Page 1 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
Chapter 1
“Damn you, Nicholas Irving,” I snarl, heaving at the stuck window. “You lazy, good for nothing, cheating bastard.”
After one last futile heave, I let go of the window and climb down from the kitchen counter where I’d been perched in my effort to get better leverage. The window over my sink was stuck, and I wanted the damn thing open. It’s ninety-five degrees outside, with almost a hundred percent humidity, and there’s no central A/C in the house. Not even a window unit. The summers are so hot here that I’d wanted to at least get a window unit for our bedroom, but Nicholas had refused, insisting he’d spring for central A/C this summer. I’d begged him all winter and spring, to no avail. Well…now it’s August, one of the hottest summers on record, and there’s no central A/C, and no window unit, and the house is like a blast furnace.
To top it off, having survived three brutal months of divorce proceedings, I’m now the ex Mrs. Nicholas Irving. The divorce was finalized about a month ago. And the bastard—the bastard—had spent the six months preceding the divorce helping himself to the money in our joint savings account. Yeah, our joint account, the one I’ve been dumping every penny of my salary into for years, to afford the remodel of this cheap-ass, broken-down, money pit of a fixer-upper he’d wanted to buy. Now, the bank account is all but empty. Zero. He’d spent it all. Our money. My money—my forty to sixty hours a week at Dr. Bishara’s practice, six to seven days a week, no vacations, not even a weekend into the city—gone.
Turns out I’m too trusting, and maybe too naive, and perhaps a little bit stupid. My paychecks were on auto-deposit, and I never bothered to check the account, trusting that my little nest egg was growing each month. I intentionally didn’t look at it so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend it on things like wine, or new scrubs, or new shoes. Or A/C. Or a working dishwasher. Or repairs for my broke-ass, piece-of-shit car.
No, I trusted my husband. “We’re saving for the remodel,” he said. “We’ll start this summer,” he said.
Nope.
I was saving—he was helping himself. While I was working my ass off to pay for the remodel, he was tapping the ass of the local science teacher, and then he moved on to his secretary—and spending our money on presents and dinners and wine.
Now I’m flat broke, stuck with a mortgage I can barely afford on a house with no A/C, a stuck window, no dishwasher, and at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of other repairs I can’t afford and can’t do myself.
I stare hard at the window, cursing it silently, willing it to budge. Even an inch! One inch, just enough to get the tiniest bit of air circulation in here, that’s it. I’ve got all the other windows open—all of them that will open, at least—and six box fans running, but this house has zero airflow because it’s ninety years old. Open-plan design was not a design concept in the early 1900s.
All I want, right now, is to open this damn kitchen window so I can feel a little bit of air stirring in the kitchen while I wash this sink full of dishes. That’s it really. One open window. Not so much to ask, is it?
Apparently it is. I’ve pounded on it, I’ve checked the lock, I’ve even gone around outside with a stepladder to see if it’s nailed shut, but I can’t see any reason it won’t open. It’s just stuck, and I’m going crazy.
To top it off, today was a day from hell.
On the way to work, three songs into my favorite playlist, my car audio died. Just…dead. No AM, no FM, obviously no XM, not even my aux cord would work.
Then, about ten minutes after clocking into work, with a waiting room overflowing with patients, the computer system crashed. The whole system— throughout the whole office. Computers, iPads, phones, everything—kaput. Dead. All our appointments, patient notes and records, prescriptions, everything, gone. Yeah, we had the paper records obviously, but that adds about ten to fifteen minutes per patient. And we were slammed with appointments from open to close, plus all our walk-in slots were triple-booked. The waiting room was a zoo from the moment we unlocked the doors and it never slowed down. And, oh yeah, Jackie called in sick; leaving me to pull double duty on the busiest day I can remember.
And then, when work was finally over, I dropped my phone on the way to my car, shattering the screen.
Did I mention that my car is twenty years old—the same car I bought thirdhand for five grand the summer before my freshman year of college? It was a piece of shit then, and that was fifteen years ago. The A/C is broken, and has been for years. The windshield wipers spazz out randomly, switching from low to high gear by themselves, whether or not it is raining. The transmission sounds like a garbage truck, the muffler has a hole in it and there’s a spiderweb crack in the windshield which is gradually getting larger.
