Damaged Goods Read Online Free PDF Page A

smiled and stood aside to let me in. “Right on time, as always.”
    “Would you expect anything different?”

    Damaged Goods

    15

    She laughed. “Not at all. Come on in. Michael"s upstairs helping them get their
    schoolbags and everything together. They"ll all be down shortly.”
    “No rush.” I followed her into the kitchen. From upstairs came footsteps,
    voices, shuffling papers, and drawers opening and closing.
    “Can I get you some coffee?” Carrie asked.
    “Oh, no, I"m fine. Thank you.”
    She picked up her own coffee cup. “So how are things?”
    “Same old, same old,” I said. “Work, work, work. That place is going to send me
    into an early grave, I"m telling you.”
    Scowling, she nodded. “God, yes, I know the feeling. I"m starting to think
    meetings were invented solely to waste time and drive me insane.”
    “I figured that out the day they invented PowerPoint.”
    Carrie groaned. “Ugh, that program is the bane of my existence.” She gestured
    toward the stairs with her coffee cup. “You know, Michael was at an awards
    banquet recently, and some guy broke out a PowerPoint presentation in the middle
    of dinner.”
    I blinked. “You"re kidding.”
    “Not even.” She sipped her coffee and set the cup down. “He said it killed every
    last person"s buzz, so they all had to start drinking all over again.”
    “Maybe the guy had a deal with the bartenders, then,” I said.
    She laughed. “Maybe so.” She started to speak again, but footsteps on the
    stairs turned both our heads.
    Michael appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Jocelyn.” He gestured over his
    shoulder with his thumb. “Kids are just about ready to go.”
    “I"m in no hurry,” I said. “Carrie was just telling me about your death by
    PowerPoint at a banquet.”
    “Oh, God.” He rolled his eyes. “That was some bullshit, let me tell you.”
    “Of course it was,” I said. “That"s why they were using PowerPoint to present
    it.”
    He chuckled. “Good point.” He rested his hands on the back of one of the
    kitchen chairs. “So, kid stuff. Mikey"s got tryouts for wrestling on Wednesday after
    school. Will you be able to pick him up?”
    “What time will it be over?”
    “Four thirty.”
    I nodded. “I may have to shuffle a couple of appointments around, but I think
    I"ll be able to, no problem.”
    “If not, let me know,” Carrie said. “That"s my work-at-home day, so I can get
    him if you need me to.”
    “Okay, thanks, I"ll let you know.” To Michael, I said, “He turned in his
    paperwork from his physical, right?”

    16
    Lauren Gallagher

    “Yeah, I made sure he had it in last week.”
    “Okay, good.”
    “Oh, and on the twenty-seventh, there"s a father-son thing for scouts,” he said.
    “It"s a Tuesday, during your week. Do you mind if I take him, and we can switch
    another day?”
    “Sure, yeah,” I said. “I think I still owe you a day from when I took them
    camping a few months ago anyway.”
    “Do you?” He furrowed his brow, then shrugged. “I don"t know, I can"t keep
    track.”
    I laughed. “Well, you take him for the father-son thing, and we"ll call it even.”
    “Sounds good to me.” He glanced toward the stairs. “Let me go see what"s
    keeping them.” He left the kitchen, calling to the kids to tell them to get their stuff
    together.
    There were a lot of things I could say about being divorced, but if I had to have
    an ex-husband, I was glad it was Michael. We"d both watched plenty of couples fight
    over their kids, nitpicking custody arrangements down to two-minute increments,
    and each pitting the kids against the other, and we"d both sworn not to do that to
    our children. If anything, we got along better now and were better parents like this
    than we ever were before we"d split. If one of them wanted to stay an extra night at
    Michael"s one week or have a birthday party at mine during his week, we didn"t
    make a big deal out of it.
    Sex and dating as a single mom may have