Page 13

Eleven

Ehhh, good enough.

— Mediocrates

SEARCY

I’d been thinking about him all day, and I was questioning life.

He’d left abruptly today, not even finishing his meal.

I’d watched him out of the corner of my eye as he started eating, loving that he’d enjoyed his food so much here.

Only, after the cute woman that belonged to the angry looking biker that’d come in last came up to order food, his entire demeanor had changed.

I’d loved the photo she’d shared with me of Doc and the woman’s—I couldn’t remember her name for the life of me—baby in his arms.

They’d both been asleep on the couch in what looked to be the middle of a party.

Both of them had been snoozing away, despite the chaos going around them.

Something had changed in me in that moment.

Seeing him with a baby on his chest had made me want that so badly that I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.

I also realized that the distance that he kept from the woman that’d been on his bike screamed platonic, not relationship, making me breathe easier since I’d seen them on the back of his bike together.

But before I could say anything to the man in any way, he’d shoved a hundred and fifty bucks at me and walked out.

The men that’d been at the table with him had stayed long enough to finish their food and leave a generous tip, making it possible for me to be where I was now.

The beep-beep of the grocery checkout was a constant hum in my head as I moved up and down the aisles of Walmart.

I had less than an hour to get everything picked out and check out because they closed in forty-nine minutes.

I’d have been here earlier, but the grease guys stopped by an hour late, and we couldn’t work tomorrow if we didn’t get the old grease emptied.

Then, after they’d come and gone, I’d found a leak in a water pipe in the bathrooms when I was cleaning them. Which had then prompted me to make a trip to Lowe’s.

I’d gotten that fixed up by the old dad on YouTube that taught kids who didn’t have dads how to navigate life—I used his YouTube videos a lot.

Then, when I’d gotten home, I’d gone to the fridge to make the kids lunch for school tomorrow—they got free lunch at the school, but tomorrow was fish stick day and they hated the fish sticks—and found that not only did we not have anything to make them lunch with, we didn’t have anything but expired condiments and a few stray baby carrots.

With my coupon binder in hand, I’d made my way to Walmart, which was where I was now, comparing two sizes of laundry detergent, and wondering how in the hell they thought that they could just add six less ounces into the Tide tubs and we wouldn’t notice.

After making sure to grab the oldest carton on the shelf that had the old amount of ounces in it, I was just contemplating getting a pack of dryer sheets when a cart ran into mine.

I blinked and looked up, surprised to see a very dirty-looking Posy staring at my cart that’d just ran into his.

“You know,” I drawled. “You can totally fit two carts down an aisle. You don’t have to run into the one that’s already here.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, sounding off. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“I can see that,” I observed as I studied his face. He had dirt right underneath his left eye. And what looked like blood on the collar of his shirt. “You have blood on your t-shirt collar.”

He wrinkled his nose, which was surprisingly cute. “Got headbutted in the face by a calf.”

“You’re lucky it was a calf and not a grown cow at least,” I pointed out as my eyes trailed down the rest of him. He was wearing the same thing that he was wearing this morning, only a whole lot dirtier. And he had a piece of straw in his hair. “You have straw in your hair.”

He didn’t bother to reach to get it free.

“I’m sure I have straw in other places, too.” He looked down the aisle I was on. “Do you like that brand?”

He pointed at the Tide in my cart.

“I usually don’t get it, but it’s on sale this week, and I have a really good coupon for it,” I replied. “I generally go for making my own, but I’m only paying six bucks for this one.”

“I’d ask you how you made your own, but that sounds like torture to me when I already have barely any time to do stuff,” he muttered as he reached for one of the newer bottles of Tide.

“Not that one,” I pointed out as I pushed it back onto the shelf before he could get it free. “This one.”

I gave him the bigger ounced one.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“The difference,”—I pointed at the ounces—“is that they kept the size of the bottles the same, but gave you less product. This one has more.”

He grunted and put it into his cart.

I reached for a coupon out of my book and handed it to him. “It’s one per customer. This one will give you the same deal I’m getting.”

He eyed it. “Just do two transactions. Then you can get more.”

I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t afford more. If I got more Tide, then I couldn’t get the lunch meat that the kids would need to feed themselves the next week.

Instead, I shook the coupon at him more insistently.

He took it, then grabbed another bottle of Tide.

He shoved the coupon into his pocket, then fell into step beside me as I moved to the next aisle.

“Why are you here so late?” I asked him.

“Long ass day,” he said. “Got done, went inside to grab something, and saw that my fridge was empty.”

“Same,” I admitted. “The kids didn’t tell me that they’ve eaten literally everything. And since they don’t like the school’s lunch tomorrow, I had to come buy some food.”

With the generous tip you gave me!

Speaking of earlier, after Mr. Grumpy Pants had left, I’d learned that the girl on the back of Posy’s bike this morning was nothing to Posy. She was just a woman that ran into car trouble and asked Posy to pick her up.

It’d all been innocent, and I might’ve overreacted today.

Which was kind of eye opening seeing as I wasn’t completely sure how it’d happened, but I had a big, fat crush on the man.

There was something definitely wrong with me.

Posy had given me zero indication that he even liked me, let alone felt about me in a way that I did about him.

I should definitely get control of myself.

A man like Posy would never want anything to do with a woman like me.

Not to mention, I came with a lot of baggage.

