I had enough to cover what I estimated would be another year at the very most. Six months would be ideal, so I’d still have a good buffer for the worst-case scenario. I’d need to find a job.
I was focusing on one thing at a time, though, and today I was focusing on the fact that the house was clean and my kids were happily playing in the backyard together. I’d only had to breakup one squabble, which was some kind of record. As well as Jack and Lily got along, they were still brother and sister with very different personalities.
Eventually they’d come in, needing to be bathed and fed. But it was Saturday and one of our routines was having takeout every Saturday night. Tonight was Lily’s turn to choose, so we’d likely be having Indian. My little girl was obsessed with trying as many different foods as she could. Amber was small, but it had a surprising variety of different restaurants, consistently growing as our small corner of paradise continued to get discovered my tourists and people looking to relocate to a town in California with affordable houses.
It was almost three in the afternoon, probably another hour until I could crack open a beer or bottle of wine and not hate myself.
I’d limited how much I drank while the kids were awake but indulged slightly more once they were asleep. Saturday was also the night I routinely let myself get a little bit tipsy. That combined with some Valium made it so I was able to get a small amount of sleep at least once a week.
Only Saturdays, though. I couldn’t really make a habit of getting drunk and taking mood stabilizers every night if I wanted my children to be even vaguely well adjusted.
My friends invited me over for wine and food almost daily. Despite the fact I always said no, they kept asking.
I wasn’t ready for that yet. To go back to the life I had inhabited before Ranger died.
Sometimes, I craved all of that. Felt guilty for not giving my kids back some normalcy.
But I couldn’t do it. Even for the kids. Not now, not that I was still processing my rock bottom, who I was down here.
So, after fixing the kids a snack and throwing a ball with Jack for twenty minutes, I settled myself on the sofa with a candle burning and a cup of tea that I wished was beer. My laptop was nestled on my legs as I typed away at the document I wasn’t letting myself call a book. It was an escape. A period of time when I could imagine life was easy with happily ever afters, hot sex and romance with no bumps in the road.
I couldn’t read romance books anymore. None of them were right. They made me mad. I couldn’t relate to anything. Couldn’t escape into anything. So I just wrote what I needed to read. Nothing else. It wouldn’t go anywhere.
I got so into this ‘not’ book, that I lost awareness of my surroundings. Which meant that I didn’t notice someone standing in my living room, watching me for who knew who long before she cleared her throat.
I jumped, turning to see Amy standing behind me, purse in the crook of her elbow, a smile on her face.
“What you doing there?” she asked with faux innocence, the tone telling me she’d been peeking over my shoulder.
Heat crept up my neck, and a little annoyance. This writing and this not book were private. It wasn’t even something I’d talked to Ranger about. He’d see me on my laptop typing things, but he hadn’t asked about it. Not because he didn’t care, but because he knew if I wanted him to know what I was doing I would’ve talked to him about it. We shared almost everything, he supported me in whatever made me happy. I wasn’t sure writing my stories made me happy. They made me... feel whole. It was nice to have something that didn’t have anything to do with being a mother or an Old Lady. Something that was just mine.
And right now, I needed something just mine more than ever.
“Nothing,” I said to Amy, slamming the laptop shut. “What are you doing here?”
She moved to sit on the chair opposite me, placing her purse down beside her and crossing her legs. Every movement was graceful, elegant, sexy down to her snakeskin boots that I would’ve stolen right off her feet if we were the same size. Unfortunately we weren’t. But both her and Gwen knew my weakness for shoes—and Ranger’s liking for them—so every year, for my birthday and Christmas, they bought me shoes that were far too expensive, physically forcing me to take them.
“Jack let me in,” Amy said. “Him and Lily are getting ready, so you should probably stop doing ‘nothing’ and get ready too. You’re totally hot in any outfit, but I don’t know if that shirt with all the holes is the look you want for the party.”