Meet Me Halfway (Learning to Love Series)
Meet Me Halfway: Chapter 1

I put my hand across his face, waving it up and down to block his eyesight in a last-second attempt to cause him to crash.

“You can’t! I won’t let you!” I screeched, but he ducked under my arm, determined to stay on the road. I snatched my hand back and clenched the object in my lap with both hands.

“No!” he yelled, “Stop!”

I ignored him, tightening my hold and focusing, swaying my body back and forth as if my movements might assist in his demise.

“You won’t always beat me, it’s time you learned what it’s like to suffer. I’m going to dance over your corpse!” I was so close. So damn close. Just once. All I needed was to come out on top once.

I was feeling good, high off the adrenaline of kicking ass when he hit me directly in the back, sending me spinning out of control and smashing into the wall.

And just like that, I was the loser all over again. Same outcome, different day.

“God dang, Jamie!” I yelled, dropping my controller, and throwing my hands up in defeat. “A red shell? Really? How long were you holding on to that?”

He crossed the finish line, laughing maniacally, the deep, foreboding sound of an evil mastermind. Or as close to it as his scrawny, prepubescent voice could get.

“I get my skills from my uncle. You’ll never beat me.” He set his controller down, smiling at me and pretending to crack his knuckles. I could practically smell the smugness emanating from his skin.

“Whatever, dude. I’ll get you next time.”

“You say that every time.”

“Yeah, but this time I mean it.”

We both giggled, wrapping the cords around our controllers, and setting them on top of the gaming system that sat on the floor next to our puny excuse for a television.

It was our ritual. Every night, on the nights I was home, we’d play three rounds of racing and whoever lost had to clean up the living room. “Whoever” always meaning me. I might as well legally change my name from Madison Hartland to Loser Neverwin. The kid was flipping ruthless.

“All right, bud, you know the drill, go brush and wash your face while I clean up.”

He immediately stood and shuffled in the direction of the hallway right behind our couch. His lack of complaint or eye roll instantly had my mom senses tingling.

“That means you have to actually go into the bathroom,” I hollered over my shoulder, not even bothering to turn around.

“Ugh, how do you always know?”

“Eyes in the back of my head.” I chuckled, hearing him grumble to himself before the sink turned on and drowned him out. I wasn’t buying it and was one-hundred percent going to smell his breath before he climbed in bed.

At eight years old, he’d never looked a thing like me. His dirty blond, straight hair and ocean blue eyes were polar opposites of my dark brown, spiral curls and chocolate eyes. Honestly, it was no wonder people assumed I was his babysitter.

His personality; however, might as well have been a carbon copy of mine. He was sneaky as a fox and stubborn as a bull. It made me want to rip my hair out most days, and I had only myself to blame. Lord knows my mother found it hilarious and exactly what I deserved.

But for as stubborn as he was, he was a sweet kid. He enjoyed hiking and exploring, but he wasn’t a rough and tumble kind of kid. He was just as happy vegging with me at home as he was hanging out with friends at school. I considered myself beyond lucky.

Crawling on my hands and knees, I made my way across our small living room, picking up the pillows we’d strewn across the floor. Prior to our match, we’d partook in a pre-game, epic fight to the death for the last package of gummies. He may have escaped with his life, but I won that battle.

Was he in elementary school? Yes. Did he only come up to my shoulder in height? Yep. Did I go easy on him because of that? Not a chance. Sweets were rare in our house. He knew the stakes.

I had just finished brushing crumbs off our faux-wood coffee table and readjusting the rug when he opened the door and walked out.

“That was fast. Did you wash your face?”

Insert dramatic eye roll. I didn’t even need to see him to know he was doing it. “Yes,” he said, drawing out the end like a snake.

I glanced up, narrowing my eyes. His skin didn’t look damp, and there wasn’t even the tiniest hint of pink to his cheeks. “You sure?”

He stared at me for a second longer before he turned without a word and stomped back into the bathroom.

Kids.

I sat back on my heels, pushing up off my knees to stand. “Come on, time to go potty,” I told the covered mound next to me. Nothing. Shaking my head, I lifted the blanket off the black-haired, sausage roll of a dog hidden underneath. “Don’t you ignore me.”

Said sausage roll glared up at me, and I swore if she could talk, she’d be telling me to fuck off. You’d have thought she was seventy rather than six by the way she acted. If food wasn’t involved, she wasn’t interested.

