One Broke Girl

by Rhonda Helms

  I was so turned on, even as I fought against it.

  All too soon, the song ended. With heated eyes, Gavin brushed his fingers along my forearm then turned and walked off the dance floor.

  “Wow,” Bianca said as she joined me, tugging Natalie’s hand to draw her into our circle. “That was hot. I almost had an O just watching you two.”

  I barked out a laugh as my face flamed. I said to them both in a casual tone, “Oh, he apologized for being a jerk. It was nice of him to do so when he didn’t have to. And he asked me to be his friend, too, which I think is great. Everyone could use more friends, right?” My excuses were paper-thin, a barfing of words, but they were all I had right now, so I clung to them.

  Bianca’s grin widened. “Girl, if that’s friendship, I’m obviously making the wrong kind of friends.”

  Chapter Five

  “This is soooo gross,” I moaned under my breath. My knees ached as I scoured the baseboards in my bedroom. I wasn’t sure they’d been cleaned since the house had been built, and the grime on them had gotten to be too much to ignore. Great way to spend my Saturday. I was a boss at scrubbing now.

  I heard Dad shuffling around in his room. Thank God he was out of bed. Over the last few days, he’d been coming out of his room occasionally and sitting on the couch. Baby steps.

  I had to admit, it was starting to wear on me that I was, in essence, parenting him. I knew Mom had basically worn the pants in our family, and my dad was a free-spirited artist whose carefree nature had attracted her in the first place. But it was getting exhausting having to take care of him. Make sure he was eating. Shove him out of the house to fill out job applications.

  A thought crept into my mind, one I couldn’t push away, despite the guilty burn in my chest. Could this be part of the reason Mom had left? Because she’d gotten tired of bearing the brunt of everything for so long?

  Dad had never been a handyman kind of guy, someone who was hands-on with the day-to-day running of a household. But right now he was pretty much on life support, just surviving. What could I do to spur him into being active? To pull him out of this funk?

  The problem plagued at me for the next hour as I finished the baseboards in my room then the living room and kitchen. I was antsy, restless.

  My doorbell rang. I paused before I got up and wiped my shirt off as I made my way to the door. When I opened it, I saw Bianca and Natalie standing in the doorway, wearing scruffy clothes and holding painting supplies.

  I blinked as happiness from this unexpected visit filled my chest. “Um, hi? Were we supposed to paint something and I missed it?”

  Bianca laughed and held up two of the paint cans. “Surprise! You mentioned you were going to do home stuff this weekend and we wanted to help.”

  “We figured this place had boring white walls, and you need color,” Natalie added in a resolute tone.

  “Guys…wow. That’s just…” I pressed a hand to my mouth, gave them a look of thanks and then waved them inside. “This was so awesome of you. But you didn’t have to. I can’t imagine how much this cost.”

  Natalie chuckled. “Oh, no worries on that front. Bianca seduced the guy in the paint department to hook us up for almost nothing.”

  She grinned and thrust out her ample chest. “What can I say? He liked my tits.”

  My eyes widened.

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “Come on. It ain’t Mardi Gras. I didn’t have to flash them. Just the suggestion of possible viewing was enough.” She dropped the cans on the kitchen floor then used the paint can key to open the colors.

  I gasped in delight when I saw inside. “Oh, those are gorgeous.” A rich burnt orange, a bold blood-red, a subtle gray. A thread of excitement wound in me, and I bounced on the pads of my feet. “This is going to be awesome. I can’t wait! Hey, Dad—come out here and see! We’re gonna paint some rooms!”

  There was uncomfortable silence for a good minute, and then I heard a quiet sigh through the door. “That’s good. Have fun.”

  “Wow. He sounds so bummed,” Natalie whispered.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “I can’t get him interested in anything anymore.” I swallowed down the growing lump in my throat and waved my hands in the air. “Whatever. Let’s not focus on that right now. We have some painting to do.”

  We prepped the kitchen and started painting. We’d decided on the gray for this room since we didn’t want to darken it too much. I was glad I’d taken the time to clean the baseboards and woodwork today, because the bright white popped against the hue.

