock diet grape soda?” I bitched, staring at the soda shelves at Walmart.
Ethan busted out laughing.
I looked down at my kid.
I’d rearranged my activities that day. Instead of hitting the store, I did some laundry, paid my bills, and cleaned the house before he got home.
This was because he liked going to the grocery store and he wasn’t a big fan of cleaning.
I didn’t let him totally get away with that. He had chores. He took out the trash, helped me do the dishes when I was home at night, and he had to keep his room picked up.
He got an allowance because I thought it was best he learned that you had to earn what you got. I didn’t want to shelter him, then send him out in the world so he could get blindsided about how hard you had to work just to afford decent. I wanted him to know even as I was careful not to bog him down in that crap.
So he got extra if he vacuumed or dusted. More if he took on the bathroom or mopped the kitchen floor. And he needed cabbage for whatever kids needed cabbage for, so he did both, often.
But I didn’t want our time together that day, a Saturday that was a full day off for me, to be about laundry and cleaning. I wanted it to be about hanging and doing shit we liked.
I wasn’t a big fan of grocery shopping, but Ethan was, so I got the crap stuff out of the way so that when he got home we could focus on the good stuff.
“Somethin’ funny?” I asked, feeling my lips quirk, even after the day I’d had and the lingering hangover that I’d had to manage without an Egg McMuffin but with pills and a fried egg on toast.
“Mom,” Ethan said through his laughter, sweeping his hand to our cart. “We got diet orange, Diet 7UP, Diet Cherry 7UP, Diet Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, and two different kinds of Fresca. How much diet crap do you need?”
“I have to look after my girlish figure,” I retorted.
“Yeah, right,” he muttered, putting his hands to the cart and starting to push. “You do that real good with your candy stash.”
I didn’t look in the cart because I didn’t have to. We’d hit the candy aisle already and we were loaded up. My kid liked sweets, but I was a candy junkie. I had some every day, sometimes more than “some.”
I had a lot of bad habits.
I could drink my fair share of booze.
I had three drawers of makeup in the bathroom.
I knew I should filter some of the shit that came out of my mouth, but I didn’t bother.
I dressed in a way I knew people thought was more than a little skanky, but I liked it. It made me a dick magnet of the extreme variety, but even knowing this, living and breathing it, I still didn’t change. I just couldn’t bring myself to tone it down. I liked the way it looked—it was me—and I’d learned the hard way to be nothing but me.
And I ate lots of candy.
I followed my son, sharing my wisdom, “The diet pop negates the candy bars.”
“It sucks that that makes sense and is probably true,” he muttered, turning the corner into the snack aisle. Another bad habit…for both of us.
“Considering your concern for my nutrition, maybe we should skip this aisle and go straight to the carrots.”
He lifted his eyes and gave me a look.
I grinned at him.
He rolled his eyes, the ends of his mouth curling up, and went right to the microwave popcorn.
I followed him, thinking about how in a couple of years, he’d be taller than me. A year or two after that, his voice would drop. A year or two after that, he’d be dating. A year or two after that, he’d be on his way to building his own life.
In other words, this time was precious.
Every moment was precious—I knew that—but this time it was even more.
I’d had ten, nearly eleven years where he was mine. I shared him because I was generous that way.
But still, he was all mine.
That time was more than half over.
Seven more years and…
“Theater style or cheddar?” Ethan asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“Uh…duh,” I answered as my phone in my purse rang. “Both.”