Said sausage roll glared up at me, and I swore if she could talk, she’d be telling me to fuck off. You’d have thought she was seventy rather than six by the way she acted. If food wasn’t involved, she wasn’t interested.
She was a short-haired, miniature dachshund and had been a puppy no bigger than my hands back when we bought her. I remembered back then that we’d had her for a few days, and for the life of me I still hadn’t been able to pick a name. So, like the genius woman I was, I decided to let my two-year-old name her.
“What’s your favorite thing?”
“The rug!”
“Okay, what’s your second favorite thing?”
“Pants!”
And thus, Rugpants was named. Genius woman, indeed. I nudged her limp form, “Come on Rugsy, outside, let’s go.”
She rolled off the couch like a potato on a kid’s project ramp and trotted her short, stubby legs toward the patio door. It was literally two feet away, but she still found time to stretch and yawn on the way over.
Yanking on the handle, I forced the door to slide open as far as I could while it fought against me. I sighed, mentally adding ‘call the landlord to fix patio door’ to my never ending to-do list.
Rugpants looked up at me, pure sass in her buggy eyes. “Don’t give me that look, it won’t open any farther. You can fit.” I nudged her out, leaving the door ajar so she could make her way in when she was done.
Walking backward, I plopped onto the couch, closing my eyes and listening to the cicadas serenade me through the opening and praying no mosquitoes took advantage of my laziness.
Jamie would come back any minute with a book, and I was dreading it. Not because I didn’t enjoy reading with him, I loved his interest in books, but because reading time meant nighttime, and nighttime meant schoolwork. No matter how much I tried to enjoy them, the evenings were never long enough.
I allowed myself one more minute of self-pity and then sat up, breathing deeply and clapping my hands together. “It’s bedtime, let’s go!”
I heard the faint clatter of something in the bathroom—I didn’t even want to know what an eight-year-old boy was doing in there—before the creak of the door echoed out, and he darted into his room.
“Are we reading out here or in there?”
“In here!” he yelled.
Of course, we were. Lazy bum. Slapping my hands on the couch, I heaved my butt up and trudged toward the first bedroom in the hall, directly across from the bathroom.
We’d moved in last week, and Jamie had been so excited to have his own bedroom and bathroom. It’d been a struggle not to burst into tears at his excitement over something he’d always deserved to have.
I crawled into bed next to him, shoving my toes under his legs to warm them and biting back a laugh when he hissed and slapped at me. We didn’t fit on his twin mattress, but I’d keep squeezing in as long as he’d let me.
“I have several chapters I have to read for class later, so do you mind doing most of the reading tonight?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
I settled in, leaning my head on his shoulder and listening to him read a novel about dragons. We were currently on book three of an ongoing series, and he was loving them.
I’d made it a point to read to him every night growing up, no matter what. When he finally got old enough to read on his own, we began taking turns and it was, by far, my favorite part of each day.
I could see his eyes start to droop when I took my turn, and I smiled. He was getting so big, but sometimes I still caught glimpses of my baby boy hiding underneath. “Let’s end here. You have school tomorrow, and I need to get started on my own reading.”
“Do you have a test?”
“Not tonight, thankfully, just some reading.” I laid his book on his nightstand and stood, throwing his blanket over his head.
“About what?” he asked, not even bothering to move it.
“Well, one of them is an overview of the research results regarding car wash employees stealing change from vehicles. I have to write up a report naming any issues with validity and reliability.”
I watched his fingers slowly creep out and drag the blanket down his face. His nose was scrunched up tight. “That sounds awful.”
“It will absolutely, without a doubt, be awful.” I laughed, flicking his light off. “’Night, bud.”
“’Night, Mom.”
I closed his door, turning and staring at my own bedroom. I could practically hear the sheets calling my name. They were probably ice cold and fantastic. Fuck, I was tired. Tipping my head back, I sighed, turning and making my way to the kitchen tucked into the corner of our living room.
Twenty-five and there I was, spending the night prepping a cup of dollar store coffee in tie-dye sweats, mismatched socks, and curls plopped on top of my head like a pineapple. I was the antonym of sexy.
Dressing up my coffee with more sugar than my daily allowance recommended, I made sure Rugpants had wandered back inside, and then heaved the door shut, ambling into my room.
The duplex was the largest place I’d ever been able to barely afford. ‘Barely’ being a key detail. With three beds and two bathrooms, it was more space than we’d ever had in our previous one-bed, one-bath apartment.
The master bedroom was the same size as the other bedrooms, but I didn’t have to share so it was a winner in my book. I set my “World’s Best Hooker” mug my friend had gifted me on my nightstand and wiggled my butt down onto my cheap, three-inch mattress, next to the four-legged child that’d already crawled in.
“Here we go,” I muttered, cracking my neck. I set my laptop on my crossed legs and logged into the university website. Once it was loaded and my planner spread out next to me, I promptly pulled up my nightly companion: streaming music.
I couldn’t afford the commercial-free version, but you wouldn’t hear me complain. It was the only thing keeping me awake most nights. Even eyecare commercials were more entertaining than silence.
I pulled up the report I’d been assigned, a research project conducted by one of my professors. He’d assigned it to the class, camouflaging it as a practice assignment when in reality, he was using us to find errors in his work for him.
I was pretty sure it would be considered highly unethical, but whatever. Setting the music station to Top Hits, I rolled my shoulders and got to work.
I’d suffered through the entire report and was summarizing my findings when a knock came on the front door. I startled, straightening up and spilling the majority of my coffee down the front of my top. Cursing, I leapt off the bed and attempted to quiet Rugpants’s barking while she tried to uncover herself from the comforter.
Who the hell could that be? I set my mug down, wiping pointlessly at my wet chest, my heart already in my stomach. I didn’t know anyone in this town besides my parents, and they wouldn’t be knocking on my door this late at night.
I slid out of my room, closing the door behind me to lock sausage butt in so she hopefully wouldn’t wake Jamie. Part of me didn’t want to answer the door at all, but what if it was an emergency? I knew more than most that emergencies could happen at any time of night.
I made my way down the hall and across the living room. It didn’t take long to cross a one-thousand-square-foot home, and I found myself wishing I’d walked a little slower.
I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the small window on the door, nerves shooting through my limbs and making my fingers shake. There was no one there. I paused, refusing to blink, waiting for someone to step into my view. But nothing happened.
“Don’t open it,” I told myself. “It’s probably someone waiting off to the side, ready to kidnap you and chain you to a basement wall.” I stared at the doorknob. “Oh Lordy, I’m an idiot,” I muttered, unlocking the door and cracking it open an inch.
“Hello?” No one answered. No shuffling, no crickets. Nothing.