  I grabbed sodas from the fridge, handed them out and put on music for us to dance to as we worked brushes and rollers along the walls. “Thank you for spending your Saturday with me,” I told them. None of my New York City friends would ever have done this.

  In fact, it had taken Fiona two days to even text me back. And all I’d gotten was a brief Hey, will holler soon. L8tr! Every day that passed gave me the distinct impression I was being forgotten.

  “Please.” Natalie rolled her eyes. “What are friends for?”

  I should have stayed in touch with Natalie better when I’d moved. We’d found each other online back in high school and had spoken occasionally over the years, but she deserved more than mediocre friendship. Well, at least I was here now, and while I was, I’d take advantage of the time to rebuild our connection.

  “So. Let’s talk money,” Bianca said as she rolled the last part of a wall. Gray paint splattered onto her hair but she didn’t seem fazed. “We need to find you more work, right?”

  “Yes, definitely.” I was afraid to check online to see what new bills had cropped up for the condo.

  “Good. I got a call yesterday from someone who needs a maid to come in and clean a few offices she manages. I told her I could use help with the job, and she said no problem. It’s only two or three days a week though.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Every little bit helps.” And hell, I was already becoming an expert in cleaning. What was a little more at this point? Surely offices were easier than elementary school kitchens.

  “And my uncle said he’s looking for someone to deliver pizzas on a couple of weekend nights,” Natalie offered with a small smile. “I’ll put in a word for you if you want.”

  Pizza delivery girl, lunch lady and maid. Quite a career I was cobbling for myself here. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, so I mustered a smile. “Thank you guys. That all sounds good.” This extra money would go a long way toward boosting our income and helping me pay for a PI, should I choose to hire him.

  We finished the kitchen and I turned on the overhead fan as the girls opened windows to let in fresh air. The whole place reeked of paint. After we shuffled into the living room, Natalie popped open the lids and we peered into the cans.

  “Which one should we do in here?” I asked, hands on hips. Both colors could be quite interesting. Bold, sharp choices.

  “I don’t know,” Bianca said. She tilted her head then said loudly, “Mr. Parker! Your presence is requested in the living room immediately.”

  There was a pause. Then his bedroom door opened. His head peeked out, a notable questioning look in his eyes. “Hello?” The scruff on his face from not shaving for days matched his severe bedhead.

  Bianca marched over to him and thrust her hand out. “Glad to meet you. I’m Bianca, one of Anna’s new friends.” She paused and stared hard at him. “I bet you’re hot when you’re cleaned up and nicely shaved.”

  Dad’s eyes grew wide with shock, and he just stared at her, his cheeks turning red. I smothered a laugh. I’d mostly gotten used to her bluntness by now.

  “Anyway,” Bianca continued, “I understand you’re an artist. We need your professional artistic opinion.”

  “Was an artist,” he mumbled.

  She raised a knowing brow. “I didn’t realize the drive to create art went away.”

  After eyeing her for a few seconds, Dad nodded and stepped out of his room, wearing beat-up jea
ns and an old T-shirt. “Fair enough.”

  My jaw dropped. I needed to keep Bianca around more often. Apparently she could breathe life into anyone. I shook off my surprise and said to him, “We can’t decide which paint color to do in here.”

  Dad eyed the paint cans then the kitchen. “I like that gray. Good choice in there.”

  Relief filled my chest, and the knot of tension in my back loosened. “Me too. I’m glad you approve.”

  “What if we do that gray as an accent wall? Then the red on the other walls?” Dad said in a low tone.

  “Mr. Parker, that’s a brilliant idea,” Natalie gushed. “That’ll look fabulous, and I think we have just enough gray left.”

  Dad gave us the first genuine smile I’d seen since Mom left, and his nod was small but sincere. “Sounds good.”

  My heart thudded with hope, burning low and intense in my belly. Please let this be the start of him moving on, I prayed.

