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“T he best? No,” he said, shaking his head firmly. “I think you’re cheating.”

“I don’t have to cheat.” I swept the paperclips from our bets off the desk and into my lap. “I am the best, and the pot is mine. Again.”

Tyler shook his head more. “You’re card counting. Or maybe they’re marked. Is that it?”

“You’re going to have to come to terms with me being a superior player. My dad started teaching me when I was young because he said that poker is a skill everyone should have.” I swept up the cards, too, my winning hand and his losing one. “What time is she getting here?”

He checked his phone for the time and took the deck from my hand. “I have a couple hours.” The house was all ready for his mom, the ramp installed and his belongings moved upstairs to one of the smaller bedrooms. He had taken care of Shay Galton’s stuff because I refused to touch all the piles of underwear and the tiny clothes. Despite her fears about the cold weather here, there wasn’t any winter stuff, I had noticed. She would have to go shopping. I looked down now at my own outfit, the mustard dress which had been Iva’s before she’d given it away. Was it really that bad? I had never worried much about clothes, except to make sure that all the embarrassing parts of myself were covered by them.

He made a big deal of examining the cards, studying the backs, holding them up to the light, and thumbing the corners. “They look clean,” he told me.

“You’re a sore loser.” He wasn’t that bad at poker, though. We’d started playing together when he’d come by and had found me practicing my shuffling, which had always been my dad’s specialty. Now, of course, he wasn’t up to it, so I liked to try to replicate his tricks.

Tyler leaned back in his chair, which he’d carried in a few days before so he could sit more comfortably. As the summer days were beginning to shorten into fall, it was much more comfortable in terms of the temperature, too. “On my way in here, I saw that guy creeping around again,” he mentioned.

He couldn’t have meant Cody, because that creepy guy had done his water delivery yesterday…then I thought that I understood. I jumped up and looked into the parking lot, but I only saw Oren standing around—there was no sign of the other man, the one who had been harassing me by screaming insults. “I didn’t even hear him,” I said. “After he got arrested, I thought he was done bothering me!”

“What?” He stood up, too. “He got arrested for bothering you and he’s still working here?”

“Not Oren,” I corrected. “I mean that guy who was standing next to his car and yelling that I was a whore. It turned out that he had warrants out of Ohio, so they shipped his mean ass back there. I thought so, anyway.”

“Someone was yelling that you were a whore? Was it because of what Shay did?”

“He’s gone, now.” And the vast, vast majority of harassment had stopped. I was still locking the office door, but I wasn’t getting jumpy at every noise anymore, or dreading every time I had to check my phone. Things between me and Shay Galton’s followers had settled down.

“You didn’t tell me that someone was coming here,” Tyler stated. “You never said that.”

“I didn’t care too much,” I answered, but he looked plenty angry.

“You should have told me.”

I hadn’t wanted to stir the pot, though, because unlike others? I didn’t enjoy it. His relationship with Shay Galton seemed to have settled down as well, and I wanted everything to stay peaceful. It was better for me that they were getting along, for sure. For sure! And it was better for the Woodsmen to have him calm and focused on the game.

Tyler wasn’t talking about his girlfriend unless I asked, and I didn’t do that very often because I didn’t care what that woman did. No, I didn’t care too much, but I was still looking at her social media. She was now involved in an all-out war with the other influencer, the one she’d accused of copying her posts. Those were similar, Iva and I had decided, but only because both women were so pretty and had such great bodies, and because both of them enjoyed nudity so much.

“Let me see your phone.”

“No,” I told him. “I already deleted everything mean.”

“Let me see,” he repeated, and he held out his hand and jiggled it impatiently.

“No!” I repeated, and then I realized that it was ringing, anyway. “It’s Iva,” I said and then, “Hi—ok, ok! No, I’m coming. I’m coming!” I yelled. “I’m coming right now! Iva, I’m coming to help you, don’t worry!” She had hung up before I’d said those last words, but it wasn’t as if saying “don’t worry” had ever helped anyone. “It’s the baby!” I told Tyler.

“She’s having it now?”

I tossed the phone on my desk. “Yes, Iva is having her baby!” I shouted.

“I can hear you pretty well. Why’d you throw your phone like that?”

“No reason. Panic,” I confessed. “I get—I have to go.” I grabbed my bag and rushed out to the lot, then remembered to go back and lock the door. Tyler had turned out the lights.

