Page 263 of Branded
Yeah, that was fucking torture.
Unfortunately, I’d had to learn how to pull it together—couldn’t be a zombie while dodging kids and operating a mobile death machine.
“Ready, bud,” I called back, wrapping up the piece of toast I’d made for him. Wheat, since I had to throw something healthy in there because his breakfast of choice included copious amounts of butter and cinnamon and sugar.
I would eat when I got back home.
Or maybe I’d pass out in my bed until my alarm went and I had to be coherent for the school pickup line.
God, I loved my bed.
I wanted to crawl between the blankets, to sleep for a hundred years.
Either that or for the six hours Ethan was at school.
My son’s pounding feet grew closer, and he skidded around the corner into the kitchen, hair mussed, shirt on backward (and swear to God, the kid had a fifty-fifty shot at getting it on correctly, but he chose the wrong fifty percent every single time). Ethan grabbed the toast, immediately peeled away the paper towel and took a huge bite, his next words muffled. “Why aren’t you wearing your school shirt?”
I was in sweats and a hoodie, no bra. My feet were crammed into my ugly but supremely comfortable UGG knockoff boots. What I wasn’t in was Ethan’s school shirt—which was a whole different brand of ugly and reserved solely for volunteers—an orangey tie-dyed tee that was emblazoned with a dragon and absolutely dwarfed my frame.
“It’s Reading Day, remember?”
Oh, fuck.
It was Reading Day—or, at least, the day I helped out wrangling kindergarteners through some grade-level books to improve their reading skills.
Which basically meant that it was Torture Day.
I didn’t mind being in the classroom (minus the fact that it was early), but kids—mine, those in the class—were exhausting and I always left after my time sweaty and exhausted, my mind throbbing.
“Right,” I said, thinking quick. “You grab your backpack and hop in the car. I forgot I needed my shirt.”
Making sure Ethan actually did snag his bag on the way out to the car, I zipped down the hall, ripped off the hoodie, wrestled my boobs—too big, too annoying, too much always in the way—into a sports bra and then grabbed the shirt and yanked it over my head.
Thank fuck I’d done laundry yesterday and didn’t have to look for it.
I’d known exactly where it was.
Boots swapped for sneakers, so I didn’t sweat my feet off.
A zip-up hoodie covering my torso. My purse from the table in the hall.
The front door locked and my ass in the driver’s seat.
Christ. I was already sweating, which was bad enough.
But what was worse?
My bed was going to have to wait.
“Julie?”
I looked up from the stack of books I was organizing by reading level, meeting the gaze of Ethan’s teacher.
His expression was serious, and immediately my stomach clenched.
I was a young mom. I’d been judged for it far too often.
Serious expressions from people in authority often meant that I was fucking up.
