Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
They were.
Chapter 4
I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but I turned myself around.
-Bumper Sticker
Tally
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I shook my head. “No way in hell. Y’all, we have a freakin’ test tomorrow. We literally cannot do this.”
“Come on,” Hadley pulled my arm. “Go get it and let’s go. It’ll be fun.”
Those words were how I ended up having a vibrator race.
I shook my head in refusal. “No. Just no.”
The girls, my closest friends, grinned.
“I really can’t. I asked my parents to watch Tallulah so I could study for this test. I have to utilize…” Hadley placed her hand over my mouth and shook her head.
“No,” she glared. “I already had this discussion with you. You pay for daycare, and they don’t mind taking her there. They also don’t mind watching her on the days you have tests, or to work on the weekend.”
I glared right back at her.
“I don’t feel like this is a productive use of my time. If I wasn’t going to study, I’d just have Tallulah with me,” I growled at her, yanking my hand from hers.
Elba, seeing that this was going to be another knockdown, drag out fight between us, backed away and took a seat on my front porch steps, turning her back to us.
“Seriously,” Hadley crossed her arms. “You’ve been studying since Doc Bones’ class. There’s absolutely no reason that you can’t just come with us for an hour.”
She had a point. I’d been studying for about seven hours now.
But I wasn’t like her.
I couldn’t scan over the work once, and then have it all down for the test.
I had to actually work at it. Study the materials. Read the goddamn chapter.
She was one of those students who could scan the notes before class and then take the test, no problem.
And it made me want to cunt punch her.
She acted like this was all a joke, and it wasn’t.
I had thirty thousand dollars in freakin’ student loans to pay off once I was done. I couldn’t fuck around here. If I didn’t graduate, I was screwed, and not in a good way.
“One hour,” I said. “And I’m taking my notecards.”
Everyone cheered, and I shook my head and slunk back inside, my white socked feet shifting against the carpet as I moved.
“Wear something nice,” she ordered.
I flipped her off, causing her to laugh.
I didn’t own anything nice.
Why?
Because I was overweight.
BT, or before Tallulah, I was skinny. I fit into size six jeans, and could squeeze my breasts into a small tank top.
Now I was in a size fourteen pants, and I could barely fit my breasts into a size large.
My boobs had grown from a 34B to a 36D.
And all of my tops were now maternity tops because Tallulah nursed just as often as she ate solid foods.
Sure, she likely could’ve stopped nursing by now, but she was so unhealthy that I felt like I needed to give her every opportunity to beef up her immune system.
She had asthma and had been hospitalized for it four times during her short eight months of life. She was always on antibiotics for this sickness or that, and there was never a day that went by that I didn’t wonder if there wasn’t something more serious going on with her than what her doctors had found.
So I did everything I could do to make sure she had the best lot in life, and if that meant that I breastfed the child until she was seven, then so be it…though I hoped to God I didn’t have to. I was in a love-hate relationship with my breast pump already.
“Don’t forget it!” Hadley screamed.
I turned the corner of the hallway and headed to my room.
My house was a two-bedroom cottage on the backside of my parents’ property. It was more what you would call a tiny house minus the wheels, but I’d bought it all on my own, and it was mine.
There was a small living area that tied straight into the kitchen. A loft above the kitchen that I put all my school work in so Tallulah wouldn’t be tempted to mark on any paperwork that I had to turn in for clinicals or tear into my books—something I’d learned the hard way.
My bedroom and Tallulah’s bedroom had actually been one large one, but I’d had them split the large space with a wall, and now each of us had a smaller bedroom that would serve our purposes very nicely for now.
My dad loved it the moment he saw it, and mentioned to my mother that he wouldn’t mind going tiny, too. Apparently, living in a big, empty five bedroom, five thousand square foot house wasn’t something he wanted to do anymore. That, or clean it.
My brother, sister, and I had the best years of our lives in that house, and I loved it more than anything.