  My phone rang. I glanced at it—Steven. My stomach gave a nervous pitch, and I looked at Bianca and Natalie. “I’m sorry, but I need to take this. I’ll be back out in just a minute. You guys have a seat and relax, okay?” Normally I wouldn’t ditch out on my friends to take a call, but I’d been putting Steven off since Thursday night.

  Partly because I didn’t know what to say and partly because of guilt over my attraction to Gavin.

  They waved me off.

  I ducked in my room, closing the door behind me. “Hey, Steven.”

  “Hey, yourself. Where have you been? You haven’t responded to my calls the last couple of days. There wasn’t a shopping emergency, was there?”

  For some reason, that irritated me. I opened my mouth to snap that there was more to me than just that, but I stopped. After all, how many times had I blown hundreds of bucks on a shopping trip since I’d known him? It wasn’t an unfair assessment from his perspective.

  God, what I’d give to have that money back. To wake up just one day and not bear the stress of worrying about how we were going to eat.

  I swallowed my reply and said instead, “No shopping emergency. Just been busy.”

  A pause. “I’ve missed you. When are you coming home? Any word on how the divorce is proceeding yet?”

  “Nothing.” Partly because we still had no idea where my mom was and partly because my dad wouldn’t even say the D-word.

  “Anna,” he said in a cautious tone. “Is there more going on that I don’t know? Because things feel different since you left.”

  My heart rate picked up, and I dragged oxygen into my rapidly shrinking lungs. He was right. Absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder. But all it had done for me was make me think about him less and less. Since moving here, I hadn’t missed Steven the way I should have—with a desperation to return to his side.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just been crazy,” I hedged as I chewed on a thumbnail and stood in the middle of my room. I glanced around the bare-bones environment, so different than my former apartment in the city. I missed its massive windows, modern furniture and scenic view.

  “Well, maybe we can get together and do a visit—meet halfway and take a trip in that SS of yours. Or maybe—”

  “Oh, crud, I don’t know if I can leave Dad yet,” I rushed to say, shamed that my lies kept piling up. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to dodge you, I promise.” Another lie. My face burned, and I scrambled for something honest to say. “Can I call you later tonight? We’re painting the place right now since the walls are so bland.”

  “Sounds fun! Send me pictures when it’s done?”

  “Sure, yeah, no problem.”

  We hung up, and I exhaled, scrubbed my face. If I got to move back to New York City—no, when I did—I was going to have to talk to Steven about where we were going. Because I couldn’t keep faking like everything was okay when it wasn’t.

  But I also couldn’t ignore the voice in my head that told me not to admit the truth to him. That told me I wasn’t that into him, that I was starting to find him and our friends to be a bit superficial. And hell, that used to be me too.

  If Mom hadn’t done this to us, I’d have still been blithely skating through my life, never greatly stressed or worried about where I was going, what I was doing. Yes, the bulk of my heart craved and missed that security. How could it not? I was already tired of being this busted.

  But a small voice in my head kept whispering that I was learning some hard truths. About myself, my family, life.

  Truths I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Truths that were changing my views on the world around me.

  Yeah, I was gonna have to have a hard talk with Steven, probably sooner than later. And as I walked from the bedroom into the living room, I told myself it had absolutely nothing to do with a certain kindergarten teacher. Nothing at all.

  Chapter Six

  When the cafeteria opened, the sound of a hundred thundering feet pounding into the room made me laugh. I was getting used to the chaos. I shifted behind the serving counter and grabbed my spatula.

  Bernita, the woman running the register, shot me a wry grin. “Those kids love Pizza Mondays.”

  It was true. Since starting here, I’d come to realize that kids were bottomless pits of hunger when it came to pizza. They didn’t even mind that Mrs. Portwell snuck vegetables under the cheese. Probably didn’t bother to chew the food, just inhaled it as fast as they could.

  I seemed to remember Natalie and me having contests about who could eat their pizza the fastest. Some things never changed.

  The lunch line filled fast, and I had trays thrust in my direction as I served up slices of pizza and a scoop of corn on their plates. Mrs. Portwell stared at me from her spot on the far end of the counter then gave a short, approving nod.

