Page 66 of Between Now and Forever
Is she serious?
“It was a business to her,” Della says. “She used her body as a tool, just like a CEO uses his brain.”
“Is that something you just grew up knowing?”
“Until I was eighteen, I thought she was a traveling nurse.” She laughs. “I found out when a guy I was dating in college happened to go to her club and saw her. Awkward conversation. Dropped the boyfriend. But there was this ... missing piece between Mom and me that fell into place.”
I take a drink and then set my glass on the table. “Is that why you’re so confident? Is that why you have such a ... free, I guess, way about you? Because you really don’t seem to care what anyone thinks.”
“I don’t care.” She shrugs. “My confidence comes from being raised with a very body-positive mindset. It was all presented at an age-appropriate level, of course. Just because she was a stripper doesn’t mean she was a bad mom or negligent.”
“Of course not.”
“In a way, she was a better parent. She taught me to be proud of myself. To take care of myself. I remember her telling me from a young age that I was in charge of my body. I grew up not being ashamed of it.” She takes a drink. “What about you? What was your life like growing up?”
The alcohol heats my skin, and I welcome the warm, relaxing sensation that eats away my stress—if only for a while.
“I was raised here in Alden, remember?” I swirl the liquid around my glass. “There was an expectation of modesty. We didn’t talk about sex or things like that. My friends and I would secretly trade romance novels to try to learn what we could.”
“Ah, the perfect romance hero. That’s where you went wrong.”
“No, they exist. But finding one isn’t as easy as breaking down in the middle of a cornfield. They don’t pop up out of nowhere.”
She grins. “I’m sure they do exist. I’m just too jaded to want the perfect hero.”
“Why is that?”
She studies me for a long time, pausing to take a long drink. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
“I don’t tell people what I do for a living. Not because I’m ashamed,” she says. “Just because I don’t want to hear the judgment.”
“Okay . . .”
“I clean houses topless.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
She shrugs. “I have a roster of men—most of them business owners or men who travel to town regularly for golf or business meetings. And I clean their homes or wherever they happen to be ... topless.”
“In Alden?”
“No.I go to Cleveland or Cincinnati. I have a security guy who goes with me to make sure nothing goes wrong, and we run background checks. We have nondisclosure agreements. I don’t really even take new clients at this point, because my regulars treat me so well.”
I glance at her chest.I bet they do.
She sighs. “Look, Gabby, we only live once. Why not live life the way you want? Why be scared or tiptoe around it? Grab whatever it is that makes you happy and run while you can.” She snickers. “People can judge me while sitting at home in their miserable, boring lives while I take my money and head to Italy for a month in the summer and Germany for December.”
“Grab whatever it is that makes you happy and run while you can.”Her words ring through my brain on repeat.
“Excuse me for just a moment,” she says. “I’m going to go say hello to a friend.”
“Sure. Go. I’m fine.”
She slides out of the booth and sashays her way across the bar. As soon as she’s gone, I let out a long, hasty breath.
“Grab whatever it is that makes you happy and run while you can.”
It’s been a long time since I had the ability to think that way. And as much as I love the sentiment—and the freedom that comes with it—it’s not that easy. I’m a single mother. Yes, I can try and plan and want to integrate things into my life that make me happy. But at the end of the day, those plans are contingent upon how they impact the most important thing in my life: my children.
