Page 45 of The Progressions

“Because you just said that people repeat stuff and behave in the same ways, acting out what they saw when they were kids. I won’t, no matter if I was drunk or if I got angry. I don’t drink, actually.”

“I think that’s a good plan.” Then I admitted something to him, and a little bit to myself, too. “When I was thirteen, I tore a ligament in gym class. I didn’t want any pain medication because I don’t want to repeat stuff, either.”

“You said your mom overdosed by mistake.”

“It was a mistake. It was! But she had been taking those pills for years and years. I just…just in case,” I said.

“That’s probably a good idea.”

I nodded slightly, because I had always thought so. “I’ll find a new place for Iva as fast as I can. She won’t have to be here for long.”

“I know you get things done.”

“Even when people don’t actually need me to,” I reminded him.

“No, I did,” he told me. “I really did.”

Sure. I looked around the condo, which had been immaculate even before his mom had arrived, because he had kept it that way. I also remembered unpacking his citrus reamer. He had wrapped it up in paper and put it in the box labeled “juicing/grating implements.” I strongly believed that a person who did that would have been capable of getting his own life in order. Why couldn’t everyone be that way?

“I wish that people would behave how they were supposed to,” I announced.

“That would make things easier. It’s good to have someone who does. Someone you can depend on.”

“Like your mom,” I said, nodding. “It will be good for Iva to have her.”

He turned his head to look at me again.

“And you,” I added. “You’re that kind of person, too.”

“You think so?”

I nodded. “I hope I am, as well.”

“If I needed help, you’d be the first person I would call.”

“Really?” I smiled. “I would come.”

“I know,” he told me, and he smiled back. I tilted up my chin like I would have toward the sun after clouds parted.

“Did you get those groceries for a specific reason?”

“I was going to make some dinners for Iva and freeze them,” I explained.

“Let’s do that,” Tyler said. He got up and held out his hand to pull me along, too. “We’ll see if we can work together.”

I had my suspicions, and it turned out that I was right. We worked together very well.

Chapter 10

Ilooked at the long column of required reading books and sighed. Why were these so expensive? And did I really need to read anything from this list? I hadn’t yet bought any of the texts for the fall semester as I’d considered my next move. Usually, I didn’t have time to do all the required stuff anyway, and that approach to my education had led to a few grades that I wasn’t entirely proud of—yet another reason why law school was out. I probably wouldn’t have been accepted, anyway, and who even knew how long it would take me to get a bachelor’s degree? I might turn fifty by the time I was done and I probably wouldn’t ever have enough time to study for the Bar exam.

So again, I had proven my own point. In fact…I looked at the list of required texts again, considering. Did it even make sense to push through undergrad? The only reason I’d enrolled in college was because my dad had his heart set on me being the first person in our family to go and I’d wanted to make him happy. But where was that degree going to get me? Right now, I was sitting in a trailer office of a decaying condo complex, and the jobabove mine was Iva’s. There was no upward mobility here and a history degree wouldn’t change that.

We were still in the add/drop period so I could get a refund on my tuition, and I studied the book list and thought about things. Then I got a call about another calculator going bananas and I tried to deal with that, but my heart wasn’t in it.

My heart, in fact, was tired. I had spent the weekend gardening, trying to shore up a gutter that was detaching from our roof, and rewiring the back of my car so that it didn’t fall off again. I had also helped Iva, boxing up the stuff that was hers in stupid Dominic’s house. I kept telling her that she wouldn’t need a ton besides clothes at Tyler’s place, because he had everything. He definitely had everything she could ever need in the kitchen, he had tons of towels and bathroom supplies, and he even had a lot of automotive stuff.

“If you need windshield washer fluid, he has it. He can change the oil in your car, too. He offered to do mine for me,” I said.

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