He laughed.
I let out a long breath. “I have no idea how I’m going to keep stretching content out of this situation.”
“No change with Annabel? Do you have any idea where she is?”
I scoffed. “I know exactly where she is. She’s at my dad’s. And speaking of Dad, he showed up here with her earlier demanding that I let them see Grace. She was completely high. And then Dad accidently pushed the door into my mouth.” I put my tongue to the scab. “Jesus’s Abs came home and ran them off—because it wasn’t enough that I only seem crazy in front of him once.”
He managed to appear concerned and amused at the same time. “How did she look?”
I glanced away from him. “Not good. Maybe the worst I’ve ever seen her,” I admitted.
Drake was well aware of my family issues. I didn’t need to regale him with the details. He knew all about the day Annabel dropped off Grace and never came back.
She used my bathroom before she left. Stole a whole bottle of hydrocodone and drank all my cough medicine with codeine and then filled the bottle up with water so I wouldn’t notice—I noticed.
“I’m trying to get her into rehab, but she won’t go,” I said.
“Can you talk to your dad?”
I huffed. “Yeah. Dad can’t even help himself,” I said bitterly. I rubbed at my forehead. His eyes followed my hand up and focused on the brace I wore. For the first time, maybe ever, I saw the humor drop away and a frown touch the corners of his mouth. Drake always smiled. I’d seen him smile being carried off on a stretcher with third-degree burns. The man’s happy didn’t have an off switch.
I put my arm off camera. “It’s just for typing,” I lied.
He went quiet for a moment. “Are you going to have it looked at?” he asked, his voice low.
I pressed my lips into a line. “There’s no point in spending months at the hospital getting poked and prodded for a diagnosis that won’t change the outcome. I’m not living my life like the Cyclops, giving up an eye to know the future of how and when I’ll die. My grandma had it. My sister Melanie had it. My aunt Linda had it. My mom had it too. All women, all dead by thirty. There’s a fifty percent chance I inherited the gene and based on the female line, I’d say it’s higher than that. I want to be blissfully ignorant until it’s painfully obvious how this ends. This is my choice. I have to live with it, sort of like everyone else’s shitty choices that I also have to live with.”
I couldn’t even do genetic testing to see if I was a carrier. Doctors couldn’t identify the mutated gene that ran in my family. If I was born with it, I wouldn’t know until it started to kill me.
He studied me quietly. “Are there any new clinical trials? It can’t hurt to try.”
I shook my head. Drake knew my position on this too.
Melanie had gone the Hail Mary route when she got sick. Tried it all. I promised myself if I ever got it, I wasn’t going to put myself through that. There was no point.
“It’s probably nothing. I’ll be okay. And hey, it could be worse,” I said. “I could have the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap.”
This drew a crooked smile.
Seeing that I wasn’t going to further the discussion, Drake took mercy on me and changed the subject. “If you’re looking for content, you and I could always get back together.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh ha ha.”
He grinned. “We were great together, butterfly. I miss you. And if you came here, I’d give you Laird back.”
“Keep him. I’ve seen enough of him for a lifetime.”
He chuckled.
“Anyway, I can’t take the baby out of the country. I’m trapped in my apartment, dealing with Child Protective Services, and getting an emergency injunction for guardianship over an abandoned infant because once again my family dumped their responsibilities on me.”
“Want me to send you my herbalist?”
I laughed a little. “No, it’s fine. I’ll manage. I always do.”
Well, I would as long as I could. Until I wouldn’t be around anymore to do it.
And that day might come sooner than I thought.
CHAPTER 5
MAN RESCUES DOG BUT WAIT
UNTIL YOU SEE WHAT IT DID TO
HIS APARTMENT!
ADRIAN
The dog was shitting everywhere.
I’d had the thing less than three hours, and I was already counting down the seconds until I got to hand him back to Becky.
The diapers wrapped around his belly and stopped only the urine from getting everywhere—which I suppose I should have been grateful for. But it did nothing for the pudding-like stool he was shitting all over my apartment. Luckily, he’d done this only on the hardwood so cleanup had been minimal, but it was far from pleasant.
I’d called Becky about it and she said it was probably just the dewormer upsetting his stomach and it would pass.
I knew nothing about dogs. We never had them growing up. My introduction so far was not going well.
On top of the messes, I was pretty sure the dog was not only deaf but also blind. He ran into walls and the legs of chairs. He growled every time I picked him up, but mostly because he didn’t see me coming and I think I was startling him.
I’d decided to try my luck at getting him to go outside, but in the freezing late November weather, he just stood on the sidewalk shivering and looking miserable until I took pity on him and put him in my jacket to go back upstairs.
I was making my way down the hall, pulling out my keys, when I glanced at Vanessa’s apartment door as I walked by.
I stopped.
What if that guy had come back after I’d gone inside?
I should check on her.
I knocked.
When Vanessa opened the door, she was in considerably better shape than earlier. Her split lip was almost invisible now that the blood was gone. Her long hair was in a neat braid over one shoulder—no vomit—and the pink tank top she was wearing was clean and showed off a nice figure I hadn’t noticed before.
“Hey, my hero.” She gave me a smile.
I fiddled with my keys. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay—and to see if you needed your trash run down. I imagine it’s probably hard to take it out with the baby.”
“Yes. I would love that service, thank you.” She tilted her head. “Wow, you just never stop giving, do you?”
“I figure your cockroaches are my cockroaches,” I mumbled, looking away from her down the hall and back again.
She grinned. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
I looked down at Harry’s head poking out of my jacket. His tongue was hanging out, and he was shivering. “I don’t. I’m fostering him.”
“Oh. So we’re both fostering. Cool. It can be very rewarding, you know.”
I grunted noncommittally. “Well, right now it’s just shitting everywhere.”
She laughed. “Yeah, mine too.”
“Hey, we should probably exchange numbers,” I said. “So we know how to get in touch in case we need to.” I put a hand up. “I’m not hitting on you,” I added.
She scoffed. “Well, thank God for that because you are hideous.”