Yes, I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to slot another job in. Once I get the transmission work paid for—which, thankfully, Smitty down at the local garage is letting me make payments on—I can ditch the douche bag and have more of a manageable life.
“I’ll call him after I eat my dinner. Do you think it’s too late?”
“Nope. My guess is that as a writer, he stays up late. At least, that’s my impression from when I went to pick him up at his hotel room to have him sign the closing documents and then show him the house. It was around noon, and I’m pretty sure he just rolled out of bed.”
Setting the carrots aside, I pick up the apple and take a bite. It tastes like chalk going down, my interest in food waning over the past several weeks. I’ve been so mired in hard work, coupled with a rising sense of panic that I’m not going to be able to survive on my own, that my appetite has been off.
“I have some leftover pasta in the fridge I made tonight,” Casey says as she eyes me eating the apple. I don’t know what expression is on my face, but I’m guessing she can tell the apple isn’t doing much for me.
“No thanks,” I tell her with a small smile. I’m too proud to take help from her, and even leftover pasta is still charity to me.
“You’re wasting away to nothing, Savannah,” she gripes at me. “You can’t go on much longer like this.”
“I’m fine,” I drawl out with false confidence in my voice. “Like you said… this house cleaning job will be enough to put me in the black on my expenses.”
“You’re not fine,” she practically barks at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re working yourself to the bone. What are you up to now… like three jobs, plus you volunteer every week at The Haven with Alyssa and Brody. You’re hardly eating. Seriously, you’re putting your health in jeopardy.”
Now… I’m normally a polite, sweet, Midwestern girl. It takes a lot to rile me up, but having these reminders of my failures thrown into my face gets me a little irritated. “Back off, Casey. While I appreciate your concern, I’ve got this handled.”
She blinks at me in surprise, because I think this may be the first fight we’ve had as roommates. Out of my core group of girlfriends, Casey, Alyssa, and Gabby, I’m the least likely to get irritable with anyone. Some would even call me a pushover.
“Fine,” she grumbles. “But it was just a small bowl of pasta I was offering.”
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly. Gentling my voice, I say, “I’m sorry. I appreciate the offer… I really do. But I’m one of those people that just have to do it on my own. You should know that about me by now.”
Casey nods her head grudgingly, because she does know that. In the four months that we’ve been roommates, she’s come to know me well enough to know that I have a streak of stubborn pride about a mile long and just as wide. It’s why I haven’t told the douche bag photographer to piss off, because yeah… while I need the money, I more importantly need him to know that he can’t rattle me. My days of being rattled are over.
My phone chimes from inside my purse and I sit the apple down on the counter, wiping my fingers on my jeans. Pulling it out, I see it’s a text from Brody.
My heart instantly lightens.
Brody and his fiancée, Alyssa, run The Haven, a nonprofit, no-kill animal shelter where I volunteer. I love animals—dogs in particular—so much that I spend all of my free time there helping out. With three jobs though, that time has been less and less, and I feel my soul starting to starve. My love of dogs has been long standing, stemming from one, single event that happened when I was just six years old.
I was out playing in the woods that surrounded our house in Clearview. We lived out in the country, so Mom usually pushed me out the door in the morning while on summer break from school and told me not to come home until dark. I was with our family’s dog, Petey, who was a Lab. I had gotten lost and couldn’t find my way back home, and Petey kept me safe and warm throughout the night. I don’t know if it was my child’s imagination, but as I sat huddled at the base of a tree, I thought I heard coyotes, bears, and lions coming at me from all directions. Petey would growl periodically, his eyes searching the darkness around us. He would lick me every so often, assuring me that everything would be okay. I snuggled into his warm fur, clutching my arms around him tight, and I knew that I was safe.
The search party found me around dawn the next morning, and Petey was hailed as the town’s local hero. He even won a medal.
Since then, I’ve found myself happiest when I can be around dogs. While I can’t afford one on my own, if I can ever get out of this butt load of debt, I’m going to have five at least.
Brody’s text is to the point.
Got any time tomorrow to help? Alyssa has to go to Raleigh to pick up a horse.
I shoot a quick text back.
Not sure. I may have new job to start. Text you later.
I stare at my phone for a moment, slightly depressed I can’t give him a simple “yes.” I’d much rather be up to my elbows in dog slobber than cleaning some rich ass**le’s house, but that can’t be my priority right now.
You could just accept the job we offered you, Brody responds.
Yes, that would be the simple solution, but I can’t do that either. There’s no way I can let Brody and Alyssa put me on the payroll for The Haven. It’s a perfectly permissible thing for a nonprofit to have paid employees, but I also happen to know that adding me to the overhead will cause even harder work for Alyssa and Brody to have to raise money to support said expenditure.