I don’t want to mess that up.
We’re in a good place today.
I won’t let my hormones complicate this.
16
Holt
I’m up early Monday.
No specific reason for it—except possibly hearing the water start in Ziggy’s room, then the podcast she likes to listen to in Spanish start right after, the voices too low for me to make out any words.
My room.
She’s in my room.
I told her to take it because I knew she’d be more comfortable with the en-suite room, and I’m still not ready to let anyone else move into Caden’s room.
Unusual to have two en-suites, a third full bathroom, and a powder room for guests in a house this old, but some forward-thinker in the seventies gutted the interior to make sure no one ever wanted for a place to piss or wash their hands.
Caden said it was one of his favorite things about the house.
You’re never more than a single room from a bathroom.
My brother was fascinatingly practical in unexpected ways.
I swing myself out of bed and crutch to the hall bath. Ziggy’s door is cracked, and Jessica’s staring at me when I leave the bathroom.
“You wanna go out?” I ask her.
She snorts on the door, turns, and points her ass at me.You are mud, human, and I am too dignified to reply to you.
“You’re welcome for giving you a friend you like,” I mutter back.
She scratches the floor like she’s flinging poop in my direction.
I make my way downstairs and into the kitchen. Ziggy said she’d cook, but I don’t need to be fully dependent on her for everything. I can do some things.
Like make coffee.
Probably.
Except the coffee maker is under the cabinet by the oven, and the coffee is stored in a lower cabinet on the other side of the fridge.
Because that’s how Caden had it, and it was never a problem before.
Good for you to solve problems this early in the morning, I hear him say.
I flip him off in my head and hear him laugh.
Never mocking.
Alwayslife is fun, stop making mountains out of molehills. This won’t matter in an hour, much less in ten years.
He’s right.
Won’t matter if I hop on one leg across the kitchen and back so that I can carry the coffee over to the maker.
