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“I’ve always appreciated how you and your brother stood by me. Even when your dad was trying his hardest to get you to cut me out of your lives.”
I hated that she still called him dad, but it was too petty a complaint to voice out loud. “I know,” I said. More often, these were the kinds of things she talked about. It made me grit my teeth because I knew she was trying to tie up loose ends, like she thought she might not be around much longer to do it.
She looked down, licking her teeth in the same, slow way I always found myself doing when I was thinking hard. “There’s no excuse for what I did, but—”
“Mom, you don’t need to explain it to me, okay? You’re my fucking mom. You brought me into this world, and I’m going to do whatever I can to keep you from getting taken out of it. It’s that simple.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “You’re a good man, no matter how hard you may try to convince everyone otherwise.”
I looked away, smiling tightly. A good man would’ve told Andi the full truth before letting her start William’s list. He also wouldn’t blame an orphaned girl for something she had no knowledge or control over.
I squeezed her hand back but said nothing.7AndiI had a job writing an advice column for a not-so-popular blogger. She was also a not-so-successful and not-so-wealthy blogger. Unfortunately, she was my friend, and that meant I put up with working out of her studio apartment for an insulting amount of money. I also put up with her ferret, Montague, who would’ve been put on a sexual predator list years ago if ferrets were held to the same standards as people.
Okay, none of that was entirely true. But the full truth is kind of pathetic, so I’ve gotten used to burying it. I just wanted to feel like my job was writing, even if it meant not getting paid regularly or well.
So day after day, week after payless week, I kept showing up. Not because of loyalty to Rachel or endurance for the sexual exploits of Montague the ferret, but because I wanted to believe this job was a stepping stone. Especially now that grandpa was gone, it felt even more important to be here.
I let myself into Rachel’s room because she refused to lock her door, no matter how many times I harassed her about it. The studio apartment was small enough that you couldn’t have even practiced a full range of yo-yo moves inside it. The lone window sometimes offered a view of a row of boxes where some homeless people lived on the street below. All in all, it was the kind of perfect charmer that demanded thousands of dollars per month in New York City’s housing market.
Rachel was sitting on a pile of her dirty clothes with about seven pens stuck in her hair. She patted around blindly on the nightstand behind her, searching for something.
I plucked a pen from her hair and handed it to her.
“What do you think about sequins? Out of date or coming back?” she asked.
Rachel was probably the most driven and single-minded person I’d ever met. If there was one thing she did well, it was refusing to admit there was nothing she actually did well. But to her credit, that never stopped her from busting her ass and using sheer effort to at least do a halfway decent job. In a kind of pathetic way, it was admirable.
Her blog, RachelATM, which was supposed to be short for Rachel’s Advice to Mom’s, was often visited by horny men who thought Rachel was into ass-to-mouth or that she was ready to print money for them. It was also worth noting that Rachel was not a mom. In fact, she hated kids and never made time to date. As far as I knew, she also wasn’t interested in ass-to-mouth and she definitely wasn’t printing money.
She was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt, yoga pants, and thick, red glasses. In the few times I’d seen her around guys, something about her intensity and tight-lipped smiles seemed to scare men away. Still, I thought if she could loosen up long enough to survive a date, there would be plenty of men out there willing to take a shot with her—if for no other reason than the vague prospect of a little ass-to-mouth.
I pulled my laptop out of my bag and sat on the edge of her bed. Rachel tore off a page in her notebook with a few ideas hastily scribbled down for today’s advice column.
I raised my eyebrows. “Breastfeeding for dummies?” I asked.
“You have the internet,” she said. “Just look it up.”
I sighed. “Don’t you just kind of stick them on the boob? How hard can it be?”