“You’re all right to drive?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said. Of course, definitely. I ran to my car, started it with shaking hands, and put it into reverse. Then I hit the gas, flew backwards, and struck a light pole, one that had just gotten new bulbs installed. I heard the crunch and I smashed back against the headrest, then jerked forward against my seat belt.

“God damn, Kasia!” My door flew open. “Why are you going so fucking fast in a parking lot?”

“I’m sorry!” I told him, like he needed an apology. I got out and looked at the damage. “Sweet Jesus, my car…” It was bad, very bad back there. And this was terrible, very terrible for me. Then there was Iva—she needed a ride, right now. “I have to go. Give me your keys,” I told Tyler.

“There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I would let you drive my car. Come on,” he said, and loped over toward the giant yellow vehicle. I gave mine one more panicked, heartbroken look before I also ran over and got into the passenger seat. I spat out her address and told him to hurry.

“Funny,” he remarked as he turned out of our lot. “I would have thought you’d be good in a crisis. You’re pretty calm about most things and even when you get pissed off, you keep solving the problem.”

“Do I? Can you go faster?” I pressed my feet on the floor. “Seriously, you need to go faster.”

“Isn’t having a baby a natural thing?”

“Easy for you to say, man with a penis who can’t ever have one,” I snapped. “She’s not due yet. The baby isn’t supposed to be here for another month.”

“Shit. What does that mean?” he asked.

“I don’t have that information! And yes, I know I’m bad at stuff like this, this particular kind of problem. I can deal with Oren masturbating against a dryer, I can deal with some woman messaging me my own address and saying that she’ll see me later. It’s the medical stuff that gets me. Because I was the one who found my dad after his stroke.”

“Who masturbated where? And who got your address?”

I waved away those questions because the answers didn’t matter anymore. “He’s ok now, mostly, but he could have died. It was awful and if something happens to Iva or her baby—it better not!” I told Tyler, as if I was daring him. Then, just like when I’d found my dad, I started praying in the way he had taught me, in Polish like my mom had taught him. Ojcze nasz, który? jest w niebie, ?wi?? si? imi? Twoje. Prayers were all I knew from the language, although my dad told me how she used to speak it to me all the time. He was always telling me how much she had loved her baby…I thought of Iva.

“Can you please, please go faster?” I asked Tyler, and he increased his speed to four miles per hour instead of three. But he got us there after carefully following his phone’s directions to her house, and then I wasn’t as careful. In my hurry to get to her, I fell getting out of his car, right into her driveway. She came through the door as I stumbled back to my feet, and he went to take her bag from her.

“Kasia, you get in the back. Ma’am, I’ll help you up,” he told her, and he lifted her into the front seat. She was crying and telling him and me that it was too soon.

“Maybe they can stop it,” I said, trying to be soothing. “They can do so much stuff, Iva!” They had saved my father from certain death, and even if he wasn’t happy with—

“My water already broke! Oh, no…” She moaned and clutched her stomach.

“It’s all right,” Tyler told her. He reached and took her hand and she clutched that, instead. “Squeeze if it hurts—damn! It’s that bad?”

It was bad. They took her right back when we got to the emergency room and I could hear her screaming. I put my hands over my mouth, as if I might have screamed along with her. It was too soon, and she was alone—I had to get ahold of her boyfriend.

“The dad needs to know,” I said, and got out my phone.

“Where is he?”

I hadn’t filled in Tyler on the situation, because it was personal to Iva and also awful. Stupid Dominic was, supposedly, in New Jersey with most of their furniture, but I had serious doubts about that.

“I think he’s in the Detroit area,” I answered. “Someone withdrew almost everything in their account at an ATM in Novi, which is northwest of the city.”

“All their money?”

“All of it, except it was hers and not ‘theirs,’” I said. “She earned it. He’s nothing but a grifter and he tricked her into being with him, and now she’ll be alone and taking care of his baby by herself. I’ll find him and get him.” I glanced around, realizing that my voice had gone up again. “She’s a good person who made a bad decision,” I continued, a lot more quietly. “She made a mistake and chose a bad boyfriend. It can happen.”

“It can,” he agreed. “Want to sit?”

No, I wanted to tell the women at the desk that I was ready to go if Iva needed me. “I can give her ice chips or something,” I suggested. “I can hold her hand.”

They said that they would let me know, and that they were taking care of her.

