5. Bring The Worst
5
brING THE WORST
“ Y ou can’t avoid my office forever,” Raina said to her two weeks later.
“I’m not,” Tori said, stabbing her fork into her salad.
Raina had been out at a client meeting and picked up food and stopped into Tori’s office for their weekly lunch.
Last week the only two days Tori could have met for lunch, Raina couldn’t, so they skipped a week through no fault on either of their parts. It was just something that happened.
If Tori was somewhat thankful she didn’t have to chance seeing Hyde again, she didn’t say. Nor did she try to analyze why she didn’t want to see him.
Raina had told her that Hyde showed up in her office right away, but she’d told her best friend not to tell her more. She wanted to form her own opinion if and when she talked to him again.
She was leaning toward not talking to him again since he appeared to bring the worst out of her.
She hadn’t thought anyone had that ability. Not even her mother.
“Could have fooled me,” Raina said. “You hate eating here because you complain your office is too small.”
She had a small office, and to eat lunch together, they had to crowd around her desk. Raina had a table in her office where she was often laying out blueprints and they could sit there comfortably.
“You were out and this was on your way,” she said, grinning. No reason to argue about this too much. Raina would just call her out on it.
“What’s going on?” Raina asked. “You said you’d take care of it if Hyde came to me. Normally that means you tackle it head-on.”
“I know,” she said. “I just hate how he brings this ugly side out of me. Even though I feel I was justified in my responses to him.”
“Completely,” Raina agreed, nodding her head.
“I still didn’t like doing it. Or like feeling as I had. My mother doesn’t even make me say those things.”
“Maybe you should be that way with your mother,” Raina said, grinning. “You’d feel better after.”
“She wouldn’t though,” she said. “And then it’s more of a headache for me again.”
“What’s going on now? You never said.”
“The same old same old. She hates her apartment and wants to leave, but it’s so hard to keep starting over. And she wants to retire but doesn’t have enough money to do that.”
“How old is your mother again?” Raina asked.
“She’s fifty-nine. She’s moved around so much and never put money away. If she did and got the payout, she didn’t reinvest and took a hit on taxes. I’m not sure what she wants from me. I’m doing well, but it’s not like I can go buy a house or anything and that is my next goal.”
“You’ll get it soon,” Raina said. “I know you. You probably are ready but just think you’re not.”
Story of her life. Plan for everything and then have more than she needs before she actually pulls the trigger.
Maybe it was the fact she spent so much of her life caring for others and helping them dig their way out of holes that she never wanted to get into one herself.
“Probably,” she said. “But it never hurts to put more away.”
“So your mother wants you to move back to Florida and buy a house there so she can live with you and not work?” Raina asked.
Tori put her finger to her nose to say right on. “I’m not moving back there. I never asked her to move there when I did after college. That was her choice because she thought it’d be fun to live there.”
Tori went where she found a job. The weather was nice and she had another friend there and they roomed together.
Her mother, who was good at thinking nothing through, quit her job and relocated. They lived together for a short period of time and Tori moved out, then a few years later moved to Durham when she reconnected with Raina.
It was hard to start over with her job and she took the first one she got. She liked it, but it wasn’t for her and then moved to the one she was in now.
“It’s not so much fun with you gone, I’m sure she’s thinking,” Raina said. “But you’ve been here a few years now.”
“I know,” she said. “My mother is good at bringing up the past. If it’s not a job that she is changing then it’s men. A few months ago she called crying that the power was shut off on her and she didn’t know why.”
“Did she not pay the bill?” Raina asked.
“Nope. She said she never got it, but I doubt that. Even if one month was lost in the mail, they don’t shut the power off right away. You get a lot of notices. I know. I’ve helped enough clients through those things.”
“What happened?”
“She clicked on something to have the bill electronically delivered to her and forgot she did that. So when it came, she thought it was spam. It never occurred to her after a few months that she hadn’t paid the bill. I can see maybe one month, but not three. She called me before she called them.”
Raina shook her head. “I hope she had the money to turn it back on.”
“She said she didn’t, but I wasn’t giving it to her. It’s not my problem if she has enough money to live and if she had extra for a few months and chose to spend it on stupid crap rather than realize she hadn’t paid a utility bill. I helped her set up a payment plan and now the payment comes out automatically each month. She has to balance that she has the cash, but if she doesn’t, then she bounces checks.”
“You’d know if she has,” Raina said.
“And she has,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve gotten calls about that too. I’m not sure what more I can do for her. I’ve got it set up so most of her bills come out automatically. Car payment, insurance, utilities. She makes enough if she budgets and she doesn’t. She’s fifty-nine going on fifteen at times when it comes to life decisions.”
Which just made her think of Hyde again and how he acted immature around her too.
Unless he was truly a dick.
But Raina insisted he wasn’t like that any more than she was the way she acted around Hyde.
“She always has you to fall back on,” Raina said. “Or she thinks she does.”
“She normally has some guy in her life helping out but doesn’t right now. So she’s struggling there emotionally too. It’s draining.”
Her mother liked someone else to take care of her. When Tori’s father left when she was a young kid, her mother spiraled out of control and things just fell apart at home.
No ten-year-old wanted to be the one to keep reminding their mother to get groceries or put gas in the car, when holidays and school events were coming up.
But she’d stepped up at an early age and got her mother on track and into a good routine.
Life was simpler when they followed the plan.
Which was how she chose to live her life now to not have any surprises.
Yet she was full of them the past few weeks it seemed.
“I’m sure she’ll find someone else,” Raina said, smirking.
“She’s not fussy when it comes to those things.”
“Unlike you,” Raina said, laughing. “I think you’re fussy with men because of your mother.”
She shrugged. “Probably. I think I’ve kind of given up trying at times too. I wasn’t lucky enough to have someone come to my defense at a work party.”
Raina smiled. “It was more than that and you know it.”
Cody had just moved to town and was invited to the Fierce New Year’s Eve party where he’d witnessed a coworker crowding Raina’s space and came over to save her.
Slowly Cody wore Raina down...with the help of the Fierces.
She’d heard that story more than she cared to admit.
Imagine grown adults interfering and setting up other grown adults for love.
No, thank you. Even if it was working out for everyone so far.
She’d rather pave her own way in life than let someone else plan it out.
It was working for her so far.
Or was it?