2. Do This For Me
2
DO THIS FOR ME
“C ome on, Marco,” Charlotte said on Saturday morning. “You got me up early, you can go out and do your business.”
The mutt looked up at her as if she was crazy.
She was.
Crazy to get a puppy and think she could handle this with home ownership at the same time.
But if she was going to take this step to be fully independent, she needed a place of her own.
It’d help keep her grounded along with this pup.
She grabbed the leash and collar and hooked it on her puppy, then opened the back door and all but had to tug him onto the porch.
When the wind blew slightly, Marco turned to run back in, but she snatched him up and brought him down on the damp grass.
Mid-April was beautiful.
There was no congestion of people, cars, noises or dickhead ex-boyfriends.
Nothing could be better in her mind.
“Let’s go, little guy. You’ll feel better with an empty belly and bladder, then we can fill it back up.”
The thought of that made her giggle.
When was the last time she felt like she could giggle?
Maybe never.
The past eight months were tough but the best of her life.
She wouldn’t change it for anything.
She walked around the tiny little yard that was now hers to let her puppy do his business.
There was a quaint fence marking off her property from the one in the back, but it didn’t extend the whole property and she could probably jump it if she wanted to. Pretty but not functional.
She couldn’t see the house all that land belonged to, but the driveway went right down to the water.
Not that she had any water view. There were too many trees blocking the view further away. Even if she had a second story to her house, she still didn’t think she’d see it.
Maybe in the winter when the trees were bare, she’d get a glimpse.
The brief glance she got of her new neighbor last night didn’t tell her much other than it was a man in a suit driving an SUV.
Not that it mattered to her.
She was over men.
Just her and Marco now.
“Are you all done doing your business?” she asked as her pup was tugging her to go back in the house, picking his paws up as if there was goo on the bottom of them.
She squatted down to check. The last thing she needed was a stinky mess on her new hardwood floors.
Nope, just dampness from the dew.
She picked Marco up and he bathed her face with kisses.
Oh, to be appreciated. This was what life was all about.
Marco and she had their breakfast. She rolled a ball around the floors, but her ten-week-old puppy wasn’t quite sure what to do with it so she ended up playing fetch by herself.
Two hours later, her phone was ringing, so she put down the color swatches that she was trying to decide on for her office.
She grabbed her phone off the counter and saw her sister, Amanda, calling.
“Hi,” she said. “Please don’t tell me you’re in labor.”
“No,” Amanda said. “Another month, but everything is good. I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Just wanted to fill you in.”
“I’m so excited. I can’t wait to meet baby Harper. Is Liam getting excited?”
“He’s not quite sure how to react just yet,” Amanda said.
“Bet Drew is excited though,” she said of her older sister’s husband, Drew Bond.
If anyone had told her years ago she’d rekindle a horrible sibling relationship and be close to best friends with her sister, she’d have laughed them out of the room.
But it happened.
And the closer she got to her sister, the more she saw what a real family looked like.
What love was meant to be.
Something she’d been searching for and couldn’t seem to find.
“Over the moon,” Amanda said.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said. “I really am.”
“I know you are,” Amanda said. “I wish you could find what you were looking for too.”
“I will, someday,” she said. “But you know what I said. I’m not looking. I’m done. I can’t go through it again. Either my prince will land in my lap, or I’ll end up being a great auntie.”
“You are a wonderful auntie,” Amanda said. “How is the house setup going? I’m so proud of you for buying your own place.”
“I needed to do this for me.”
Landon had tried to get her fired from her job and all it did was backfire on him and she ended up with a promotion once they found out she’d left him. Should have done that sooner.
“You absolutely did,” Amanda said. “Have you got everything all set up?”
“Getting there,” she said. “The movers got everything in place for me and now I’m looking at color swatches for my office. I’ll tackle that first. I love that I’m working from home and don’t need to go into the City more than a few times a month. I want to make this a nice calming place for me to be.”
“Things are coming together for you,” Amanda said. “You have to look at the positives.”
“All I’m focusing on are the positives,” she said. “That’s my new motto. Men can go shove it. Except for Marco.”
“Marco?” Amanda asked. “Who is that?”
“My new puppy.”
“You got a dog,” Amanda said, laughing. “You always did want one.”
“And Mom said no way. They were dirty and took too much care. But now that I’ve got my own place, I’m doing things my way.”
“Good for you,” Amanda said.
Charlotte smiled and wondered how she’d gone so long in life not having this with her sister.
Because she’d listened to her mother and was fearful of having the things said to her sister done to her.
She did all the right things and followed the rules, and in the end, she was in the same situation with her family as Amanda.
No relationship with her parents at all and couldn’t have been more ecstatic over it.
Sometimes toxic crap just had to be eliminated from your life and that was one of the things she had to bring to the dump.
“Yes,” she said. “Good for me.”
Amanda laughed on the other end. “Do you think you’ll get lonely there? You’ve always liked to be around people and go to events and parties.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope I don’t, but it could happen. The truth is, whatever I’ve been doing in life hasn’t been working. I’m thirty-three years old and I need to break out of the box of the familiar. Small town living seemed to work for you. Maybe it will for me too.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I came to Amore Island just wanting to start fresh. I didn’t know it’d be the place I’d call home for the rest of my life.”
“You struck gold. I keep digging up coal. I’ve put my shovel away for now.”
“You’re so much funnier than I remember,” Amanda said.
“I don’t want to say I feel different, but I do. Maybe I’ve been pretending for years and I’m not anymore.”
“As long as you’re happy that is all I care about,” Amanda said.
“I really am.”
“I wish you could have come for Easter. I hate that you’re alone tomorrow.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “It will give me time to work on the house.”
Last year she was with Landon for Easter and they went to some fancy brunch that took him months to get reservations for. He’d bragged about it the entire time. The waitstaff was stuffy, Landon tried to throw his name and weight around, and the tiny fancy portions of food left her starving.
This was much better in her eyes. She’d make herself something and maybe slip a little to her puppy.
“I know,” Amanda said. “I’ve spent a lot of holidays alone, but never you. You’ve always been the one to be with someone. I do worry about you.”
“Don’t worry. This is good for me. I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places. And now I’m quoting songs. Next, I’ll get a few cats to go with Marco and call it a day.”
First thing that was wrong, was the fact all her boyfriends tended to be significantly older than her. Not by choice. It seemed to fall that way for some reason. Could be because of the attention they bestowed on her she’d been craving in her life.
But now, it was going to be the first flag she would spray paint red.
Second was a man with money.
No, thank you. All it’d done was make her feel like a second-class citizen to be treated as if she was nothing more than a pretty little thing on their arm. One that could hold intelligent conversations, throw a great dinner party and host all sorts of other events if needed.
Her degree in marketing and then her MBA came in handy for those things.
What she wanted to do was put it to use in her career, not just as part of her partner’s grand plans.
“And now you’ll just be looking for piles of dog poop,” Amanda said.
She cringed. “Yeah, not my favorite thing to do. I wasn’t thinking it through that I’d have to pick that up, but if I don’t do it daily, I step in it.”
Amanda was almost roaring with laughter. “Good God. All I can see is Mom’s face if she knew that.”
She laughed again, almost as hard as Amanda. “If you keep it up you’re going to cause your water to break.”
“I miss this, Charlotte. I wish we’d had this for longer than we have, but I’m glad we’ve got it now.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“And I hope you find everything you are looking for in life,” Amanda said.
“Right now, I’m only looking at paint samples. That’s good enough for me.”