“Ok,” I answered. “Thank you.” These were different employees than the ones who had been here five years before when I’d come with my dad, but those people had probably moved on to other things. The patients who arrived sick and hurt, they were the ones who got stuck in the moment. They, and their families, stayed trapped in the problems and the repercussions.

“Kasia?”

I looked over at Tyler. Everyone in this waiting room was here because of some kind of tragedy, big or small, but he was still a Woodsmen player. They were staring at him, gaping openly, and I felt a need to stand in front and block him. I camouflaged about half of his width and none of his shoulders or head. “You can go,” I told him. “You don’t need to wait with me. Shouldn’t you get your mom at the airport?”

“I still have time. Let’s sit down.”

Maybe he wasn’t noticing the open mouths and the scrutiny, or maybe he was used to it. “You came out of college early,” I noted.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was thinking that you had more time to acclimate to this kind of attention,” I explained. I opened my phone and tried the number I had for stupid Dominic, which didn’t work. I had deactivated my social media accounts, of which there were two and they really had only displayed some terrible poetry I’d written. I started to turn them on again so I could contact him that way.

“There’s a lot of attention on the Woodsmen,” Tyler agreed.

“Anyway, you want it,” I said absently. “You drive a car the color of a highlighter. And there’s the fur hat. Nobody wears stuff like that to blend in.”

“That was the only color they had of that model of SUV at the dealership here, and I didn’t want to wait for another one. Maybe I should have,” he admitted. “And I hated that fucking hat. Shay and her stylist had this idea about us taking pictures in the cold.”

“They really didn’t understand about summer? We’re still in the northern hemisphere,” I told him. “Why didn’t you just say no?”

“She was moving here for me,” he answered. “She was giving up a life she had out there, for me. It seemed like the least I could do was wear a bad outfit for one day. But I hated that fucking hat.”

Well, that sounded nice, actually. I looked at what he was wearing now, which was just jeans and a t-shirt. His clothes were normal and not post-ready at all.

“She was so disappointed when I decided to sign with the Woodsmen,” he continued. “She cried for days.”

I pictured Shay Galton with her beautiful tears. I had also been crying today as we drove to Iva’s house, and I was sure that I didn’t look so sweetly tragic. “She didn’t really move here, though, did she? Where is she right now?”

“I think…Aruba,” he said. “I’m not sure.”

“Is she going to be mad about your mom coming to stay with you?”

“No.”

“You said that they didn’t get along, though,” I reminded him, and he nodded.

“Yeah, but they won’t see each other because Shay and I broke up. I sent all her stuff to California, including that giant fucking deionizer.”

“The…what happened?”

He explained part of what he’d just told me. “I shipped the deionizer back to her, that huge thing that looked like a sarcophagus. It was supposed to stop aging and shrink fat cells by removing all the ions in her body. She wouldn’t listen to me when I said that humans need those. Things like potassium and calcium are pretty important, but the machine didn’t work, anyway.” He pointed at my phone. “You can’t find the dad?”

No, I hadn’t been able to, but…what? I understood what he’d said about electrolytes, but not the rest. “You and Shay Galton aren’t together anymore? When did that happen?”

“Right around when she unblocked me. I was tired of all the crap going on. At first, it was—” He stopped, and his eyes slid to look at his shoes. “It was easy. Low-risk,” he explained. “I just went along with it all.”

Being with Shay Galton sounded exhausting to me, but whatever. “Why didn’t she make a video about you? Why isn’t she using it for publicity?”

“She wants to lock things down with a new guy first. She says she’ll be trading up and that’s what she wants to emphasize when she publicizes it.”

“I guess it’s better to be practical about a breakup,” I said. I didn’t have a lot of experience with those, so it was hard for me to judge. “Was she upset? Were you?”

“She saw it coming. I was very pissed off about that video.” I understood which one he meant. “I’ll miss parts of being together.”

I thought about the two of them kissing and further understood one of the parts he was referencing. It had seemed like a really good part.

“But it’s better this way,” Tyler continued. “I knew that things weren’t going anywhere.”

“And you wanted your relationship to progress? Like, to marriage or something?” I really couldn’t have thought of a worse person to marry—I meant her, not him.

“No, I didn’t want that at all,” he countered, “but I also didn’t want to keep going the way we were. Everything was on repeat. We’d fight, she’d post, we’d make up, she’d post that. We’d pose for pictures, she’d fight with someone else. She was in this huge, ongoing argument with some of the other girlfriends and wives at my former team and they were always getting into it, in person and online. The guys I played with were involved and it was so fucking dumb.”

