CHAPTER 2
“N eed any help?” Gwen asked her.
“No, we’re okay. They’re just being annoying,” Elisa replied of her own children. “I thought we were done with the terrible twos. How did no one tell me there are also annoying eighteens?”
Gwen laughed and reached for her purse that she’d left on the table by the door.
“I’m the cool aunt. Want me to talk some sense into them?”
“No, they need to talk some sense into themselves. I’m trying the whole thing where I let them build their own character and act like adults, despite the fact that I want them to stop being little assholes.”
Gwen smiled at her and kissed her cheek.
“I’ll see you later, then?”
“Yeah. And thanks for lunch,” Elisa replied.
She saw her ex-sister-in-law out of the house, closed the door behind her, and sighed.
She was lucky that she still had Gwen after the divorce.
She’d lost most of her other friends when she and her now ex-husband had separated.
They had mostly been his friends anyway, but it had still hurt, and she had lost the rest of them when she had moved her and the kids to New Orleans.
The kids had been seventeen at the start of the divorce process, and she had gotten full custody.
Elisa hadn’t wanted to move them toward the end of their senior year, so she had stayed in the guest house behind her now-old home and let them graduate with their friends while she worked to prepare for their future.
She had bought the house in New Orleans and had made near-daily trips for months to get things set up but also to just get some time away.
Yes, her ex-husband was a very successful doctor with his own practice, and he worked at least ten hours a day, if not longer, so he wasn’t around the house, but it still felt strange to Elisa to be in the old home she had shared with him for nearly twenty years without being his wife anymore.
The guest house was a full apartment, so she hadn’t needed to go in the main house often, but since her kids lived there, she’d found herself cooking dinner for the three of them, and sometimes, even all four of them as if nothing had changed and she were still married to their father.
He had gotten a little used to it as well, but on top of him clearly liking having his wife back, at least in some ways, he’d decided to start dating as well.
Apparently unable to wait just the couple of months before the kids were out of high school and his ex-wife was ostensibly out of his life forever since the kids were eighteen, he’d started going on dates and making it very clear where he was going each night.
“I’m picking up Samantha for our date,” he’d say after grabbing his keys by the door.
He had always made sure to emphasize the word date , too, and he had always dressed up for those dates.
He would wear a suit and one of his nicer ties with his even nicer shoes.
Elisa couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a date night at all, but when they had actually made a night of it the once a year it had occurred, he’d been in jeans and a sweater, claiming he had to dress up all day every day and needed a casual night out.
She’d understood and hadn’t cared, but the difference in him since they had separated had been easy to spot.
She had been a little jealous, of course, but not because he’d been going on dates with beautiful women or that he’d even brought a couple of them over to the house, noting that the kids were old enough to understand that their parents were moving on.
She’d disagreed on that point. They might be eighteen, but she wasn’t sure that there was an age where any kid would be okay with their father bringing other women home while their mother was making breakfast for them.
She wasn’t jealous of the other women. She knew how her husband was in the bedroom, and there wasn’t much for her to be jealous of.
She supposed that might have been more because of her than him, though, and maybe these other women would enjoy his disinterest in any kind of foreplay, his insistence that he needed the stress release of jerking off in the shower every morning and grunting her out of her slumber as he did, and the five or so minutes the sex actually lasted.
Interestingly enough, he’d not been okay with her purchasing a vibrator to help her own body relieve some tension.
The five minutes it took him to finish never got Elisa to her own orgasm.
She wasn’t sure she had ever had one with him in the whole two decades of their relationship, not even the first few times when things had been new and were supposed to be exciting.
Of course, that newness had evaporated the moment the stick had turned blue, and she’d discovered she was pregnant.
Elisa wasn’t jealous of the women for being with him.
She was jealous that he was able to start over, which had been her dream all along.
She’d been the one to suggest the separation and push for it to be legal because she had planned to start dating as well.
She’d been the one to then send him the divorce papers because she hadn’t been able to wait anymore.
