Her sad, lonely apartment…
Sighing, Melanie tossed her bag aside, grabbed a small bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and walked towards her bedroom, forgoing her comfortable couch and settled for the bed that she was sick of looking at. It was only for a little while longer, she reminded herself, hating that she was going to have to move soon, but what choice did she have? Renovations were set to begin on the Fire & Brimstone soon, she had a baby on the way, she could barely make it up the two flights of stairs now, and she really wasn’t sure how she was going to manage it with a baby in her arms, but most importantly, she couldn’t afford the rent by herself anymore.
Grabbing her iPad, Melanie sat on the bed, picked up where she left off with the two-gallon sized Ziploc bag of peanut butter M&Ms that she kept for nights like this, and settled in for another night of trying to find a first-floor apartment with two bedrooms, a garden tub, a gourmet kitchen, a huge backyard with a hot tub, and a landlord who was willing to rent it to her for a thousand dollars a month or less.
Preferably less, Melanie mused with a handful of M&Ms and a wistful sigh
A lot less.
Chapter 2
“I’m dying,” Aidan announced dramatically to the large bedroom filled with unpacked boxes, dirty clothes, and empty junk food wrappers that should fill the medical professional in him with shame, but sadly, it didn’t.
After a few minutes of staring aimlessly at the stack of boxes that he’d been meaning to unpack, Aidan finally found the motivation to move. With a small sigh, he managed to roll over onto his side so that he could stare at the alarm clock blinking three p.m., reminding him that he still needed to set the time. Groaning, Aidan reached over and grabbed his phone, or at least, tried to.
Instead, he ended up knocking over several empty energy cans, discarded junk food bags, and a half-eaten burger that had somehow escaped his notice, onto the floor. When he finally managed to grab his phone, he released another sigh and tossed the phone over his shoulder.
He was running late, again.
It was six-thirty in the morning and he was already running thirty minutes behind, which meant that he was going to have to choose between taking a shower or grabbing something to eat on his way to work. Since he’d spent last night helping his cousin Trevor gut a house that he was planning on flipping, skipping a shower wasn’t really an option this morning.
He was going to have to forgo his usual stop at Dixon’s bakery for a “Bradford Breakfast,” and get his ass to work on time or be forced to skip lunch and spend the rest of the day trying to catch up with patients. Pretending that his muscles weren’t screaming in agony, Aidan got up and decided to move his ass.
He headed towards the small bathroom that he’d been meaning to renovate and rolled his shoulders, trying to work the stiffness out of his muscles. He needed to stop pushing himself, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Thinking about that half-eaten burger that was waiting for him, he flicked the lights on and yawned when the overhead light blew out.
For a minute, Aidan simply stood there, staring up at the busted light before he shrugged, grabbed his toothbrush, and headed right back out the door, making a mental note to add the busted light to the ever-growing list of things that needed to be done. He walked into the large living room, opened his apartment door, crossed the small hallway that separated the two first-floor apartments, and walked into the other apartment, which he’d planned on renovating when he’d bought the place, and walked into the large living room that he was using for…
Well, he wasn’t really sure what he was using this room for since there didn’t seem to be a theme amongst all the shit that he’d thrown in here. Yawning, Aidan stumbled around the old mini fridge that had once kept his beer cold during medical school and headed for the bathroom. A few minutes later, he’d relieved his bladder, brushed his teeth, and was shouting several obscenities when he was reminded that the water heater for the first floor still needed to be replaced.
Concerned that he was going to lose his balls to hypothermia, Aidan stumbled out of the small bathtub, grabbed the towel off the floor that didn’t look like one of his, and wrapped it around his waist. Ignoring the disturbing odor that was coming off the towel, Aidan headed back to his apartment, tripping over a laundry basket full of what appeared to be clean clothes that his mother must have brought over at some point, and couldn’t help but wonder what had possessed him to buy this place in the first place when he’d had a perfectly good apartment to keep all his shit in.
Ten minutes later, he was rummaging through that basket of clothes to find something decent to wear after the search of his apartment had resulted in him adding laundry to the list of things that needed to be done. After scoring a clean shirt and a pair of slacks, he hurried back to his apartment, yanking his clothes on along the way. Once he was dressed, Aidan tore his room apart until he found his cell phone and was then forced to do the same thing for his briefcase in the living room.