Of course, I had read about that, too. “You wanted her to come here, though,” I pointed out. “You wanted her to move to Michigan with you.”

He squinted at his tennis shoes again. “Yeah, I guess. I was kind of—” He stopped again, and looked around. There were plenty of people trying to listen but we were seated far enough away that they couldn’t. “I was a little, you know, nervous.”

“You were scared of the change?”

“I wouldn’t say that I was scared,” he corrected me. “No, not scared. Anxious. Upset. I had a good thing going out there, pretty much.”

“But with the Seals, you were fighting for playing time. They had way too much talent in your position because they made such poor decisions when they signed guys.”

“I’ll pass that along to the general manager.”

“Here, since Hidalgo retired, you’re the star,” I reminded him. “So it’s a much better move for your career.”

“You sound like my agent. He pushed hard for me to leave California and get out of that whole atmosphere. It wasn’t only Shay fighting with everyone. No one on the team got along, and the locker room was like poison. All the guys were pissing a ring around their territory.”

“That’s gross.”

“It wasn’t actual piss,” he said, and then smiled a little. “You feeling better?”

“Were you distracting me?”

“Kind of. It’s also kind of nice to talk about it, you know, to explain.”

I didn’t really understand what he was trying to explain, but it might have been because I wasn’t fully paying attention. We were sitting in a place I hated because of all the terrible memories I had of coming behind the ambulance as it had bumped down our road to bring in my dad, and then of sitting and waiting for them to tell me if he was alive.

“Iva will be ok and so will the baby,” I announced.

“Yeah, I think so. You want to hold my hand like she did?” He offered it to me. “I think she broke a few phalanges.”

“Oh no, really?” I did take his hand. “Are you going to be able to play on Saturday?”

He smiled again. “I can manage, coach.” His phalanges curled loosely around mine. “She’ll be ok but your car is not.”

“It will still be drivable.” It had to be. “I’ll get a ride back to the complex so I can pick it up, because I can’t stay here for the whole night. My dad needs me, but so does Iva—”

“Are you Kasia?” a person in scrubs asked me. “Kasia Decker?”

“Yes!” I dropped Tyler’s phalanges and jumped up. “How is she?”

“You can come back,” she told me. “She’d like you to be with her.”

“Ok!” I said, and hurried after the nurse, toward my boss who needed me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Tyler standing there. He raised his hand and nodded, and I went through the big doors.

And a few hours later, Iva had a son, a little, scrunched, red, funny guy who was so small that it scared me to death.

“She’ll be able to go home soon, but they don’t know how long he’ll need to stay,” I explained to my dad when I got home. I didn’t want to worry him, because he knew Iva and he loved babies, all babies. But I was so worried myself that I couldn’t hold it in.

“It’s a good place. They’ll help him,” he reassured me, and I nodded. “Are you going back tomorrow?”

“As soon as visiting hours start,” I answered. “Do you want to meet him, too?”

“We’ll see,” he told me, which meant that he did not. I’d gotten him to the hardware store to buy garden supplies, but now it had been fifteen days since he’d left the house. “Don’t you have to work?”

“I’ll do that, too. First, I need to keep looking for stupid Dominic, and then I’ll make sure that everything at her house is ok.” I already knew that it wasn’t because Iva had been crying and saying that her water broke on the floor, and she was sure there would be ants. I had promised to clean it for her. I would look into the process of transferring property, too, so that if I ever got in touch with stupid Dominic, maybe I could convince him to give her that house since he couldn’t take care of it himself. It was hard to pay property taxes if you didn’t have an income, besides what you could steal from your girlfriend.

There were a lot of things to think about that night after I helped my dad into bed and as I tried to get comfortable myself. Over the years, the springs in my mattress had gotten pokier, or maybe now I felt them more. I hoped that Iva was able to sleep in the hospital—I never had, when they’d let me stay in a chair in my dad’s room. It had been a big argument, since I had been a minor at the time and he was my only parent, and because (like Iva) we didn’t have family to step in.

I got up and crept over to his door, where I stood for a moment to listen to his steady breaths. Then I walked to the sliding door that led outside and held up the handle as I opened it, so that it wouldn’t squeak when it moved. That was why I avoided the ramp, too, and when I was in the cool air, I stopped and rolled my head back and forth. I hadn’t mentioned to Dad how I’d backed into the pole. I had hurt myself a little in that accident and now I was sore in my neck and my chest, but I certainly wasn’t as hurt as the car. I’d taped some pieces back on before I’d left the condo complex, and now would be a good time to find some wire and make it more secure.

