The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(20)

Last night, outside making more cards, I’d decided it was time to go online and assess my financial situation.

And I discovered what I’d feared as it festered in the back of my head was right.

I had a cushion that came from having a job in a swank restaurant down in Chattanooga before I’d left Perry. My tips were crazy good. We lived in a safe apartment that didn’t cost the moon. And I was tight with money. It would have been more if I also hadn’t had to take care of Perry during that time, but it still was a nice cushion.

Not to mention, since Izzy didn’t need any of her furniture when she moved, my friends down in Tennessee helped out and I unloaded all my stuff, besides Brooks’s crib, dresser, changing table and other baby provisions, which Izzy and Johnny (and Toby, damn it) had gone down with me to move, with all the other stuff I was keeping.

Unloading all that obviously didn’t make me a millionaire.

But it had enhanced my cushion.

A cushion, since I now lived beyond my means, I dipped into monthly to meet the basic necessities.

I did calculations, and if I didn’t give Brooks a single present for Christmas, that cushion would disappear in April.

If I did give Brooks a proper Christmas, it’d be gone in March.

Either way, if I didn’t sort something out, I’d have to do what Daphne would lose her shit about.

I’d have to start charging things to a credit card that I could not afford to pay off every month.

Do not ever, to anyone, for any reason, get into debt, my queens, she’d said, more than once. A kind-hearted soul can be a lender, but a borrower you should never be. Debt is a string. Strings tie you down. And I want my queens to fly free.

I had never, not once, not in my wildest days, not even when I’d lost my mind for that year and got caught up in the club scene that was all about tight dresses, high heels, big hair and lots of makeup and accessories, got caught up in the whole credit card thing.

And the first time I’d borrowed money, it was from Johnny and that had only been okay because things got ugly with Perry and it was for Brooks.

Now I was understanding my mother’s lesson.

Because it seemed I was now in the position that I had to make one of five choices.

First, ask Johnny for a deferment of the loan until I could figure something out.

Second, take Brooks out of daycare and take Margot up on her offer of free childcare for my son.

Third, tell Izzy I couldn’t afford the full mortgage and either move out, or ask her to cover part of it (a large part) so we could stay.

Fourth, quit the grocery store and find another job, maybe in the city (which might mean we’d have to move to the city), probably as a server in a high-end restaurant where I’d make in a week just on tips what I made at the store over a month.

Or fifth, get a second job, which would mean I’d have to lean on somebody to look after Brooks because I worked forty hours a week already. And since the grocery store was open from six to nine as well as on weekends (when it was open until ten on Saturday) I already had to lean on friends and family for Brooks. Whatever extra job I got would be in addition to that since it would definitely have to be outside normal daycare hours.

This last might happen anyway. Last night I’d also looked at rentals in Matlock, and even though they were less than Izzy’s mortgage payment, with daycare and all the rest, they’d have to be practically free.

The good news was, that morning when I got to work, I told Michael, the store manager, I’d be up for any overtime he could give me. And since it was the holiday season and he was looking for part-timers to help, he was all over it and said he could easily give me an extra fifteen to twenty hours a week.

For him, paying me time and a half would be half of what he’d have to pay an extra staff member, not to mention he’d save time and headache on a hiring process.

For me it was just time and a half.

It’d only be an extra seven fifty to a thousand bucks in the next month, but that would mean Christmas for Brooks and I’d still be able to push out my cushion until April. I’d also be close to a raise at the store, since I heard they gave you one after a year if you had a good performance evaluation.

Still.

Even with a five percent raise, that’d only be maybe fifteen extra dollars a week.

But the store had good health insurance.

And being in Matlock meant I was close to Izzy and Brooks’s support network.

But the bottom line was, I just simply could not afford my current situation and give a decent life to my child working at that store, even after I got a raise.

There was no way around it.

I was fucked, any way you cut it.

Until Macy said that.

She’d handed me fifty dollars from the cards she’d sold, took the entire stock I offered her, asked for a load more Christmas cards by Monday and finally, she’d suggested Etsy.

How much did people make on Etsy?

I could make cards, sell them online, drop them off at the post office during lunch.

I’d probably have to sell a ton of cards.

And thus make a ton of cards.

But I’d made ten since Wednesday.

And I might be able to do other stuff, like place markers or something.

I needed to get on Etsy and suss this out.

“And Carol, who owns Gifts ’n’ Goodies in Bellevue, told me to tell you to swing around,” Macy continued. “She was in this week and said she loved your stuff. Said she’d be thrilled to put some by the register. People are beginning to think it’s hip to buy local. It’s becoming a big thing, thank God.”