And he replied, “I’m all in.”
Juno felt something inside her get all loose when she didn’t know it had been tight and hurting.
But it had been.
And she sent a silent message to Heaven, something that she would never in a million, billion, trillion years admit to her stupid grandfather she did (though, she did it a lot, it felt nice sending messages to Heaven).
Thank you, God.
But in real life, she smiled so big at Mr. Cisco, her face hurt.
And he smiled back at her.
Chapter One
A Perfect World
Pepper
My phone chimed with the eleventh text I’d gotten in an hour and I just managed not to pull it out of my purse and throw it in the nearest garbage can.
Okay.
All right.
Deep breath and…
Center.
Bottom line: I needed to get over it because I didn’t want to be a hater. Hating was such an ugly thing. I didn’t like how it made me feel and I didn’t want it around my daughter. And when the world at large was so full of negativity and hate that it was pushing in sometimes on an hourly basis, the best way to keep that kind of thing from burying my little girl was, when I had her, do my all not to be a hater.
So I had to guard against the hate.
Even if the holidays were coming up and it always got bad during the holidays.
Bad in the sense of these texts I was currently getting from my sister, because she (and Mom and Dad) always thought holidays were the perfect time to win me around to their way of thinking.
Or, to be blunt (and honest), indoctrinate me and Juno into their way of life.
A way of life I’d turned my back on years ago.
You had to hand it to them, they never gave up.
But that was a stretch for a silver lining because it was also a not-great thing that they never gave up.
And it couldn’t be denied, I hated it (rephrase: disliked it intensely) when they put my sister forward to appeal to me in a sisterly/generation-sharing way.
Making this worse, I had to divide my time with my daughter, giving some of it up to her father, which was never fun, but especially unfun during the holidays.
In a perfect world, my baby would be with me all the time.
In a perfectly perfect world, my baby’s daddy would not be a liar and a cheater, and we’d all be together all the time.
It was not a perfect world.
This year, I sensed holidays were going to be even worse because her dad had a(nother) new woman in his life, and from what I was getting, she was all in to win Corbin by showing she could be the best stepmom in Denver.
That happened a lot (the new woman and her wanting to win Corbin by using Juno) and it always involved messing with Juno’s heart. And then, when Corbin dumped her (and he would eventually dump her), part of Juno’s heart would go with her.
It hurt my baby girl.
It hurt to watch.
It also hurt because I was powerless to do anything about it.
In the beginning, I’d tried to talk to Corbin and warn him about introducing his girlfriends to our daughter too soon.
He didn’t want to hear my advice on how to father.
Though, even if he didn’t want to hear my thoughts on parental issues, he spent a lot of time making sure I heard from him on a variety of subjects that had to do with co-parenting (and other topics).
This regardless that Juno was eight, and for the most part, we had it down.
I didn’t need any of this right now.
It was career day for Juno’s class and Juno loved me. She thought I could do anything. As such, she did not get that her mom—who had been a stripper, but was now a featured dancer at a former strip club (even so, you could absolutely still describe what we did as exotic dancing, we just no longer bared all)—was not the person teachers wanted talking to their kids about their future career prospects.
But Juno thought I was cool.
Juno thought I hung the moon and that my besties, Lottie, Ryn, Hattie and Evie, were the stars (all of them also dancers, except Evie, who used to be one, but now she was a student).
So Juno didn’t hesitate to ask me to come and chat with her class.
I had a little presentation to give. It was a lot about the choreography, costumes, lighting, music choices and working with the stage technicians, and less about how I found new and interesting ways to take off most of my clothes (obviously).
But I was nervous.
I could dance while disrobing with a crowd watching, but standing in front of them and talking?
Nope.
Making matters worse, they were having career days all semester, one each Tuesday. The kids invited parents or other folks in their lives to come in and chat with the class. Thus, I knew Juno had asked her dad to come that day too, and as referenced earlier, he and I did not get along.