Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
With that, he took his food back upstairs to his woman, leaving me with a lot to mull over.
The party grew wilder until, eventually, Colter, Raff, and Coach each took a girl upstairs.
The other three, not wanting to abandon their friends, curled up on the sectional in the living room.
“Don’t,” I whisper-yelled at Cat, snatching him off the back of the couch as he eyed the blonde who was out cold, her head resting on her two fists. “Why do you have to be such a dick, huh?” I asked him, depositing him on his tree stand, then rubbing behind his ears.
Once I was sure he wasn’t going to launch himself at them again, I carefully draped blankets on them, turned the music down, and considered going to see if one of the other bedrooms was empty so I could catch some sleep.
But it was right then that Detroit came walking in, still dressed for and sweaty from the gym.
His gaze swept over the girls, then me, a question etched between his brows.
“Is it morning already?” I asked.
“About six.”
“And you’ve already been to the gym?”
There was a morning person, and there was Detroit.
“From the looks of you, you haven’t been to bed.”
“Guilty. You cooking?” I asked as he made his way toward the kitchen.
“Found a recipe for a quiche, but made with a potato crust. Been wanting to try it out. You heading to bed, or you wanna make yourself useful?”
I was no chef. I had no imagination when it came to what went well together or anything like that. But given my mom’s delicate mental health my whole life, I’d learned from a young age how to feed us.
I still had a nasty burn scar on my wrist from the first time using the oven. And this raised white spot on a fingertip from where I’d sliced it off while cutting up veggies with a too-dull knife.
“You’re pretty good with that knife,” Detroit said as I sliced up some bell peppers.
“My mom’s favorite meal was unstuffed bell peppers,” I said, remembering how much I learned to hate that meal when she would go through phases where it was the only thing she would eat. Now, fuck, I’d kill to be able to make it for her one more time, to let her know that I hadn’t completely abandoned her, that none of this was my choice.
“Sounds good. She was lucky to have you.”
“We were lucky to have each other.”
That was the thing with a loved one who struggled with their mental health. Outsiders only saw the bad. The manic episodes or the depression that made it impossible for them to work, bathe, or get out of bed.
But there had been good times. When the meds were working and my mom was stable. When I got to be the kid, not the caretaker. When my mother doted on me and did her best to make up for the weeks or months when I had to step up and be the adult.
I once came home from school in March to find she’d put up the Christmas tree, had bought and wrapped presents, had baked cookies. Because she’d been in such a deep depression all winter that we’d missed the holiday entirely.
For my sixteenth birthday, she’d somehow managed to scrape together enough money to get me the computer that I’d been drooling over for a year, all the while sure we could never afford it.
I’d learned sometime later that she could only buy it because she’d sold the diamond bracelet her own mother had bought her for her sweet sixteen.
The highs were as high as the lows were low. Long months when I was doing all the housework, shopping, and cooking while also making sure my grades were up and I behaved at school so no one ever had any reason to check in on my home situation and take me away.
I’d been placed in foster care twice when I was little while my mom was put away against her will to regulate her meds. I never wanted that to happen again.
More so than the work, or the caretaking, it was the loneliness that could weigh on me in those down times.
It was what first made me get into computers. Then through computers, hacking. And the whole hacking community that I learned so much from that would, after a lot of trial and error, allow me to provide a nice life for us. Even as a teenager.
There were no more worries that we were going to get evicted, or that the heat or electric might get turned off, or that my mom’s health insurance would lapse, making getting her very expensive meds impossible.
“Sorry you haven’t been able to see her, man. I know that’s weighing on you. Praying for you that Nancy finds that cold, shriveled thing she calls a heart.”