Finally ready, or at least secure in the knowledge that he had his keys, he headed out the door, noting that it was trash day and that his tenants had remembered. Putting his shit down, Aidan quickly grabbed the trash cans spray-painted with the number one on them and dragged them to the curb to join his tenants’ trash cans. Deciding that he was making good time, he stopped on the way to work for gas, day-old hotdogs, and an energy drink to help him start his day.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling into work and stealing his father’s parking spot. When he reached for his briefcase, a bright yellow stain on his tie caught his attention. With another yawn, Aidan yanked the mustard-stained tie loose and tossed it on the floor to join the others.
Grabbing his briefcase, he got out of his car and headed for the backdoor of his family’s practice. Before he had a chance to open the door, it was thrown open and Raven, a nurse who’d been with his family’s practice for over twenty years, came stumbling down the stairs, looking absolutely terrified as she shoved a patient folder in his hands.
She didn’t say anything as Aidan opened the file, but then again, she didn’t need to when the name on the file told him everything that he needed to know.
*-*-*-*
“Pancakes or waffles, Edmund?” Melanie asked the large belly that made it impossible to see her feet as she contemplated this morning’s choices.
When the baby kicked his displeasure, she couldn’t help but smile. “Not a big fan of Edmund, huh?” Melanie asked, deciding against pancakes and opted for the donuts that she’d picked up last night during her impromptu visit to the grocery store when her craving for Cool Whip had compelled her to put on her bunny slippers and hit the store before it closed.
While she was there, she’d decided that it was a good time to go grocery shopping for the third time this week. It had taken her an hour and two trips, but she’d managed to fit two-hundred dollars’ worth of junk food into her car. Thankfully, Lucifer had been outside walking Mojo when she’d pulled into the back parking lot, so she didn’t have to worry about carrying all those bags up two flights of stairs.
Once the bags were brought upstairs and Lucifer put them away, he’d joined her on the couch with a bag of cookies and an extra-large tub of Cool Whip and kept her company until sitting up became too much and she had no choice but to go to bed. After that, she’d laid in bed for a while, trying not to think about everything that she wasn’t supposed to think about and failed miserably before finally falling asleep sometime around three this morning.
Now, Melanie was awake and determined to have a productive day, one that didn’t end with her taking ten naps before dinner. She’d been off bed rest for a week now and needed to get some things done before the doctor overreacted and put her back on it. Five months had been more than enough, Melanie thought as she took a bite of the delicious powdered cinnamon donut and thought about all the things that she needed to do today. She really wasn’t looking forward to spending another day checking out apartment lis
tings and trying to figure out a way to stretch her budget a little further.
It had been five months since she was able to work, which meant that it had been five months since she’d collected a paycheck and was forced to live off her savings. Even though her savings account was decent, five months of paying for copays and tests, buying expensive medicine to combat nausea, countless emergency room visits, and the normal costs of living had done some serious damage. She had enough to cover a few more months and hopefully the delivery, but that was pretty much it and that was only if nothing else happened and she was really hoping that nothing else happened.
Normally, Melanie paid her bills with the money that she made from the bigger projects, like creating programs and databases, and used the money she made from designing websites and apps to pad her savings account, but right now, the big projects were out of the question. She couldn’t handle the eighteen-hour days that she usually put in for her projects and there was no way that she could guarantee any deadlines right now.
Smaller projects would be easier to handle and thank god those jobs were easier to come by. Five or six small projects a week should be enough to keep her going until after the baby was born and she had more time for work. Until then, she was going to have to do her best to make this work and be careful about her spending.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to control how much she spent on food, Melanie thought with a wistful sigh as she took a bite of the delicious powdered cinnamon donut that she was going to have to get more of. She really didn’t want to think about how much she was spending on food. The only thing that was stopping her from having a nervous breakdown over her food bill was Lucifer.
He was always cooking for her, checking on her to make sure that she had enough to eat, and refused to let her pay when she ate at the Fire & Brimstone. She wasn’t sure if he was doing this because of her relationship with Rebecca, his lovely bride who lived to torment him, or because they’d become friends in the last few months. The only thing that she knew for sure was that without him, she probably wouldn’t have made it this far.
She probably would have-
“Open the fucking door!” a terrifyingly familiar voice suddenly demanded, startling her, which of course, resulted in her dropping her delicious donut on the floor and making her realize that there was a very good chance that she was going to have to make another trip to the grocery store.