She was a short-haired, miniature dachshund and had been a puppy no bigger than my hands back when we bought her. I remembered back then that we’d had her for a few days, and for the life of me I still hadn’t been able to pick a name. So, like the genius woman I was, I decided to let my two-year-old name her.

“What’s your favorite thing?”

“The rug!”

“Okay, what’s your second favorite thing?”

“Pants!”

And thus, Rugpants was named. Genius woman, indeed. I nudged her limp form. “Come on Rugsy, outside, let’s go.”

She rolled off the couch like a potato on a kid’s project ramp and trotted her short, stubby legs toward the patio door. It was literally two feet away, but she still found time to stretch and yawn on the way over.

Yanking on the handle, I forced the door to slide open as far as I could while it fought against me. I sighed, mentally adding ‘call the landlord to fix patio door’ to my never ending to-do list.

Rugpants looked up at me, pure sass in her buggy eyes. “Don’t give me that look, it won’t open any farther. You can fit.” I nudged her out, leaving the door ajar so she could make her way in when she was done.

Walking backward, I plopped onto the couch, closing my eyes and listening to the cicadas serenade me through the opening and praying no mosquitoes took advantage of my laziness.

Jamie would come back any minute with a book, and I was dreading it. Not because I didn’t enjoy reading with him, I loved his interest in books, but because reading time meant nighttime, and nighttime meant schoolwork. No matter how much I tried to enjoy them, the evenings were never long enough.

I allowed myself one more minute of self-pity and then sat up, breathing deeply and clapping my hands together. “It’s bedtime, let’s go!”

I heard the faint clatter of something in the bathroom—I didn’t even want to know what an eight-year-old boy was doing in there—before the creak of the door echoed out, and he darted into his room.

“Are we reading out here or in there?”

“In here!” he yelled.

Of course, we were. Lazy bum. Slapping my hands on the couch, I heaved my butt up and trudged toward the first bedroom in the hall, directly across from the bathroom.

We’d moved in last week, and Jamie had been so excited to have his own bedroom and bathroom. It’d been a struggle not to burst into tears at his excitement over something he’d always deserved to have.

I crawled into bed next to him, shoving my toes under his legs to warm them and biting back a laugh when he hissed and slapped at me. We didn’t fit on his twin mattress, but I’d keep squeezing in as long as he’d let me.

“I have several chapters I have to read for class later, so do you mind doing most of the reading tonight?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

I settled in, leaning my head on his shoulder and listening to him read a novel about dragons. We were currently on book three of an ongoing series, and he was loving them.

I’d made it a point to read to him every night growing up, no matter what. When he finally got old enough to read on his own, we began taking turns and it was, by far, my favorite part of each day.

I could see his eyes start to droop when I took my turn, and I smiled. He was getting so big, but sometimes I still caught glimpses of my baby boy hiding underneath. “Let’s end here. You have school tomorrow, and I need to get started on my own reading.”

“Do you have a test?”

“Not tonight, thankfully, just some reading.” I laid his book on his nightstand and stood, throwing his blanket over his head.

“About what?” he asked, not even bothering to move it.

“Well, one of them is an overview of the research results regarding car wash employees stealing change from vehicles. I have to write up a report naming any issues with validity and reliability.”

I watched his fingers slowly creep out and drag the blanket down his face. His nose was scrunched up tight. “That sounds awful.”

“It will absolutely, without a doubt, be awful.” I laughed, flicking his light off. “’Night, bud.”

“’Night, Mom.”

I closed his door, turning and staring at my own bedroom. I could practically hear the sheets calling my name. They were probably ice cold and fantastic. Fuck, I was tired. Tipping my head back, I sighed, turning and making my way to the kitchen tucked into the corner of our living room.

Twenty-five and there I was, spending the night prepping a cup of dollar store coffee in tie-dye sweats, mismatched socks, and curls plopped on top of my head like a pineapple. I was the antonym of sexy.

Dressing up my coffee with more sugar than my daily allowance recommended, I made sure Rugpants had wandered back inside, and then heaved the door shut, ambling into my room.

The duplex was the largest place I’d ever been able to barely afford. ‘Barely’ being a key detail. With three beds and two bathrooms, it was more space than we’d ever had in our previous one-bed, one-bath apartment.

The primary bedroom was the same size as the other bedrooms, but I didn’t have to share so it was a winner in my book. I set my “World’s Best Hooker” mug my friend had gifted me on my nightstand and wiggled my butt down onto my cheap, three-inch mattress, next to the four-legged child that’d already crawled in.