I used my phone to light my way to the shed, and that was when I saw that I had new messages. They weren’t the mean kind, either, and they weren’t from Iva because something had gone wrong. It was Tyler asking me about her and the baby, and saying my car must have survived because he’d seen that it was gone from the parking lot. Or had I towed it?

“Everything is fine,” I answered him. “Is your mom here?”

“She’s here and she likes the room a lot,” he said. “Ramp worked well.”

Good. I wrote that I was glad to hear it.

“She thinks I’m a dumbass for renting a place this big.”

“Your mom called you a dumbass?” I asked.

“It was implied,” he told me. “She said, ‘4 brs? Ty, why did you think you needed this much space? Bless your heart.’ The place in California had 6 of them.”

It was certainly a lot of unneeded space and also, that was the nicest way I’d ever heard of calling someone a dumbass. “Is she in pain?”

“Not too bad. She doesn’t like to take the pills they gave her.”

I read that and nodded, thinking it was a smart plan. It was a bad idea to take too many pain pills but I didn’t want to discuss it anymore. “I’m going to bed,” I wrote as I found the twist of wire I’d been hunting for. I’d go to bed after I’d lashed my car back together.

“I forgot, grandma hours,” he said. “I got tickets for you for Saturday.”

“Tickets for what?”

“You really can’t guess? Bless your heart,” Tyler responded.

And now I knew what that meant. “Hey!” I protested.

“Tickets to the Woodsmen game, Kasia. I’ll pay you to escort my mom. I got one for your dad, too.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” I said, although my heart had leapt up with excitement when I’d read his words. “I can’t push two people in wheelchairs.”

“Hers is motorized.”

“Then why do you need me?” I asked.

“You don’t want the money?”

“I do!” And I wanted to go to the game, too. I just had to convince my father to come—I couldn’t go without him, I wrote.

“Tell him it would be a favor to me and my mom,” he suggested. “Good night, grandma.” I thought for a moment but something scuttled in a corner of the shed, so I left fast.

“It would be a favor,” I told my dad the next morning, borrowing Tyler’s language. “A favor to me, and to Iva. She needs people.” She knew my dad because I’d driven him to the condo complex a few times, and she’d come over to our house, too.

“Poor girl,” he said, and in the end, he did agree to do me this favor and go to the hospital. In our driveway, I directed him around the front of the car so that he wouldn’t see what had happened in the back, because it would only make him worry. I’d get it fixed, eventually, but the wire holding the bumper and the license plate was fine for now. I helped him into the seat and the trunk did open to hold his wheelchair, which he would use once we were in the hospital. Getting it to close and latch was a little more difficult but luckily, there had been a lot of wire in the shed and I used more now.

“I’ll never forget yesterday, not ever,” I mentioned as we started to bump toward the main road. “You know how organized Iva is, and she had the birth plan all worked out, almost down to the minute. Nothing went like she wanted. She was in so much pain, too, and then…there he was. He’s so tiny, Daddy, and at first, he didn’t make any noise at all. It was probably only a few seconds but it felt like hours before he cried.”

“I’m glad he’s all right,” he said, and so was I. “I remember when you were born. I’ve never been so scared or so happy.”

“That was how I felt yesterday, too. I didn’t do anything but hold her hand and encourage her, but afterwards, I was also so tired that I could have dropped down onto the floor.” I drove in silence, remembering, before I said, “I hope they’re doing better.”

Thankfully, Iva was better and so was her baby—but yes, he was still as tiny and helpless as the day before and no, she hadn’t named him yet.

“I need to discuss it with his father,” she said, her palm resting on her son’s tummy. “We hadn’t totally nailed down our top choice. I’m sure that Dominic will want to be involved.”

I glanced at my dad, and he didn’t appear sure of that at all. I felt even less so.

“For right now, he’ll have my last name,” she continued. “Baby Balderston.” She nodded and now my father and I exchanged a look.

“Dominic hasn’t answered me. Has he gotten back to you yet?” I asked, but she only shrugged. No. My dad and I exchanged another look and I could tell that he was getting angry. I was already there, myself.

