Page 48 of Protecting What's Mine

“Another round, ladies?” she asked, setting the salad, wings, plates, and napkins on the table.

Ellen nodded vehemently. “Calm down. Just make him nuggets and call it a night.”

Mack looked at her glass. “Sure.”

Sophie whirled away with their order and headed back inside.

“Ugh. Yes. I’ll go to the grocery store on my way home. But can you try to remember this stuff when I’m actually making my list next time? Make my life just a little bit easier for once? Hello? Hello?”

Annoyance crackling off her, she shoved her phone back in her bag. “He hung up on me. Can you believe that?”

Mack wasn’t sure if she could or not.

“This is why I’m so stressed. I can’t even get ten minutes to myself without someone needing something.” She reached into her bag and produced a pack of cigarettes.

Mack cleared her throat.

“Oh, hell. Okay. Fine. I lied. I’m stressed out.”

“Okay. So tell me about it,” Mack said, sliding half of the salad onto a plate.

They ate wings and speared vinaigrette-tossed lettuce while Ellen talked and Mack listened. She was getting a clearer picture. One she’d missed in the office because she’d been in a hurry to move on to the next appointment.

“Have you thought about anxiety meds?” Mack asked when Ellen seemed to have emptied out her stress tank.

“Thought about and rejected,” Ellen said cheerfully. “I’m cautious about what I put in my body.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m saying this as a friend and not a doctor. But are you really?” Mack looked pointedly at the wings, the cigarettes, the second fishbowl-sized margarita.

Ellen winced. “Don’t I deserve to have a vice or two…or three?”

“What you deserve is to feel good, to be healthy. Stress isn’t good for anyone.”

“What am I supposed to do? Sell a kid and get a divorce?”

Mack looked around them to make sure no one else was listening. “I am definitelynotsaying that. What I am saying is you have options. You can make some lifestyle changes, or you can consider prescriptions, or both. You don’t have to keep feeling like this. But you will if you keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Lifestyle like eating healthy and exercising? You sound like Dr. Dunnigan and Dr. Robinson, you know?” Ellen groaned.

“It doesn’t have to be torture,” Mack said. “What did you like to do before you had kids?”

Her dinner partner shrugged, looking morose. “I don’t know. Going on bar crawls and eating tacos at one in the morning?”

Mack laughed. “Anything else?”

Ellen’s face brightened. “You know what I used to love to do?”

“What?”

“Swim.”

“Really? That’s a great sport,” Mack said. “Why did you stop?”

“I started hating how I looked in a bathing suit.”

Honesty. Mack could work with that.

“Here’s what I propose. You take a month. Find a place to swim. Try a little harder on the food. Grab some ‘me time’ for yourself every single day no matter what. And for God’s sake, kick the cigarettes. We’ll meet back up and see how you’re feeling. Then we can go from there.”