So. Long(36)

Holy fucking—oh shit. No.

I grip the hair at my temples, growling.

I turn and glare at Chloe, looking all innocent and shit, lying in the doorway. “I should make a hat out of you, you little turd.”

Several pages of the blood, sweat, and tears that I’ve wrung out of my blocked-up creative center are gone. Simply gone. Covered over by Chloe the Terrorist.

I take a deep breath. And another. And a third, trying to calm myself.

It’s okay. It has to be okay. I’ll SAVE AS a new document, and then recover the other one. Surely, it auto-saved at some point.

“Please, God, let it have auto-saved. Please!”

Mom pokes her head around the doorframe. “Everything all right in here?”

I fight the bitter words I want to spit at the universe.

Mom doesn’t deserve that. This isn’t her fault. “The cat got on my laptop. She erased some of my latest book. I’ll have to recover the document. But it’s okay. I’ll deal with it.”

Mom leans against the wall, just inside the room. “You should think about locking her out. She’s a kitten. She doesn’t know any better.”

I let out a sigh. “I usually do lock her out of my office, but the doorbell rang, and I—I forgot.”

Mom picks up Chloe and kisses the top of her head. “Poor kitty, you didn’t mean to mess up anything, did you?”

The woman is a traitor. “You hate me, don’t you?”

“Of course I don’t hate you.” Mom gives a little smile. “I love you. You know that.”

I rub the ache developing between my eyebrows.

She takes a step further into my office. “You’ll have to be more careful—”

I hold up one hand to stop her from sitting. “Mom, I need to get busy.”

“Oh, of course. I’ll go make us some lunch. I brought greens and black-eyed peas.” She sing-songs that last part—the part that makes my insides wither like a tree doused in diesel.

“None for me, thanks.”

Mom purses her lips. “You need to eat. I’ll fix you a plate.”

“Really, I’m not hungry.” I’m ravenous, but I’m not eating greens or peas. Years of being force fed rabbit food and legumes ruined me for anything not drenched in ranch dressing.

“Your body needs sustenance. All day, you sit in here typing on that computer. You’re going to waste away.”

She turns toward the kitchen.

“But, Mom, you know I don’t like”—I slump in my chair, my voice trailing off—“black-eyed peas or greens.”

She’s humming her way down the hall and doesn’t even care that she wants to feed me my most despised foods.

After only three more interruptions from Mom, for the death lunch, to show her where I keep the laundry soap, and to help her carry in the other six bags of clothes and toys she brought for Clarissa, plus two and a half hours of searches and opening and closing documents, I admit defeat.

I’m woefully under-educated in all things technical and clerical.

I can’t find it. It’s not here. The only thing I have left of the first quarter of my novel is what’s left after the Chloe-tastrophe and a copy of it the way I saved it before she decided my keyboard looked like a hammock.

I drop my forehead to my desk.

God, don’t you love me anymore?

How am I ever going to make rent? Those words took so much to get onto the screen.

Chloe weaves between my feet as I trip my way into the living room.

Mom looks up from her magazine. “Oh, good. You’re done. I didn’t want to bother you.”

Like she’s not bothered me at all today?

Finally, I manage to talk her into heading home before the traffic gets too heavy.

She loads her dishes of left over dirt beads and weeds—I mean, beans and greens—into the car. “All right then, I guess I’ll be on my way. You’ll call when Clarissa is home, right?”

I give a non-committal grunt and try to sidestep Mom’s hug.

“Oh, stop it. Give your mother a hug. You might never see me again.”

If only…

I suck in a deep breath as she takes hold of me like a polar bear hugs a seal it particularly hates.

I wheeze one word. “Mom?”

She doesn’t loosen her death grip. Instead, she squeezes tighter. “Oh, I just love you.”

I clamp my cheeks together, but there’s no helping it. A fog horn rips out of my ass. It bounces off the houses as it echoes down the street. It’s surprising a blinding light doesn’t shoot out of my forehead.

Mom lets go of me and covers her face. “Kelsey Marie!”

“Well, it’s your fault. You’re the one who thinks a hug is a test of strength and endurance.”