OtterLeader: lol
OtterLeader: Okay. I like hanging out with you.
That took her by surprise. The thing was, she’d never had any intentions of staying up quite this late. But she’d had a great time, and her need to “kill shit” had been replaced with a warm, drowsy, happy feeling. She couldn’t quite remember the last time she’d felt that way, actually.
Huh.
OtterLeader: Besides, I imagine at your age you need less sleep anyway, right?
BOGWITCH: Don’t make me regret my decision
OtterLeader: LOL good night, Boggy
BOGWITCH: ‘Night, Otter.
She signed off, then looked at her computer for a long second. She felt tired, yes, but she felt better. Better than she had in weeks. Better than she had since Kit left. Longer than that, if she was honest with herself: since the year leading up to Kit leaving—figuring out the money for his tuition, trying to organize all the things that would help him get there. Hell, even dealing with Kit’s temperamental roller coaster of emotions as he tried to figure out where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. She’d been wrung out like a sponge.
She enjoyed fighting with the guild. But this, this one-on-one with Otter, had been the most connected she’d felt to someone else in a long time.
She was still for a moment as her tired brain processed that.
You felt close and comfy “hanging out” with a guy who is, tops, twenty-one.
That . . . might not be a good thing.
CHAPTER 13
BEING GOOD SUCKS
Aiden gritted his teeth so hard, he was surprised his molars hadn’t turned to powder. He was at his mother’s. He’d managed to pretend that her whole engine had blown up and he needed a slew of replacement parts （and had even gotten Davy’s buy-in to bolster the lie）。 Meanwhile, Davy said that he’d get her a new car, but it was going to take time to get the right one. Since she liked Davy better, she took the explanation with a degree of pride and grinned smugly at Aiden. It didn’t bother him as much as it used to that he wasn’t her favorite. Although it did still bother him. Especially on days like this.
She’d called him at six in the morning, telling him there had been a loud noise, a crash. In a panic, he’d tossed on sweats and driven over like a demon, hoping that there wasn’t any black ice—it had gotten cold. Still, he lived only ten minutes away, on the other side of their small town.
When he arrived, she was drinking coffee . . . and there was a small, angry, barking little dog.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
At which point she got up, still dressed in pajamas and a thick flannel robe, and shuffled her way to the living room.
His father had been many things, but a carpenter he wasn’t. Still, he’d surprised Aiden’s mother with a “built-in bookshelf” one year, on their thirtieth anniversary, and they’d put every book in the house on it, including a now-ancient set of children’s encyclopedias. Year after year, with every visit, Aiden had noticed that the weight of the books had caused the shelf to continuously sag, like a slow, tired smile. Now, all the books were strewn across the floor, and the shelf itself was wrecked.
He took a deep breath.
“Scared the hell out of me,” his mother said, going back to the kitchen and turning on the small TV there. It was her habit: get up, get a cup of coffee, then watch the news or a rerun of Murder, She Wrote. “And Prince Albert here was terrified. Spent about half an hour barking.”
Aiden looked at the dog with narrowed eyes, and the dog glared at him right back. Or at least, it seemed to, from underneath a thick fringe of beige hair. It was a Pomeranian or something, from what he could tell. He liked animals and generally loved dogs, but he preferred bigger dogs. Also, he couldn’t imagine why his mother, who wasn’t particularly a pet person, would be responsible for one. “When did you get a dog?”
“I’m watching him for Gladys,” she said instead.
He kept his face completely impassive as he crouched down and tried to befriend the dog, who growled at him with suspicion. The last thing she needed was a dog to take care of, but he knew better than to say so, or to even show his uncertainty. He chose his battles.
After having a cup of coffee of his own, he gathered up the books, piling them on the coffee table and along the wall in the living room. The thing was, he’d inherited his father’s unhandiness. He was decent on a computer, and he felt like he had a real skill when it came to taking care of someone sick. But wood, nails, plaster? Not his wheelhouse. At all.
“You know, maybe Riley knows somebody,” he started, only to have her instantly up in arms.
“No! I don’t want to spend money on this!” she said, and as cranky as she sounded, he could see the genuine panic in her expression, and he relented.
“Mom, if I try to fix this, I’m just afraid it’s going to be a nightmare,” he said. “I can pay for it.”
She huffed. “You should be saving your money,” she said. “You’re not even working. Not even looking for work, for God’s sake, Aiden. You can’t just throw your money around.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t fix this, and neither can Davy.” Even if he ever made it out here. He forced himself to smile encouragingly. “So . . . here’s what we’re going to do. We’re either going to hire someone to make you a built-in—”
“No!”
Startled, he saw that she was teary eyed.
It occurred to him that this shelf, one of the things his father had actually built for her on their anniversary, wasn’t something she’d want replaced by Random Handyman. He nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Aiden finally agreed, even as he felt a falling sense of doom.
A few days later, after much discussion with talkative guys at Fool’s Falls Hardware, he had a vague idea of what he needed to do. To add insult to injury, the dog was slowly won over, and was currently trying to get his attention. He gave the puffball some skritches that had him wriggling until Aiden thought his butt would wiggle right off. “I need to do this, buddy,” he said firmly, but the dog was intent on getting in the way. “Mom, can’t we shut him in the bedroom or the spare room until I’m done with this?”
“He’ll pee,” she said, shaking her head. “He gets nervous when he’s left alone. He already peed on my bedspread when I took a shower.”
Aiden sighed, making a mental note to change out her bedding. He couldn’t leave the dog in the yard, either, since she had no fence. Well, he’d just have to make do.
So, clenching his jaw and trying to find a stud, he found himself ignoring the yipping antics of the dog, the high volume of his mother’s television （which was spouting something that he knew, had he been paying attention, would’ve pumped his blood pressure up by a dangerous amount）， and fielding questions from his mother as he tried to work.
“Did you find a date?” his mother asked, apropos of nothing, as the news complained about immigration. Prince Albert let out a little sharp bark, like punctuation. He was cute, if somewhat demanding. At least his mother wasn’t tasked with taking care of, say, a Great Pyrenees.
“Not yet.” The stud finder lit up, and he marked it off with a pencil. Then he went to find the other stud.