“Experienced.” Jess giggles. “Nice.” She reads whatever facial expression I’m giving her for another moment, and then takes off. “I’m on an afternoon shift. I should get going.” She breaks Sonny out of his trance to plant a loving kiss to his temple. “Goodbye, Sonny Bunny!”
“Goodbye, Jessy Bessy.”
Jess strides into the kitchen and locates her sunnies. “That reminds me. I got stung by a bee today.”
“One of my father’s, no doubt.” I snort, cracking open the door for her. “His army of insects are probably still flying around somewhere. That’s if they haven’t dropped dead yet.”
“Their reign will continue with their kids.”
Unless they can break free.
“Shame my father can’t drop dead as fast as the bees he raised,” I half joke, seeing Jess out.
My father coincidentally decided to leave as soon as I became a legal adult, and ran off to Boston with some chick who I can’t even remember the name of. I haven’t heard from him since, which I’m glad about.
He left me alone in a house that was still due mortgage payments, and made me deal with the bees he forgot to release.Perhaps, if not for his wild beekeeping obsession, he’d have spent more time with me.
But of course, insects take precedence.
“Homework time, baby,” I announce, gently prying the toy plane from Sonny’s grasp. “Pilots must first complete their math practice before flying.”
“Pilots can take off and avoid it.”
Not the most positive approach to life…
“Pilots are good at math and pass all of their classes,” I remind him.
Sonny drops the plane and hops up onto the table with a pouted bottom lip.
Same.
Nobody wants to work. Flying away from problems every time they become an inconvenience would be ideal if money and reality were factors that did not exist.
Alas, the real world comes first, and so does Sonny’s education. It’s my dying wish for this little mister to leave Maple Crossing, succeed in life, and live free from financial burden.
With Sonny occupied, I crash on the couch and slide a laptop into my lap that should be classed as vintage. A few keys on the keyboard are misaligned, and the huge crack that stretches diagonally across the screen makes reading a challenge, but the battery still works perfectly fine, so I cope…
Until I see the whopping prices of dishwashers and stoves these days.
Holy shit.Do they take an arm and leg as credit?
Dread starting to settle back into my stomach, I open up a new tab and go about this in a different way. I bring up the search engine and type in the pathetic question:How to get free money.
Sponsored surveys pop up one after the other as I scroll down the page of search results. No, thank you. I tried those before and earned a grand total of twenty cents from atwo-hour-longsurvey.
Fuck that.
And fuck gambling. The last thing I need is a slot-machine addiction. My father once developed a gambling “hobby” for a year when I was younger, to apparently “let off some steam.” As if stress from beekeeping was ever a thing. He lost more money than he gained, and had the bank at his throat for years to come after multiple missed mortgage payments.
I exhale despair out of my system and persist, flicking through pages of search results. Grants. Free demos.Take our ten-minute survey and earn one hundred dollars.My ass…
Hey. I might as well sell some pictures of that online to earn cash for Sonny’s new wardrobe.
The thought has frequented my mind a lot over the past few years, but I’m way too prudish for that. Taking a pussy pic for one guy is scandalous, never mind having it duplicated all over OnlyFans for creeps to jerk off to. That life isn’t for me, and with an eight-year-old son under my wing, I wouldn’t wanna risk it and have my actions catch up to him later in his adult life.
Things always have a way of coming back to haunt you…
Like the ad that pops up on the screen of a smiling, happy family. The advertisement is not relevant. The pictureis.
