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She waves her hand at me. “I can always puke in the kitchen sink. Or this bucket.”
That’s Lila in a nutshell. Practical. Unassuming. She never likes to make a fuss. If I had a deadbeat boyfriend who knocked me up and took off, heads would be rolling. Even thinking about it, my whole body gets hot with anger.
No. Think positive. Manifest your perfect future.
If only I could manifest one for Lila. She won’t stand up for herself. Not even when she’s left alone with a baby.
Although, we were both left alone with a baby when Mom died. I was five. Lila was three. Dad seemed to go into a grief trance that he’s still stuck in twenty years later. Even though Garrett was the oldest, he wasn’t much help. He practically lived at friends’ houses.
I was in kindergarten and had to take up the mantle of raising the little ones. We all went to this tiny church school and day care where, I later learned, they paid our tuition as charity. Those were better years than later, because at least when we were little, the church ladies made sure we had clothes and sent food home for dinner. I carefully portioned it out to last over the weekends.
Summers were the worst. Dad didn’t always remember to get groceries. I learned to hoard what we had to string it out. Garrett would eat elsewhere most days. We could go for a week without seeing him.
When we aged out of the church and got dumped into public school, we created strategies to stay fed and clothed. Garrett would lower Tillie into the donation dumpsters to find us things to wear. I was the one who raided our neighbors’ gardens to find vegetables to throw in a pot with Good Noodles. I only got caught once, trying to filch lemons from a potted lemon tree.
Drew saw that one, of course. He hauled me home. I never should have tried it during the day, but I wanted to make lemonade for him. I had it as bad for him then as I do now. But this time I’ve taken ajob. That’s quite a leap from a stolen lemon.
Lila rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. I have a few minutes before I have to leave for the vet office, so I sit on the floor beside her. “How long have you been this sick?”
“Since the week I found out. Random throwing up is what clued me in.”
She lifts her bucket, and I prepare myself for the visual and audio of her puking, but then she sets it down again. “False alarm.”
“I’m proud of you, doing this on your own,” I say.
“I won’t have to. He’ll come back.” Her voice is firm on this matter, as it always is. She’s the only one who believes that scumbag of a boyfriend will return. He was exactly the sort of man you hate to see your sister hook up with. He laughed too loud and often at her expense. He spoke sweet to her when he had to, but mostly he was gruff, the definition of a toxic male.
He forgot her more often than not, preferring the company of his beer-swilling friends. She delivered pizza to pay the bills. He pitched in randomly when he got work building an engine here and there. Said his back was too bad for full-time employment.
Probably he had a girl on the side.
But I say none of this, checking my bag for granola bars. I’m here for her. And Tillie will be, too. It’s like she said. We have to take care of each other.
And speaking of that, I should go to the grocery store. It’s been a lot, the new job, my sisters, figuring out my next move. I’m absolutely jonesing for a cup of Good Noodles, and we should buy things that Lila can keep down.
Lila touches my shoulder. “Anything new with you and Drew? Any sparks flying?”
I shut my purse. “I hardly see him. And he treats me like an employee, one hundred percent. This might’ve been my worst decision ever.”
“When will you tell him you’re only there until the middle of next week?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you like the job? You could always keep it. Then you can be around Drew all you want.”
I don’t say this aloud, but that’s the whole problem. Drew has put me in the employee zone, and I’m not sure how to get out. And I do want out. I want more of what we stirred up in that shed. What led us both to write racy emails. I didn’t even get my one-night stand!
But the stakes are high. What if I find out that Drew is going on a date this weekend? What if gossip of his conquests gets to me?
I’m not sure how professional I can be if that happens, not even for eight days.
But I don’t want to put any of my worries on Lila’s plate. She has plenty.
I put on my brightest smile. “I have time to decide. I’m going to make an extra effort to be around him today. Yesterday was a lot of learning curves. Today will be better.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “Ronnie did a good job helping you be more positive about life.”
I almost frown at the reminder of my former brooding, obsessive self. “Me, too.” It took Ronnie going into the pit for us to find a way to get us both out. It had been her idea, shortly after her mother died, for both of us to do positivity training. When I saw my sweet, happy, caring friend turn into, well,me, I knew we both had to make a change. Her mirror of all my ugliness about how the loss of my mother ruined my life was too much for me to bear.
