Page 1 of Grin and Bear It

Chapter1

When I was a kid, adults seemed like gods. Angry, sad or happy ones maybe, but always authoritative, always in control. Back then, I felt like my whole childhood I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen so I could ascend to those same heady heights.

Problem is, it’s now ten years after I hit that magic number, and I’m still waiting.

I might be twenty-eight, but I don’t remember either of my parents starting the day like this.

“Fuck… fuck… fuck…”I panted, yanking on my dressing gown as I stumbled out of my bedroom.

“Morning.” Colleen, my flatmate, was standing at the breakfast bar, sipping a coffee. “Mary-Kate.” She pointed to one of my breasts as I closed the dressing gown, “Ashley. Lovely to see you again this morning.”

“Fuck…” I paused. “Did you name my tits after the Olsen twins?”

“I needed to come up with something.” Coll shot me a cat-like smile. “I see them that fucking often. Seems rude not to give them a name.”

“But the Olsen twins?” I looked down at my capacious bosom. “Not something like Ashley and Graham?” But before either of us could answer that, my alarm went off.

Again.

“Fuck!” I yelped, looking down at the time and leaping forward again, storming straight to the bathroom and slamming the door behind me.

“Hey, Elle—” Coll’s voice was muffled behind the door.

“Can’t talk!” I shot back over my shoulder as I reached into the shower stall to slap on the shower taps. I started to wrestle my dressing gown off again, the process somehow so much harder than putting it on. “I’m teaching first lesson and I’m late!”

Anything she might have had to say was drowned out by explosive sprays of water coming out of the shower head, the pipes rumbling threateningly, sounding just like my assistant principal each time I screamed into the teacher’s car park a bee’s dick before the bell went.

Something I could look forward to if I didn’t get a fucking move on.

I had several alarms set on my phone for the morning, reasoning that somehow this would be enough to get me up in time for work.

But it rarely worked.

Sleep was the only place where I could feel calm, warm, comfortable. I clung to sleep like Jack to that door inTitanic, desperately wanting to sleep my damn life away.

Even if my bank balance said I couldn’t.

This morning, I’d slept through one alarm, then I’d hit snooze on the next which had left me standing in the bathroom, panicking. I finally got the dressing gown off and dumped it on the floor. Stepping into the shower cubicle, I discovered that the Gods of Plumbing had decided to make their displeasure known. Although water came out of the shower head, it did so in fits and starts, just enough to wet me so I figured I’d at least be able to get a quick wash in before the water ran out totally. As this kept going, I grabbed my new bar of sweet-smelling organic soap from Lush, smoothing the bright yellow bar all over me. Trying to de-stress a little, I took in a deep breath, feeling refreshed by the bright lemon scent rather than just panicked. I grabbed my face washer and started scrubbing, still chasing the spray of water and trying to build up a lather.

Just as I was ready to rinse off, the shower head shook on its pipe, the rattling getting louder and louder, worse than I’d ever heard it. I looked up in horror, right as I finally realised what Coll had been trying to tell me.

“The shower head is busted!” she shouted.

I realised that as I watched the bloody thing pop off like a cork and went sailing through the air. My mouth fell open, right in time for water to come pouring out of the pipe unimpeded now, with the speed and vigour of an elephant dick facial. And to top it all off? The shower head bounced off my forehead, rewarding me with a blinding rush of pain to go with all that water. I spluttered, blinking from the rush of water in my eyes as much as in reaction to the pain. As my wits came back to me, I stepped away from the gushing pipe and turned the taps off, then turned around to survey the mess.

Now that I wasn’t blindly focused on getting to the shower, I noticed the towels strewn across the floor, obviously there to clean up the previous deluge. I’d added to the flood with my antics. I looked down at the puddle of water at my feet and saw that it was slowly turning pink. I realised why as a drop of blood slowly fell from the upper periphery of my vision to the water below. I slapped my hand on my forehead, then winced, as the pain flared in intensity.

“Shit!” Still holding my head, I stumbled over to the bathroom mirror, then gingerly moved my hand away. The cut wasn’t big but it was going to need a dressing or I wouldn’t be able to see to drive. Just what I needed. But then, before I could perform some hasty first aid, my phone blared out the alarm that was guaranteed to make me stop whatever shit I was doing and hightail it to the car. If it played while I was still in the house, I was going to have to floor it all the way to work. I’d used the Imperial Death March for this one to let me know that the time for procrastination was well and truly over and I just had to get my arse into the car or all would be lost. I looked down at my sodden, still half-soapy state in horror, then grabbed one of the towels and scrubbed myself as dry as I could before sprinting out the bathroom.

“I tried to tell you—” Coll started to say and I just nodded.

“Got it. I’ll get a plumber over tonight.”

How and with what money?I thought, but mentally I couldn’t spare the energy for that right now. I didn’t even bother shutting my bedroom door as I wrenched my wardrobe doors open and then started tossing clothes on the bed willy-nilly.

No clean jeans. None of my favourite tops were washed. There was a reason why I’d woken up extra late this morning: I’d stayed up last night, marking students’ essays until I’d passed out. “Fuck,” I hissed. “The kids’ essays.”

“I’ll get them; you get dressed,” Coll ordered. I had to bite my tongue as she swept all of my carefully sorted piles from my desk into a box, not bothering to order them by class. I wrenched my eyes away, picking up the pace again and grabbing a bra and undies. Then I had to face the next challenge of trying to work out what clothes were clean. The choice was between really bad and awful. But I was out of time to worry about what I looked like today.

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