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After a quick shower, I took a moment to admire my long dark hair and hazel eyes. Some would have said my build was too fit and slim for them, but I liked it.
I had worked hard to maintain the muscles from my sports days in nursing school, and it didn’t hurt that some areas of nursing required my strength if there were no lifts available to help get patients into a wheelchair or into the beds from a wheelchair. My muscles allowed me to take some of the slimmer patients and do those transitions easily. Larger patients took some extra time, and sometimes another set of hands, but I was proud to be able to treat them with respect and dignity.
Everyone deserved that, no matter their circumstances.
I finished drying my hair and headed to the bedroom. Instead of immediately going to bed, I double-checked that my alarms were set. I needed to be up at three in the morning to get ready and leave on time for a five a.m. clock-in. I typically swung through McDonalds for coffee on my way in. Mornings had never been my favorite, but hot coffee definitely helped.
I’d asked for night shifts, as I was a night owl in college. I supposed this was as close as they were able to get me to that, but I needed plenty of sleep now I was no longer in an atmosphere that encouraged people to stay up all night long to study, party, and get everything done.
Having patients depend on me for the right dosages of medications meant my sleep was now sacred to me. I needed to be alert during my shift, and I couldn’t do that properly if I was drowsy. I had started thinking about it that way in my second year of nursing school, and so far, it hadn’t steered me wrong.
I spent about a half hour on my phone browsing rentals and houses on the market in Lantana just to see what the prices were looking like. I had some savings put away since I had no energy to do anything but bead and send stuff out en masse when I finished a shift. I figured I could live off my savings for about ayear if I planned it right, but I would have to be incredibly careful with how much I was spending on the roof over my head.
This was certainly not a problem that would be solved tonight, but depending on how much the business lease would come to once it was split between myself and Maria, I was pretty sure I’d have to rent a home or apartment instead of buying something outright. Either way, as long as I could set up a room to bead in where no one would disrupt me, I would be happy.
It’d be better than trying to bead in the living room and risking all the glass beads I used getting busted on the floor and having to order more.
Before I turned off my lamp, I opened up one more rental site to check it for affordable apartments in Lantana.
Just to see if moving would really be feasible.
As expected, most apartments were tiny and super expensive. But on the third page of listings, I saw one that was different.
A whole floor of a house rented forwaybelow market value.
The online listing looked incredibly promising. It was a beautiful home in the northern portion of the neighborhood. The house had a beautiful backyard, and the listing even said that rent included utilities. That was something rare to find outside of college towns, especially considering the prices of utilities were rising these days. If I rented for a price like that, I could save money to eventually buy a house of my own, and budgeting would be even easier since I’d only need to keep track of five different bills: my rent, my groceries, my cell phone bill, my credit card, and my portion of the lease for the store that Maria and I were going to be opening.
Furthermore, the listing stated that the entirety of the house would be mine to use as I pleased – minus the master bedroom. With so much space, I wouldn’t need to worry about having enough space for my things—not even all of my beading supplies.
Before plugging in my phone to charge, I texted a link to Maria.Look at this place! How is this real?!
She replied in seconds.
Message the landlord NOW.
I smiled. I needed to sleep, but it wouldn’t take long to fill out the short information request form on the website that would be sent to the landlord. I submitted my info, gave my phone number, and closed the browser.
I put my phone on the nightstand and turned off the lights. It was all a dream for now, but that dream would soon be a reality. And that was always the best feeling in the world.
I couldn’t help smiling as I fell asleep.
Chapter three
Three: Jesse
Three days later, when I returned home from the ranch, I took a shower. The lifestyle at the ranch left me sweaty more often than not, and though I often showered there, a shower once I got home always felt amazing.
Having the rest of the afternoon and evening before I had to be anywhere, I decided it was time to see if anyone had responded to the ad I had put up. My phone hadn’t been ringing, but the site also let potential tenants email for more information. Since I hadn’t been checking that either when I was at the ranch, it was possible I had plenty of bites coming in.
Once my laptop was fully booted up, I pulled up my email. It was just as empty as it had been before I left for the ranch with the exception of a single new email. I clicked on it and found that it was someone emailing about the listing. Their information was sparse, and I realized they must have used the online form instead of emailing me directly.
The crickets singing their hymns in the wake of my ad left me discontented. How could people be so stupid to pass up such agreat rent price for all that was included? I even had a fire pit outside that was in great condition.
I’d expected far more people to be interested in my ad.
I returned to my ad to see if I could figure out what had happened. Except, this time, instead of logging into the landlord portal, I visited as someone who was interested in renting. There was a link to fill out applications, and I quickly realized that I hadn’t put together a proper application that people could submit online. And there was no way to fix that without taking the listing down.
I heaved a sigh.
