Page 20 of Single Girl in the City
Chapter Seven
Happy Things:
Blueberry cake doughnuts
By the time Abi reached home, she was soaked through and her legs were the consistency of Jell-O, but she considered it a win. She’d ridden her bike eight miles, during peak traffic, and only broke out in a cold sweat once.
Then there’d been the two good deeds she’d accomplished. She’d potted a plant for the front of the tea shop—a good deed for Mother Nature—and gave an introduction class at the senior center on how to use the internet. Then immediately regretted the latter since Ms. Walker crashed the network by streaming too much porn.
Locking her bike to the porch railing, she went to open the front door only to find it locked. She searched her backpack, then searched it again, dumping out every last item.
“Crap.” She checked her pockets. “Crappedy, crap crap.” She closed her eyes and envisioned the last place she remembered having them. “Crap!”
They were on the counter at work. The third time that week she’d left something she needed at home at work or vice versa. She considered picking the lock, then imagined Dotti calling the cops on a burglar at large and settled for a gentle knock in case the kids were asleep.
They were not. In fact, when the door swung open, Abi watched as a very loud, very naked Koi raced past with their dog, Buster, fast on his heels.
“I poopied,” he exclaimed.
“And not in the potty,” Dotti added wearily.
Her sister was dressed in the same nightgown she’d been in when Abi had left that morning, with smudges of mascara that reached her cheekbones, and an apron that had spaghetti sauce splattered down the front.
“You’re here.” Dotti pulled her into her arms as if they hadn’t hugged since the internet was invented. “Thank god, you’re here.” She grabbed Abi by the shoulders and held her back. “You are here, right?”
“Do you need me here?” she asked tentatively.
“Only if you have wine.”
“I can go get wine.”
Dotti looked over her shoulder right as Koi raced past again, followed by Buster, and then Lemon-Marie who was waving a wand in her hand.
Swoosh swish. “Let it go. Let it go,” the song fromFrozencame out of the wand.Swoosh swish.“Let it go. Let it go.”
Dottie shook her head and her normally sleek hair was so ratted it didn’t move. “But then I’d be alone.”
Swoosh swish.“Let it go. Let it go.”
“You don’t want to be alone?” Abi asked, because Dotti had spent the past two months trying to get Abi out of the house.
“What does that even mean? Alone?”
“Usually it means by one’s own self.”
“Don’t sass me,” Dotti said, but she pulled Abi inside and slammed the door, trapping her in a tower of crazy. Abi turned to find the deadbolt fully engaged. “If you even think about leaving, I will cry.”
Whoa.Dotti did not cry. Period. End of sentence. She went through thirty-nine hours of labor, no meds, with Koi and never even popped a single tear. “Who are you and what have you done with my perfect sister?”
“Perfect?” She snorted. “I accidentally sent Hank to work with a mayonnaise and cheese sandwich and he’s lactose intolerant, Koi said the F-word in class so now the other moms think I’m a bad parent, I lied to Lemon-Marie and said that Anna and Elsa went on vacation so she’d stop playing the stupid movie, the kids’ fish died because I’m a murderer, Hank and I haven’t had sex in over a month because he thinks I’m fat, and I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”
“If you haven’t had sex, then how are you pregnant?”
“Because Hank’s sperm defy science. Or we might have had sex that one night Lemon-Marie slept in her own bed, but I’m so tired I can’t be sure.”
“You can’t be sure if you had sex?”
Dotti snapped her fingers. “Keep up.”