  The gesture warmed my chest. Yeah, this wasn’t my dream job, but at least I was doing my best—and the effort was being noticed.

  When I saw a few kindergarteners trickle into the line, my heart fluttered and I struggled to maintain my perfect scoops of corn. I hadn’t talked to Gavin since the bar Thursday night, and I’d only seen him from across the room on Friday.

  He slipped in behind a dark-skinned girl, and I turned my attention back to serving pizza and corn.

  “Miss Lunch Lady?” the girl asked me with wide eyes. “May I have extra corn, please?”

  I blinked. “Oh, uh, sure. Why not.” I added another healthy scoop, and she beamed.

  “I like corn,” she proclaimed.

  “Corn is good, isn’t it, Malik?” Gavin said in that gentle, compelling teacher voice. I found my breathing getting a bit more rapid, my thoughts wandering about how it felt to have that voice murmuring in my ear.

  She nodded and beamed up at him. “Yup. Plus I can see it in my poop!”

  The kids around her tittered, and Gavin shot her a warning look. My jaw dropped; how quickly I’d forgotten the bluntness of children.

  “We don’t talk about potty stuff in the lunchroom,” Gavin chastised. “That’s not appropriate.” He ushered the girl along and stepped back then looked at me. When those green eyes locked on mine, I saw a teasing light that made my breath hitch. “Sorry about that. No filter. I’m working with them on it.”

  “It’s okay. Some of my friends don’t have filters either.” Bianca would probably have high-fived the girl.

  I absentmindedly handed out pizza and corn to the next several students who shuffled through the line. All the while, Gavin and I shot each other awkward smiles. I cleared my throat.

  “So how was your weekend?”

  His bright white teeth flashed in the cafeteria light. “Fine. And yours?”

  “Fine as well.” It was so hard to not look at those sexy lips. I made myself think of Steven’s face to appease the self-reproach flaring in my belly. Surely it wasn’t wrong to find a guy mildly attractive, right? I mean, it wasn’t like we were going to do anything. I might have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I wasn’t going to cheat.

  I’d just keep r
epeating that chant in my head every time I saw him and it would be totally fine.

  “This is a scintillating conversation, you know,” he said with a wide grin.

  “Mr. Metcalf,” a young boy interrupted as he tugged on Gavin’s sleeve. “Is it time for recess yet?”

  “After lunch. Go finish your food, okay?”

  The kid’s face fell, and he glared as he crossed his arms. “I hate my sandwich. It tastes like balls.”

  I huffed a sharp laugh and tried to focus on the students in line.

  “That’s so not appropriate,” Gavin said. “You shouldn’t repeat things you hear the older kids say.” He gripped the kid’s shoulder and led him back to his table.

  Well, it was probably good that Balls Kid had interrupted us. I didn’t need to be kinda-flirting with him anyway. Not only because I had a boyfriend, but because I was crazy occupied at the moment. I had a busy life, what with this job, fixing stuff up at home, starting the maid work and possibly delivering pizza on my bike.

  The fun times never ended.

  I got through the rest of my serving shift then darted to the back to clean. I already had the routine down and moved from counter to counter, methodically cleaning each surface. Mrs. Portwell came over and patted me on the back as I stepped back to examine the kitchen as a whole.

  “You’re doing a great job,” she said in what sounded like a surprised tone. I should have been offended by her shock, but I made myself focus on the good words. “I’m glad we have you here.”

  “Thank you,” I told her sincerely as I removed my hairnet and tossed it in the garbage. “I’m trying to learn.”

  “If you keep up the good work, maybe we can get you started on helping us cook food someday. It means a few more hours a week, too.”

  “That would be great.” Since the elementary school was small, they only had a couple of lunch periods, which meant I was maybe putting in two to three hours a day right now. I grabbed my purse and headed out of the kitchen. The hallways were emptied, and from the classrooms I could hear kids talking over each other in excitement to answer their teachers’ questions.