“Here we go,” I muttered, cracking my neck. I set my laptop on my crossed legs and logged into the university website. Once it was loaded and my planner spread out next to me, I promptly pulled up my nightly companion: streaming music.

I couldn’t afford the commercial-free version, but you wouldn’t hear me complain. It was the only thing keeping me awake most nights. Even eyecare commercials were more entertaining than silence.

I pulled up the report I’d been assigned, a research project conducted by one of my professors. He’d assigned it to the class, camouflaging it as a practice assignment when in reality, he was using us to replace errors in his work for him.

I was pretty sure it would be considered highly unethical, but whatever. Setting the music station to Top Hits, I rolled my shoulders and got to work.

I’d suffered through the entire report and was summarizing my replaceings when a knock came on the front door. I startled, straightening up and spilling the majority of my coffee down the front of my top. Cursing, I leapt off the bed and attempted to quiet Rugpants’s barking while she tried to uncover herself from the comforter.

Who the hell could that be? I set my mug down, wiping pointlessly at my wet chest, my heart already in my stomach. I didn’t know anyone in this town besides my parents, and they wouldn’t be knocking on my door this late at night.

I slid out of my room, closing the door behind me to lock sausage butt in so she hopefully wouldn’t wake Jamie. Part of me didn’t want to answer the door at all, but what if it was an emergency? I knew more than most that emergencies could happen at any time of night.

I made my way down the hall and across the living room. It didn’t take long to cross a one-thousand-square-foot home, and I found myself wishing I’d walked a little slower.

I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the small window on the door, nerves shooting through my limbs and making my fingers shake. There was no one there. I paused, refusing to blink, waiting for someone to step into my view. But nothing happened.

“Don’t open it,” I told myself. “It’s probably someone waiting off to the side, ready to kidnap you and chain you to a basement wall.” I stared at the doorknob. “Oh Lordy, I’m an idiot,” I muttered, unlocking the door and cracking it open an inch.

“Hello?” No one answered. No shuffling, no crickets. Nothing.

I pulled the door open a little wider, dredging up the small amount of bravery I was surprised I actually possessed. But I was promptly put right back in my place of cowardice when I spotted movement in my peripheral.

I flinched violently, smacking the side of my head into the door frame, and shrieking in an undignified manner. Heaving, I clutched at my chest, positive I was about to have an aneurysm.

It was a ripped piece of notebook paper. The little square of gray tape at the top indicating it’d probably been attached to my door before I so elegantly arrived.

Bending slowly, just in case anything jumped at me, I snatched it off my porch, holding it up to the light to read the chicken scratch.

Some of us are adults with jobs and need sleep. Be more considerate and turn down your music.

My face heated, and I glanced around anxiously. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t still out there. It’d only been a minute or two since I’d heard the knock. The someone obviously being the neighbor I shared a wall with.

Having only moved into the duplex a week ago, I still hadn’t met the person sharing the duplex with me, aka my wall neighbor. I’d caught a quick glimpse of a man sitting in the forest green Chevy Nova parked out front once, but that’d been it. I didn’t even know if anyone other than him lived there, or if he was actually the person living opposite me.

A sudden crunch to the left of the porch caught my attention, and I snapped my head to the side, squinting into the dark.

“Hello?” I called, clenching the note tighter in my hand and waiting, but I didn’t see or hear anything else.

Keeping my spine straight, I backed up, letting my rear push my propped door open so I could slip back inside without turning my back to the shadows.

I was embarrassed. I knew the set up for the other side of the duplex was likely the same, meaning my room would share a wall with the other primary room, but I never really thought much about it. I certainly didn’t think my music was that loud. I had Jamie sleeping down the hall for God’s sake, I wasn’t blaring it.

I tried to brush it off. Neighbor man, or whoever lived there, was the one keeping himself awake by writing a damn letter and stalking over to my door in the middle of the night. Joke was on him.

Lost in thought, I fanned the paper back and forth, the motion chilling the large damp spot on my chest and making me shudder. I wiped at it subconsciously only to freeze when I grazed my nipple.

I looked down in horror, my eyes locking onto the hardened peak beneath my fingers. It was glaringly obvious through the wet fabric of my white sleep tank. Standing under my porch light, I might as well have had a neon arrow pointing right to it. Come one, come all, to the nipple show.

