Relapse

CHAPTER ONE

Ialways thought my sister was the smart sibling, until the day she died and left me custody of her kids.

That’s when I realized, despite the alcohol and drug abuse, the unbalanced levels of my neurotransmitters, and the fact that I dropped out of college after an affair with my professor, I definitely was the smarter sibling.

I mean fuck, I can’t even take care of my own grown ass, so of course I can’t take care of two kids.

“Aunt Ivy?” Tanner’s light voice makes me turn. He’s standing in front of the big screen TV in the living room, his face contorted into a frown. Looking behind him, it quickly becomes evident why as I watch the fat asses of music video girls shake on the screen.

Holy shit.

I snatch the remote from him and quickly change the TV to Paw Patrol.

“Aunt Ivy, I’m too old for this show,” he complains.

“No, you’re not, now sit down and forget about what you just saw,” I order him. I place a hand on the top of his brown curls and guide him to the leather sofa. After studying him for any visible damage due to what he just witnessed and coming up clear, I return to unpacking boxes.

I frown at the black, glass elephant that I’d tried to talk my grandma out of gifting to me. As per usual, the woman wouldn’t take no for an answer and got her way, shoving the tacky figurine in a box right before we left her house. It’s where the kids and I have stayed the past two weeks as we made the biggest change of not only the kids’ lives, but also mine.

I’m not mother material and neither is my own mother, so going to my dad’s mothers for a while was the best choice. For weeks, she made sure the kids were well taken care of as I tried to process what was going on.

Of course, I then realized that I’d never be able to fully process the fact that my big sister, Kylie, the person who understood me more than anyone, was dead. A car wreck. All because some idiot thought it would be fun to run a red light and ruin multiple lives in the process, killing my sister and her husband, Andrew, on impact.

When I received the call, I couldn’t breathe and it wasn’t because of the marijuana suffocating my lungs.

The reading of the will happened and when the lawyer informed me that sole custody of the kids was going to me, it somehow made sense, but it also didn’t. Andrew’s parents were dead, and he had no siblings or any other close relatives. Kylie’s father, a different man than mine, died of a heart attack five years ago. That left me or our mother. Well, if our childhood, or mine in particular is anything to go off of, that woman is unfit to raise kids.

Yet, I’m barely a better candidate.

I was living in a rundown apartment and struggling to make a living as an artist before the wreck. And I’d still be living that life if my sister and her husband’s insurance policy didn’t have a lot of zeros behind it. Kylie’s father came from old money, hence why our mother married him, and when he died it was all left to Kylie. Andrew also wasn’t bad off, owning stock in a couple of companies.

Still, money doesn’t change that I’m a fucking mess. In all honesty, the kids would have had a better life in the system. But what’s done is done and now I have to leave the old Ivy, the real Ivy, in the past and create a new one. A responsible, boring, motherly Ivy.

I shudder at the thought.

“Aunt Ivy, I don’t want to watch this!” Tanner continues to pout from the living room as he props his feet up on the coffee table.

“Fine, but get your feet off of my furniture.” The glass coffee table is a new purchase since my old one fell apart when the movers were trying to load it into the moving truck. It lasted longer than I expected considering it came off someone else’s trash pile.

“Where are you going to put the elephant?” Tanner questions, his eyes flitting between me and the TV that is now showing a bunch of big, sweaty men throwing each other around.

I pause for a second, watching as one particular ripped man in tight trunks kicks the other man in the face.

“Aunt Ivy?”

“Huh?” I turn to find Tanner’s freckled face frowning again, as his wide brown eyes study me, as if to make sure I’m okay.

“The elephant?” He points to the figurine still in my hand.

“Oh, I don’t know where I’m going to put it yet.” My eyes flicker back to the screen. “Are you watching wrestling?” I question as one man slams the other into the mat.

“Of course! It’s the best thing on TV!”

I have to agree with him as one man climbs on the other after nailing a visually pleasing flip onto him. He hooks the other man’s leg, lying across him as the referee slaps the mat three times. I find it hotter and more explicit than it actually is and have to reel my thoughts in as the TV goes to commercial.

Fuck, I really need to get laid if I’m ogling men pinning each other on TV.

But where would I even find the time?