Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
That’s where I came in.
I was no salesman, but I could research the fuck out of a candidate. Ya know, real wild, revolutionary shit like taking ten minutes to check their social media, reaching out to their previous chain of command, or hell, I don’t know, maybe one phone call, soldier to soldier, that didn’t have them reciting me their résumé. It wasn’t rocket science, but the perks of working from home for six figures, a 401(k), five weeks of paid vacation, and full health benefits were enough for me to be cool with letting my boss assume it was.
Best of all, I got to escape my life for a solid eight hours. Focusing all my attention outward on someone else rather than the clusterfuck permanently rolling inside me.
It felt like part of my penitence. Helping soldiers and their families instead of failing them as I’d done all those years ago. I couldn’t change the past. I’d been through enough therapy to have accepted that. But damn, every time I closed my eyes, I wished I could.
Well, at least until five o’clock, when everything went to hell.
Quitting time should have been celebrated. Even for me, when the only difference between on the clock and off the clock was relocating from my home office to my home couch.
However, on Wednesdays, I stayed at my computer as long as humanly possible, procrastinating on the inevitable and driving myself mad.
The clock never stopped. That damn minute display mocked me with each unyielding tick.
It was less than a mile from my house, though it might as well have been a fifty-mile death march for the way my heart pounded when it was time to leave.
Outside of my front door, my brain became hyper aware, a world of stimuli ricocheting inside my head.
The sun was too bright even on the cloudiest of days.
The cars passing sounded more like they were landing at an airport.
The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. It wouldn’t be until later that I would figure out if it was because I had chewed a hole in my cheek or if it was merely memories that wouldn’t let go.
I damn near hyperventilated walking down my driveway.
My lungs seized as I turned onto the sidewalk.
Lightheaded, vomit clawing at the back of my throat, ears ringing, I had to voluntarily constrict every single muscle to compel my legs to carry me away.
Those few blocks never got easier.
Every single Wednesday, I died inside as I made that trek.
And yet somehow, the trip home was always worse.
Alone.
Always alone.
Gwen
“Mooooom!” Daphne exclaimed, turning in the booth behind us, her blond hair whipping the shared backrest.
Her mother was sitting beside me, but as I saw my son holding her at straw-point with a spitball locked and loaded at the tip, I knew I was the mom she needed.
“Nathan Bryce Weaver, one blow and you will be knitting her a scarf tonight.”
It was an odd threat to give an eight-year-old boy, but I’d learned that the typical punishments of taking away toys, video games, or screen time just didn’t work for us. Mainly because my son didn’t give a damn about any of the aforementioned pastimes.
Nate was a wild beast. He spent his days outside, attempting to cut down trees with butter knives, barefoot and shirtless, running beside the golf carts in our neighborhood (much to our HOA’s dismay), or riding his bike off ramps he’d made using scraps of wood he’d collected from God only knew where.
I’d tried taking away his bike once. It backfired monumentally. Less than an hour later, I’d found him bouncing off the side of my house, teaching himself parkour. (Coincidentally, this was something I did not realize was actually a thing outside of an episode of The Office.) I was still paying the price for that mistake. Quite literally everything in my house had been jumped on, jumped off, or flipped over.
But what was I supposed to do? There was nothing else I could take away from him when he got into trouble besides fresh air, exercise, or, say…his legs. I had to get creative. A little forced mother-son bonding time did the trick.
When he’d dented my fridge rebounding off it, we’d spent an entire afternoon recreating a Bob Ross painting together. Nate was bored out of his mind, but you better believe he steered clear of anything breakable after that. So far, we’d scrapbooked pictures from the first year of his life, completed a one-thousand-piece puzzle, and we were only one up-past-his-bedtime away from finishing a gorgeous floral diamond art.
Truth be told, I loved when he got into trouble.
Something he knew all too well—hence the way his brown eyes flashed wide as he lowered the weaponized straw. “Jeez, Mom. I wasn’t really going to do it.”
His best friend and partner in crime elbowed him in the side. “Dude, you gotta be sneakier.”