But we got to hold the baby and we worked through some of her worries, like her house being a mess (I would clean it) and how she would get her car (I would drive her home when she was discharged). Iva would be able to leave soon, but her little son would have to stay and then she had questions about whether the day care she’d arranged could accommodate any medical needs he might have. She wasn’t sure if he should even go there at all because he could be exposed to so many germs—she had always been worried about those and now, with a preterm baby? She had a mental list of concerns that was much longer than the one she’d produced when she’d left the condo complex in my care. I carefully took notes on what she said and told her that we were going to fix every single one of her issues.

“You don’t need to worry about any of this,” I announced, holding up my phone and showing her what I’d typed. “I’m on it, Iva.” She answered she felt totally relieved, which was probably not totally true. I knew that she didn’t want us to go, but I had only taken the morning off and we had to head out. With my dad’s appointments and sometimes having problems, too, I needed to hoard my leave.

“You’re doing a lot,” he noted as I pushed his chair toward the elevator.

“She would do the same for me,” I answered.

“Her boyfriend should be here helping.”

That was absolutely true and I couldn’t argue with it, but I held in my thoughts until we were outside of the earshot of the other people who’d ridden down with us. “I wish…no, I’m happy about the baby because she wanted one so much, but I wish she hadn’t had him with stupid Dominic.” Speaking his name made my mouth feel sour. “He left her when she was on bedrest! It was a good deal for him when she could manage his life so that he could mess around, but as soon as she needed something in return? Whoosh, he was gone. It’s infuriating.” We had arrived at the car, which I’d backed into the spot to hide the damage. “Ready to get in?”

It took a moment to help him into his seat and when I was in mine, he spoke again. “You’ll choose better.”

“What?”

“You’ll choose better for your life. You’ve always made good decisions,” he said. “You’ll pick someone who’s good to you.”

“Sure,” I answered, signaling for the turn out of the hospital.

“Kasia!”

I looked over at him, startled. “What? What’s the matter?”

“You can have these things,” he said, and I could see that he was agitated. “If you want them, you can have them.”

“You mean, something like Iva’s life? Sure,” I repeated, but I tried to sound more optimistic and upbeat. “I can, if I want.” I pulled forward and made the left, but I could feel him watching me.

“What about that man from high school?”

“Daddy, I think you’re talking about the prom, and that was thirty thousand years ago.” I laughed. “We only went together because neither of us had dates, and if you remember, I left early after he saw the girl he really liked and took off with her.” I had been glad to get home because there was no one there to hang out with; after about the fourth grade when kids had become more aware of fashion and coolness, school had gotten rough. In particular, the four years of high school had been abysmally full of suckage. First, I’d had the problems with Cody, and after my dad’s stroke, I’d walked around like I was in a nightmare. I had been exhausted almost all the time, just a mess, and everyone around me had made me feel worse. Most of them hadn’t had any real responsibilities or worries, whereas I’d felt overwhelmed by them.

“What about Tyler?”

“Tyler Hennessy, the Woodsmen player?” I clarified. “Are you suggesting that he and I would somehow be a couple?”

“You’re the prettiest girl in Michigan, and the smartest,” my dad said, as he always did.

“Well, maybe he’ll realize that and fall head over heels in love with me. In the meantime, I have plenty to keep me busy,” I answered. I already knew that I wasn’t heading down Iva’s path. I didn’t have time to take care of anyone else, not a boyfriend, husband, or baby. I needed to finish undergrad and make my way to law school so that my dad and I would have a secure, prosperous future…or maybe not. Maybe I wouldn’t go to law school, anyway. The car accident had shaken me in a few ways. I’d always known that we couldn’t live like this forever, right on the edge of solvency and hoping that nothing would go wrong—

“What was that noise?” he asked me, and he tried to turn to see what had caused the sudden clanging sound that came from the back of the car.

It had been the bumper hitting asphalt because my repair job with the wire had failed. “It’s ok,” I said. “I’m just going to pull over here, though, and take a look. I may be a minute.” I would be at least one or two, because I’d have to stop the lane of traffic to run into the road and retrieve the lost parts from my car. I would do that and wire them back on without getting crap on the mustard dress that I wore. Then I’d take him home, return to work, get groceries, go home again, make dinner, get him settled in bed, and head to Iva’s house to straighten up. Before the game tomorrow, I had another list of things I needed to accomplish…I smiled at him and said that the car was fine, but I would also need to find some money to actually fix it.

Yes, I definitely had enough to keep me busy. There was no room for anything or anyone else, not even if Prince Charming himself came knocking on my door. I’d have to tell him that unless he could do automotive bodywork, I wasn’t interested.