She’d needed to be done and out of her marriage, out of that house, and somewhere new.
At thirty-eight, she’d been finally ready to really start her life, but then, she’d thought of the kids and their school and how she would have to wait because no matter how unhappy she had been, Elisa would always put her children first.
“Mom, I don’t understand. Why can’t I get the bigger mini fridge and the bigger TV for my dorm?” Archie asked her when she walked back into the kitchen.
“Because we’ve already bought you a mini fridge, and you’re taking the TV from your room. It’s big enough for a tiny dorm room, Arch,” she replied, using one of her son’s many nicknames.
“Adele’s TV is bigger,” he argued, pointing at his twin sister.
“I bought it myself. I had a job, and I used some of my money to buy things I wanted for my room,” Adele stated.
Ever the older sibling, Adele then picked her plate up and carried it to the kitchen sink. Elisa wasn’t sure if it was because Adele was the older twin or because girls matured faster than boys, but she’d always been the more responsible of her children.
“I had soccer,” Archie retorted.
“I had tennis and two academic clubs. Plus, I was the salutatorian,” Adele said.
“Just couldn’t get that point-two you needed to be the valedictorian, could you?” he teased.
“I’m sorry; weren’t you ranked, like, in the hundreds?” Adele argued further. “And your TV is fine. Any bigger, and you wouldn’t have room for it.”
“I want to play video games on it. How can I be on my bed and play on a TV that’s so small?”
“You could consider studying,” Adele suggested.
Elisa laughed at the impossibility of that as she sat down in her chair.
“Yeah, right,” he replied. “Mom, come on.”
“Honey, we got you the fridge already, and you have a TV. I’m not getting you another one or returning that fridge. You have a roommate. What’s he bringing?”
“What will I watch in my room when I come home?” he asked. “I mean, when I come here.”
Elisa tried her best to hide the disappointment in him calling this new house here instead of their home, but he was right: it wasn’t much of a home just yet.
She’d taken months to get the place in order, and once the kids had been out of school, she had driven them here, and they spent the weekends with their father.
Neither of the twins had been particularly happy about that, but they hadn’t turned eighteen until July, so they had been stuck with her as part of the custody agreement.
“Mom, I won’t have a TV in my room here,” he added when she didn’t say anything.
“Ask your roommate to bring the TV so you can keep yours here,” she suggested. “I’m not buying you another TV, Arch. Don’t you watch stuff on your phone anyway?”
“AJ, just get a job and buy one yourself. They’re not that expensive. Like, one paycheck, and you’d have a bright and shiny new TV for your dorm,” Adele suggested.
“I leave soon,” he said.
“Did you miss the part where I said work for, like, one paycheck or something? That’s plenty of money for a TV and a new fridge if that’s all you care about,” Adele replied and walked out of the kitchen. “You’re so annoying. How are we even related?”
Elisa had to laugh at that. Adele had been born seven minutes before her brother, but in maturity, it felt like they were seven years apart.
Adele understood that her mother couldn’t afford to buy her all the things she wanted for her dorm, and she had been working since she was sixteen and legally could.
Archie Junior had played sports and had earned himself a scholarship to play at a Division-II school.
It wasn’t a top Division-I school, and he would likely never go pro, but the school he would be going to was a good one, so she hoped he’d excel academically and figure out what he wanted to do with his life when soccer was over.
Adele had gotten an academic scholarship to a great school, and for the first time in their lives, they were about to be separated.
Also for the first time in their lives, their mother wasn’t buying them all the things they were asking for because most of the money from the divorce settlement had gone into the purchase of the house and the furniture.
The rest was to keep them afloat until she found a job.
Archie Senior was paying her alimony but no child support now that the kids had turned eighteen.
He was , however, paying for their room and board at school, which wasn’t covered by their scholarships, and for their books and other expenses since the tuition was covered by their scholarships.
Elisa had opted for that instead of more money for her each month.