I groaned, my embarrassment hiking up to humiliation status. It was fine, no one had been out there. The sound I heard was either a cat or my irrational anxiety playing tricks on me. Probably the latter.

All I knew for sure was I was too tired for this shit. Frustrated, I slapped the paper onto the bar, the sound echoing out louder than I’d anticipated and setting off Rugsy’s insufferable yapping again.

“Shush! Lay down!” I whisper screamed, running down the short hallway. I’d barely opened my door and toed her body back when another door clicked open behind me.

“Mom?”

I sighed; at this rate I was never going to finish my assignment. “Sorry, bud, I know we’re making a racket. I’ll keep her quiet, I promise. Go back to bed.”

“What’s all over your shirt? Is someone here?” he asked, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Besides the creature under your bed? Nope.”

He dropped his hands, glaring at me. “He’s not there anymore, I checked.” His voice was raspy with sleep.

The effort of keeping a smile off my face was a battle. “Oh? Where do you think he went? Maybe to replace a kid with a little more meat on his bones?”

“No,” he said, stepping through his doorway, “I’m pretty sure I saw the clown in your shower drain eat him.”

Speechless, I stared at his closed door a moment longer. That was a visual that would stick with me for a while. Thank God I hadn’t planned on sleeping for a few more hours.

I’d made the mistake of telling him about the first horror film I’d ever watched and how I’d been at a sleepover and had to lay in a pitch-black room while the TV screen was off but the surround sound was on. I’d been forced to fall asleep listening to the sounds of kids screaming and dying. Fifteen years later, I still had nightmares about it.

Shuddering, I made my way back to my room, grabbing a t-shirt from my closet and replacing my nasty top. The remainder of my coffee was ice cold at this point, not to mention I’d have to study in silence now. Great.

I propped my pillows against the wall and snuggled back in, shaking my head when Rugsy instantly re-burrowed under the comforter at my feet. How she breathed way down there, I’d never know.

This was our routine every night, or at least every night Monday through Thursday. I’d enrolled in a local community college when I was around twenty, thinking I’d stay two years and come out with something to help me get a job. I’d received enough federal assistance to pay for it, so it could only help, right?

Three years and four associate degrees later, I was still waiting for it to help me land a full-time job rather than the part-time ones I currently had. My dream was to work directly with delinquent teens in a youth correctional facility, but instead I was stuck earning minimum wage making copies and serving food.

I’d graduated with a 4.0 GPA and had been so proud until the moment I’d realized no one else cared. If it wasn’t at least a bachelor’s, my GPA didn’t matter to employers. Period.

So, I’d applied for a few scholarships and transferred to the university in the next city over. I was currently in my last year of full-time, online courses for Criminal Justice, and I was starting to run on empty.

Research results and court rulings were boring to read during the day, but at night it was giant, face-altering-yawn-level boring. But I was pushing through anyway, determined to finish and determined to maintain my GPA.

The thing was, getting pregnant at sixteen meant the world had stopped expecting anything of me. I probably sat at home with my seven baby daddies, milking the system while I refused to get a real job. I mean, that’s what all single moms did, right?

My neighbor had only further proved that narrow viewpoint by his comment insinuating I wasn’t an “adult with a job.”

I’d been a single mom for years; I was used to it. I was going to graduate summa cum laude if it killed me. Not because I had anything to prove to the world—society’s views on teenage moms were never going to change—but because I was determined to prove it to myself.

Three hours and a few more assignments later, I was dead. I was head bobbing harder than an emo at a concert and had nearly face planted into the screen. I closed the computer and glanced at my alarm clock, internally crying.

Five hours. If I fell asleep right now and skipped a morning shower, I could get five hours of sleep. I lifted my arm, sniffing. The waft of vanilla and strawberries hit my nose. I could definitely pull off one skipped shower. Sweet.

Making sure my alarm was set, I scrunched down into my bed, chuckling when Rugsy shuffled up to curl behind my knees. It’d make turning difficult, but I didn’t move her. Jamie had stopped cuddling with me years ago, so knee-pit, dog snuggles were all I got these days.

Thank God I only had one six-hour shift tomorrow. It was one of my easy days, and I was beyond grateful. Most people hated Mondays, counting down the days until the next weekend, but for me, weekdays were my break.

Just this year. I just needed to finish up this last year of school and then I’d be free to get a better job. One job.

I laid there, crossing my fingers and toes as I fell asleep. If you wished hard enough and worked hard enough, it was bound to come true eventually. I had to believe that.