Dream Maker (Dream Team 1)

Please instruct on where to take this bag.

ASAP.…still had the red UNDELIVERED warning next to it.

I had hit TRY AGAIN so often, I probably wore off my fingerprint.

But I did it once more anyway.

The message failed to send.

I realized I wasn’t breathing properly so I forced myself to do that thinking I had limited options of what came next.

But, even if it was akin to banging my head against a wall, I was going to explore them.

I showered, didn’t wash my hair, and pulled on my Wonder Woman tee, some frayed jeans, my red Chucks and a sloppy cardigan.

I then took the Trader Joe’s bag I’d shoved the plastic sheeting back into and then hidden under my dirty clothes in my hamper, grabbed my bag and keys and went out to my car.

It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning, but I didn’t care.

The weather was chilly.

It was late February in Denver and that could mean anything from the possibility you could lay out to a blizzard hitting.

We’d had a mild spell.

That, apparently, was over.

With the bag stowed in my trunk, I drove to my mother’s.

I was in such a state, I didn’t even sigh when I saw my stepfather’s big truck sitting next to my mother’s SUV in their drive.

The gas-guzzler family.

I got out, locked up and jogged up to their front door.

I then leaned on the doorbell and didn’t let up until the door opened.

Rob, my stepdad, wearing a faded tee and even more faded pajama bottoms, looked at me, his expression went from annoyed to alarmed, and he asked, “Jesus, Evie, you okay?” at the same time he was urgently pushing open the storm door.

Rob was a couple inches taller than me, relatively built with a bit of a beer belly, and good-looking, I supposed, for a stepdad.

He was also three years younger than my mother, something he didn’t know about until two years after their wedding.

He’d thought he was three years older.

Mick had let that slip, and Rob had lost his mind.

I had to hand it to him, he wasn’t angry because he was younger than my mom and had some idea that the man in a relationship should be older.

He was angry because she’d lied to him, kept up that lie for years, married him amid a deception, and he was not down with that.

I was there during one of their many fights on this subject and heard him say (or shout) that it wasn’t only a lie she’d told and didn’t intend ever to divulge the truth. And it wasn’t the age, he didn’t care about the age.

It was that she didn’t trust in his love enough not to care about the age herself.

I had to say, I was with him on all that.

Sadly, thus began the cheating, and I suspected that wasn’t about being married to an “older woman.”

His strike back was messed up, and I way did not condone it.

But what Mom had done was messed up too.

It sucked he was a cheater, because there was a lot to like about him.

He was nice. He could be funny. He was responsible in the sense he’d been gainfully employed the whole time I’d known him with the goal of working toward a decent retirement. He treated his own kids from his first marriage great and seemed at his best when his mingled family was together. He got irritated when I did stuff for myself that required tools, and that wasn’t an “I’m a man” thing; that was an “I’m your stepdad and your real dad is a waste of space so better late than never you having someone who gives a shit” thing.

And he thought my sister was wasting her life and someone should shake some sense into my brother.

“Is Mom home?” I asked, moving in when he moved out of the way.

“She’s still sleeping. I was about to jump into the shower. I’ll wake her up in a sec,” he said, closing the door behind me. “Now, answer me, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

I looked right into his eyes and stated, “Mick’s got some trouble.”

His face morphed right to pissed and he bit out, “That fuckin’ guy.” He got a lock on it and said, “Hang tight. I’ll get your ma.”

I hung as tight as I could when I felt like I was going to fly apart.

I also realized I hadn’t made myself coffee, or stopped for one, which, after a night with no sleep, was a mistake.

It took some time, but Mom eventually came out with her mass of dyed-blonde hair falling in attractive, messy waves around her face and shoulders, and she was wearing a long, satin, sexy nightgown the likes she’d worn to bed her whole life.

They were also the likes no kid ever wanted to see her mom in, no matter that kid was now twenty-seven years of age.