Earning My Keep

We were a day before the first anniversary of mom’s **** at the hands of my drunken biological father. Not only did he manage to take mom from Ray and me, but he also convinced the court that mom owed him for smashing his pickup truck into her car to cause her ****. Mom didn’t leave much behind, so the court awarded everything to him, with the exception to me. I couldn’t believe it when my own father refused to have anything to do with me, since he blamed me for him smashing into mom while drunk.

For the last seven months I’ve been staying with Ray and Cole, his son. We shared a three bedroom apartment since the plans to move into a house was a pipe dream after everything was done. Don’t get me wrong Ray and Cole treated me as if I was more than just an outsider thrusted upon them by a marriage.

So here it was two weeks before the start of bikini season and I was going to Ray for his opinion on what suit I should wear on the first day at the beach. Ray was sitting at the kitchen table in front of his laptop. I stood behind him off his right shoulder,holding my two choices of debut bikinis and was getting ignored by Ray as his fingers danced over the keyboard.

I knew what Ray was doing was important but to me this was as important. I know I was very curt with Ray ignoring me and let it be heard in my voice. “It’s only polite to acknowledge someone when they’re in the same room with you!”

“Sorry Chris, I’ve been doing the numbers and I don’t like what I see!”

“In that case why don’t you look at what I want you to see”

Ray got up and turned towards me and looked between both bikinis and me. “Sorry Chris this is where you need your mother more than me!’
I just looked at him, then turned and walked back to my room, dropping both bikinis onto my bed before returning to find Ray back at his laptop. I came over and looked at the screen which might as well be in a foreign language as far as I was concerned. I crossed my arms, just under my breasts.

“So what is more important than making me feel special, Ray?”

I’ve been trying to justify having a three bedroom apartment that costs me more than I can afford!”

Ray went on to tell me how the company he works for was being hit big time by cutbacks and looked like he might be having his hours cut. With mom dead Ray was charged the tax rate of a single person, instead of the married rate, meaning he was paying higher taxes than when mom was alive. The small amount of money Cole gave him each month didn’t even begin to cover the weekly groceries let along any of the other expenses

“Are we going to have to move out?”

“Of the building, no, out of a three bedroom apartment into a two bedroom you better believe it.!” Ray paused before delivering the unkind truth. “So I have to figure out who I should ask to leave, my son or my step daughter!’

With that said Ray got up and went over to the fridge and got himself a beer then went over to his favorite chair and sat down to drink it! I knew that Ray didn’t need to have me around while he tried to determine what the best thing to do,so I went back to my bedroom.