to get myself a hotel room somewhere quiet, I had to settle for the family vacation home. With its awful décor and the fact that it was the worst time of year to visit when you wanted to be alone.
"You look tired, Gigi," Penny said, clucking her tongue.
"I am," I admitted. I wouldn't lie, I wanted a little sympathy. I had been running myself ragged for months. It was thankless work. And I was feeling drained and needy.
"Well, you will be able to unwind here," she said, rising from her rocking chair, reaching for her oversized paisley bag. "Just let me know when you head out. I will come back to keep an eye on things. And if you need anything while you're here, you know where to find me."
"Thank you, Penny," I said, watching as she made her way to the door, inwardly wishing she would have stayed around, would have shared a cup of tea with me.
I didn't mind being alone. I was used to it. But it would have been nice to have someone with me for a little while, so I didn't wallow too much.
But if she was leaving, instead of tea, I was going to have a stiff drink.
With that in mind, I made my way into the small kitchen, dominated by truly heinous green backsplashes and mismatching wooden doors on the cabinets which almost—but not quite—distracted you from the fact that the linoleum on the floor had been only partially replaced a decade or so before, leaving half of it dingy and faded, and half of it bright and new. All of it, however, was ugly, with its faux parquet that fooled exactly nobody.
We didn't keep much in the pantry at this house, seeing as we never knew how often we would be able to visit. When I opened the door, I found a few cans of tomato soup, sugar in an airtight container, beans, and what I was after. An entire shelf of hard liquor that, luckily, never went bad.
I reached for the whiskey, twisting off the top, and drinking straight from the bottle. It was fine. I was planning on drinking every drop of it before I packed up and headed back to the city bright and early on Monday morning.
I drank a solid two fingers' worth standing right there in the center of the kitchen before making my way back out onto the front screened porch, tossing one of the musty cushions to the floor, and sitting down directly on the wicker. Propping my feet up on the coffee table,I watched the crowds of people making their way down the street toward the beach with their rainbow umbrellas and their folding beach chairs, their towels and swimmies and blow-up pools for babies who can't go in the ocean.
I was still there when they returned a half an hour shy of dinnertime, parents' shoulders drooping, faces flushed, children grumbling, babies whining, everyone probably itchy from the sand and starving and dehydrated.
I was working my way to dehydration thanks to the whiskey and the ungodly hot temperature outside.
I probably needed to eat too, I decided, screwing the cap back on the bottle, making my way inside, going for one of the cans of tomato soup, knowing that ordering in was out of the question. My budget was tight, and I wasn't looking forward to making it any tighter. So, I would make do with what was here as well as the couple things I had packed in my suitcase. Which meant a lot of protein bars and some instant oatmeal packets.
I had no business escaping the city, shirking my responsibilities, getting some time away.
Time away meant my father could sink the business even further into a hole.
But I had just hit my wall.
I couldn't take another minute of it.
I had to get away from the pressures of it all before I snapped and did or said something I would regret.
As a whole, I had my family's notorious temper, but I had always been better at controlling it. Maybe because I learned at a young age that when my father blew his top, things went sideways quickly because no one acted rationally when on an irrational tirade. But I had been controlling it for months. No, years. And from the looks of things, there seemed to be no end to the frustrations, so I would need to control myself for months or years to come.
At least, if I couldn't figure this out, if I