“It’s a long story.”
He clicked on the WiFi network, then turned the screen toward her. Aelin started to drop into a crouch to type in the password, then realized her entire ass was dropping out of the bottom of the towel. She shot back up. “I—can you stand?”
“You can just tell it to me.”
“I’d rather not.”
His lip twitched. “It can’t possibly be better than the network name.”
Aelin pursed her lips. If he stood, she’d still have to either hen peck out the password with one hand or hope her armpit could hold up her towel while she typed. She debated for a moment, then accepted her fate. “The password is ‘BJs!nmyPJs72.’”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“Hm. Yep.” Her face felt like the surface of the sun.
“Another long story?”
“Pretty short, actually,” she quipped, then clamped her mouth shut. She shuffled back toward the door. “No apostrophes. The “I” is an exclamation point. The J’s and the B and the P are capitalized.”
He nodded. “So the BJ?—”
“And the PJ. Mmhmm. Seventy-two.” Aelin escaped inside and closed the door behind her. Sweat dripped down the inside of her arm.Could that have been any more embarrassing?Maybe if she’d had a penis drawn in Sharpie across her cheek like she had when she originally came up with that passwordwhen she was a junior in college.
There was something very wrong with her, and now, because of her sick sense of humour and her abject refusal to bring newpasswords into her rotation, the angry hot dad on her porch knew far too much about her nightmare brain. And was definitely judging her for it. At least her twenty-year-old self hadn’t gone with sixty-nine. There was that.
She glanced up at the clock.Seven-ten?Aelin’s hands started to shake. She’d been dreading this morning for at least three weeks, and the stress of this situation was only making her anxiety worse.
She took the stairs two at a time and heard the girls giggling in Bailey’s room. “Bailey, you have fifteen minutes!”
It would be fine to drop her off a little early, wouldn’t it? There were other kids there, she wouldn’t be outside of the school for long, and it wasn’t like it was the middle of December.
When she reached the landing, she sprinted down the hall to her bedroom, dropping the towel the second she got into the washroom and closed the door. She hopped back into the shower, did a quick rinse to wash away her stress sweat, then dried off and applied moisturizer and deodorant. She ran a brush through her hair, hung up her towel, then rushed into the bedroom and grabbed underwear from her dresser.
She’d already laid out the outfit she planned to wear that morning. Something nondescript and comfortable so she had one less thing to think about while her ex, Clark, was coming after her foreverything else.
Aelin fumbled with the clasp of her bra, her fingers slipping on the hook and loop, then finally got it on and pulled her blouse over her head. Aelin grabbed her jeans and pulled them on, zipping them up just as she turned to the mirror. Her hair hung in messy, damp tendrils around her face.
She ran back into the washroom, snatched her hairdryer from the drawer and plugged it in, the roar of the motor filling the room. As she worked the dryer through her hair, her eyes ran over the message she’d written to herself in dry-erase marker on the glass.Bailey is #1. Let everything else go.
Aelin drew a deep breath and switched the dryer to her otherside. It killed her to think about walking into that office and allowing Clark to get away with only claiming a hundred grand in income the prior year. It felt like a succubus was draining her life force each time she imagined him driving home in his freaking Audi to his custom ranch in a brand-new gated community and then sitting there at mediation pretending he shouldn’t have to increase his child support payments.
She felt the familiar spiral begin to take hold. She needed to find a job for the summer. A good one. That meant she wouldn’t be around for Bailey, and since Bailey wasn’t old enough to be home on her own, she was going to have to find childcare, which meant her job needed to beeven better, and she was a terrible mother for missing the entire summer with her daughter, and?—
Aelin shuddered.Nope.She wasn't going to think about that. She'd been working with her therapist on not catastrophizing, and she was getting better at it. But it was proving more difficult when her worst-case scenarios were staring her in the face.
Aelin turned off the hairdryer and swiped smoothing cream through her locks, tamping down the post-shower fluff.
She grabbed her makeup bag and pulled out her concealer, dabbing it under her eyes and over the spot next to her nose that always seemed redder than the rest of her face. She swept bronzer over her cheekbones, then reached for her mascara.
When she finished applying, she smoothed tinted lip balm over her lips and grabbed a hair clip just in case. Sometimes the feeling of her hair on her neck annoyed her. Especially when Clark was around. He hated when she wore her hair up.
Aelin took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Breathe in for four counts. Hold for four counts. Breathe out for four counts . . . It was supposed to ground her. Right then, it was only pissing her off.
Aelin rushed into the hall. “Bailey!”
“We’re downstairs! I’m giving Amaya some Fruity Pebbles!”
Fantastic. Sugar cereal for breakfast. Yet another thing man-bun Ryan could judge her for. She glanced out the window whenshe reached the main floor and saw the back of Ryan’s head. He was still on the porch swing. Still staring at the screen of his laptop.