Speaking of baggage, I came to a stuttering halt in the middle of an aisle when a familiar face popped up at the end of the aisle.

My mother.

“Mom!” I barked.

She whipped her head around, and her eyes widened.

“What are you doing here, honey?” my mom asked, looking for an escape route.

She should.

I was going to chew her ass out.

“I’m shopping for food for your children with money that I earned running your place of business. All the while keeping it afloat on my own, with zero compensation for it,” I snapped. “Where have you been?”

My mother’s face went scrunchy, letting me know that she was angry that I was pointing out her inadequacies.

“I’m busy,” she said as she stepped back to her cart.

Her fully filled cart.

I narrowed my eyes. “Where are you getting the money to buy that?”

My mother’s face went guilty.

“You better not be pulling it out of the diner account, because I have to pay bills tomorrow, and if that money isn’t there, I don’t have enough money to keep the lights on!” I snapped.

Not with her constantly taking money out all willy-nilly, spending it on things we couldn’t even deduct on our taxes.

My mother’s face flushed, and I was thankful that at least she didn’t have access to the money that I used to pay our house payment.

I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

Plus, the kids had had to take showers at the Y for a couple of weeks because we had no water at our own place.

I’d had to take spit baths at the diner.

It was utterly embarrassing, and she didn’t fucking care.

I didn’t know why I bothered with her.

If it wasn’t for the kids, I’d have taken off years ago.

As it was, I couldn’t figure out how to crawl my way out of this fucked-up life while keeping my siblings clothed and fed.

My mom sighed. “I’m not buying much.”

“You’re buying more than you need,” I pointed to her cart. “What are you going to do with all that face cream? That’s way too expensive!”

A man came up then, dropping a few more things in the cart.

That’s when I might’ve lost it.

I marched up to her and yanked my purse off her shoulder.

I sifted into my purse and pulled out her wallet, and the shit ton of crisp bills that she likely pulled out of the bank before coming here.

I took the cash and her cards before handing her wallet back to her, keeping my purse.

“Fuck you,” I said as I went back to my cart and turned it around.

All the while, the silent man at my side didn’t say a word.

I was zooming past the Cheez-Its when I caught sight of the crackers that were on sale that I had a coupon for.

From there, I made sure to get everything that I could get this month using my WIC card, then started in on the food that wasn’t on sale.

It was on the candy aisle that I decided that I could possibly afford a few small things for them.

Maybe a five for a dollar candy bar…

Posy snatched up a package of Reese’s footballs, which were my all-time favorite.

I ignored him and his stupid Reese’s and carefully picked out five candy bars.

I could give everyone one and have an extra for a rainy day when Calliope went on her period and decided the whole world would be better if it was lit on fire.

“What do you think would be best?” Posy asked as we came to a stop at tin foil. “The store brand or the real one?”

I turned the pages of my binder and got to the tin foil page, pulling out a few options for him.

He rolled his eyes at my coupons and said, “I’m not stealing your coupons.”

“I don’t buy tin foil,” I said. “It’s a waste of money. However, if you’re going to buy it, I have coupons you could use.”

He took one of the coupons and grabbed for the most expensive one.

I had a fleeting thought of ‘I wish I could do that’ and went back to shopping.

By the end of it, the whole bottom of my cart was filled, and my mother was nowhere to be seen.

Thankfully.

It’d take her a few days to get her a new card, and by then, I could start up a new account and move the money over.

My mom could contest it, of course, but she was the one who added me as a signer on the account because she up and left so often.

“What are you going to do about your mom?” Posy asked as we got into line at the checkout.

The constant beep-beep was making me jittery.

Mostly because I hated spending money, and it gave me anxiety.

As I checked out, I explained to him my plans.

“You can just take the money for the diner if she owns it?” he asked.

“She made me a part owner,” I said. “And she could fight it, sure. But then she’d have to get a lawyer to do so, and she’s not that invested. She’ll probably come back when the money dries up. Work for a while, then we’ll do this all over again in about six months.”

When I got my WIC card out to pay for the WIC items, I didn’t try to hide it.

I wasn’t embarrassed about what I had to do to keep my family afloat.

Speaking of…

“I also have guardianship of my siblings because this is such a usual thing for her,” I said.

“She likes to go off on a walkabout, and I have to take care of everyone. After the first time she did this when I was like eighteen or so, and Kent got super sick and needed his appendix removed, we made sure that I had the power to do the things I needed to when she wasn’t here. ”

“She sounds awesome.” He started to check his own things out.

“Don’t forget the coupons,” I called as he went to pay.

He pulled them out of his pocket, and I was happy to see that I’d saved him eight dollars.

His brows went up in surprise as he paid.

“That’s a lot of money in the grand scheme of things,” he pointed out.

“I know,” I sighed as we walked out the door. “One day, it’s my goal to never use coupons again.”

He walked with me to my car and then helped me get my groceries in.

When he grabbed the last bags, I took my cart to the return corral, and he placed the last of my bags into the trunk.

I waved at him when he started backing away. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

His eyes were filled with mirth as he said, “See you for a grilled cheese tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there,” I grumbled.

Because where the fuck else would I be?

I got home in a much better mood than when I’d left.

It was as I was unloading the bags in the kitchen that I realized that I’d come home with a few more than I’d expected.

When I got to the bag of candy, my heart literally jolted inside of my chest.

My eyes went watery.

But they didn’t spill over.

At least, not until I got to the second bottle of Tide.