The Shutout by Dianna Roman

Author:Dianna Roman [Roman, Dianna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wild One Press
Published: 2022-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

It was Saturday. I finally got a weekend to myself and what time did my body wake me up? Six o-freaking-clock. That whole worrying about your child instinct should shut off if they were safely in the care of other family members, but apparently my body was a sadistic asshole.

On the plus side, I got to read the entire newspaper and drink two cups of coffee without interruption for the first time in a decade. It was…weird.

Dinner with Bob and Ellen last night was painfully tolerable. They were great people, don’t get me wrong, but when Lainey was alive, we talked about family. Now, it was this awkward mix of anything but family from Bob—complete reviews of restaurants from his business trips to places I’d never see about food I’d never eat. And when Ellen wasn’t talking about houses her agency closed on, she was tossing out random opinions of what Lainey might have thought about something. I swore she did it to include me or console me, but I’d rather get my chest waxed than hear it every fucking time.

I was studiously on the third load of laundry today in the new washer—there would be no more mold experiments under my watch. Thank you very much. I hauled and put away the last of Emma’s crap back in her room sans hole in the roof, sans raccoons in the attic. I got all the bills paid, the floors swept, and it was only one in the afternoon. I’d accomplished enough that I wouldn’t have to stress about the house when I went back to work Monday.

I should feel like Superman, but anxiety was kicking my dumb ass. The other topic of dinner last night—the date.

I was prepared to cancel, but Ellen looked like she was just offered her own HGTV show whenever she mentioned the infamous Renee Thomas. With every passing minute counting down to the moment I had to make small talk with a woman who was interested in the idea of me, I wanted to develop laryngitis.

At work, I talked to people I didn’t know every day, but there was no expectation there to be copasetic. I didn’t have to talk about me. Come to think of it, I didn’t talk about myself to Dan much either. I’d only known Trevor for four years, but I swore he knew more about me than Dan.

Trevor knew I loved Italian food but hated garlic. He remembered Emma’s birthdays. When Dan and I went out last week, he ordered a garlic dip appetizer and told the ear licker that had hung on me that my daughter was twelve. My point is it was hit or miss even with people you already knew. You couldn’t force things. Everything about this date felt forced, and I hadn’t even met her yet.

A repetitious smack noise outside caught my attention, making my nuts tingle like Pavlov’s dog. Okay, maybe that was a bad analogy. It would imply Pavlov did something really strange with that dog.

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