“Hey,” I said to the three of them, watching as my little sister raised her arms up to the ceiling as her way to get me to come toward her.
She was the most affectionate one in the family, which was just one more reason I was going to miss her when she left for college. That thought pierced me straight in the gut.
She was graduating high school next week. Next week. She’d be eighteen in a couple of weeks. Legally an adult but forever my baby sister who had grown up way too fast, no matter how hard I had tried to prevent that from happening.
Bending over the back of the couch, Lily’s arms went around my neck as she pressed my cheek to the side of her face. “Tough day, sugar tits?”
My “It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst, sugar lumps” went right into her cheek as I dropped a quick kiss on it.
“Sorry, boo.” She pecked me right back. Her green eyes—the same shade as mine and both of our sisters too—were extra watchful. She had told me enough times how I worked too much and was going to wear myself out too quick. “Want us to go to my room?” Her gaze flicked to my wrist and she smiled. “Oh, look, you’re wearing it.”
I gave her another kiss on the cheek before straightening. “Of course I am, and not unless you care if I sit here for a little while with your leftover pizza.”
She made a face. “You’ve been snorting too many paint fumes today.”
I made a face back at her before turning around and heading into the kitchen down another short hallway. I really needed to open up the house more and make the layout better. I’d gotten the plans for it right after I’d bought the place, and I’d bet I could find an engineer or an architect who could tell me just how many of the walls I could take down. I worked too much to really get a lot of the Home Remodeling Network shows in, but I had a general idea of what I wanted this place to look like eventually.
I took in what I had currently—a closed-off kitchen that had been popular in a different century, solid cabinets, a countertop that had been replaced at some point in the last twenty years, and a stove and refrigerator that got the job done… There were glass and ceramic containers on the countertops, a fancy blender that Lily had talked me into, a countertop mixer that I had splurged on during a Black Friday sale, and a wire basket half-filled with apples and oranges.
I had so much, and I was so lucky. Even in its current state of needing a serious uplift, even the kitchen could make me happy. Because it was mine, and no one could take it away… unless I stopped paying the mortgage, but I hadn’t gotten fired yet, so that would be a worry for another day.
I could still easily remember the days of looking through a pantry and refrigerator with no food in it. I had made myself a promise that I would someday open a cabinet and always find something in there to eat and my sisters could have the same. I had sworn to myself that if I ever became a parent, I would give my kids what my parents had been too selfish and negligent and careless to give us.
And right then I remembered that I had managed that. Maybe it took working sixty hours a week and getting scolded by a boss who usually blatantly ignored me when I tried to put him in a good mood, but I had done it. I had done it.
As tired as I felt then, as much as my shoulders ached from holding the spray gun, and my arms and hands and back and feet hurt from the hours of bodywork I had done that day, it was all worth it.
There was a laugh from the living room that I knew was my little sister’s and that too just cemented how worth it busting my ass was.
So, as I made my way toward the pizza box sitting on the counter beside the refrigerator, I felt lighter again.
Maybe I had gotten in trouble. Maybe it hadn’t been the best day ever. Maybe everything hurt. But I was home. I had gotten a kiss from someone who loved me. I had a bed to sleep in.
For all intents and purposes, it was a good day despite a couple things.
Then I opened the pizza box, saw there was only one single slice left, and I told myself again it was still a pretty good day.
I had enough in the budget to call and order another pizza if I really wanted to, and that was pretty damn good if I said so myself.
Chapter 4
I knew I should have turned around and waited to get my coffee the moment I walked into the break room and heard my bosses arguing the following week.
Again. For maybe the thousandth time or pretty close to it.
In my defense, if I walked out every time I heard them fighting over something, I would rarely get to drink a single cup of coffee. Or eat my lunch. Or refill my water bottle. Or find out if I’d read their chicken scratch on Post-It notes correctly.
That morning, more than normal, I needed caffeine. I’d had a dream about my dad for the first time in months. It had felt so real I’d woken up with tears rolling down my cheeks. It had been years since the last time I’d cried so hard… and that had only made me cry even more. It had felt like I was back living with them, back to those nights when my dad would get drunk and go from being unbearable to being a nightmare; back to the days where, if I was lucky, the woman my sisters had known as their mom would be on the couch, high out of her mind, doing nothing other than letting me know how much she hated me. I’d ended up staying awake, lying in bed, telling myself things I had told myself a thousand times.
I was loved. I had a roof over my head. Food to eat. A bed to sleep in. Money in my bank account.
I reminded myself that life was a gift—sometimes one you wanted to return, and other times one you’d want to keep forever, but it was still a gift. The grass might look greener on the other side, but at least you still had grass. There were places in the world that didn’t have any to begin with.
I was fine.
I had more than I ever would have let myself hope for.
I was fine.
I was really glad my little sister could sleep through anything. Otherwise telling her why I’d woken up crying my guts out would have been a real pain. While I went long periods of time between thinking about them, about those times in my life, my youngest sister had decided just never to think about them at all in the first place—at least not that I knew of. I had tried before to get her to discuss it, just to make sure she was fine, but she’d refused.
Knowing all that I had and reminding myself of it hadn’t helped much, but it had done enough. It got me to take a deep breath, climb out of the bed I’d had to save six months for, and shower in my own bathroom in a house I had a mortgage on—a mortgage I paid every month and even managed to put in a little extra for the principal. I grabbed my lunch bag from the refrigerator, filled with food Lily had bought that weekend, and somehow managed to remember to grab the cake I’d made the night before while Lily had made our lunch. I had fought her for so long about how she should just buy food at the school, but she’d insisted it tasted like crap and she could make something ten times better herself. After all that, I drove to work in a car that I had bought with my own money and headed to a job that I loved most of the time.
I was loved. I had a roof over my head. Food to eat. A bed to sleep in. I had an enormous bag of Skittles in my desk at work. Had an oven to bake cakes in and money to actually buy the ingredients to make them. All on my own. All because someone had given me a chance, a little love, and let me work hard to have all the things I did.
And that made me feel better more than anything else—the knowledge that I wasn’t vulnerable and didn’t have to rely on someone else for basic things.
So, more than on any other day, hearing my two bosses argue weighed me down like a hundred-pound sack of flour on my shoulders. I needed to make some coffee to wake up and get to the booth where I worked so I could pretend like I hadn’t woken up upset. I didn’t feel like trying to be subtle and break up an argument between anyone.
But I knew I would. I hated people arguing, especially when I loved one of them and cared too much about the other.
“When were you going to tell me?” came the voice that was all gruff, hoarse, round edges dipped in chocolate. It was such a nice voice, even if he did wield it like a freaking sword to chop people and their feelings in half. But at least he did it with everyone. He had high expectations and didn’t let anyone at the shop get away with things. Me—and my screwup—included.