Tangled: A Moreno Brothers novella Read Free Page B

this, she thought it’d be a breeze.
It was just four hours of her day. She remembered thinking “How hard can it
be? Plenty of women work full-time and still deal with their household chores
and families.” But she hadn’t taken into account the commute time to and
from work, the extra hour she now needed in the morning to get ready while
helping the kids get ready as well, and making their breakfast and lunches.
Then there was the getting home and preparing them something to hold them over
until she could get a real meal together for them.
    Having to squeeze in all the usual things she could do so easily
before she had to work was so much more exhausting. Like the stuff she typically
knocked out in one day on her errand day. Now she had to run errands several
times a week because there was no way she could squeeze them all in during the
few hours she had once she was out of work and still have dinner ready in time.
It felt like far more than four hours of her day were being sucked up by
this job.
    The family dinner time at the table every night was her thing, not Romero’s. So she knew he wouldn’t have a problem if dinner wasn’t
ready when he got home. In fact, he often told her, even before she’d gone back
to work, to let him know if she wanted him to just pick something up for dinner
on his way home. After Romero’s grandma had died, Manny and Max had done their
best to raise him, but he’d told her about the many pizzas and buckets of
chicken or even frozen chicken wings they’d thrown in the oven for dinner. Having
dinner at the table every night with her family was something Isabel remembered
so fondly from when she was growing up. It was her family’s bonding time, and
she’d been a stickler for wanting to instill the tradition in her own kids.
    It’d been easy to get them used to it, and the kids seemed to
enjoy it as much as she had when she was growing up. Only now it was getting
harder to have it all as perfect as she liked it to be with the rolls and salad
and even dessert ready just in time.
    To top it off, with the holidays looming, she had added errands
to run. Buying all the Christmas stuff for the kids was something she’d
normally done when Amanda was in school and she could drop off Romeo with her
mom or sisters for a few hours. With both of them in school now, this year
should’ve been easier. Instead, her working during their time in school was
making everything feel overwhelming.
    It was shameful to think not only had her mom done the same thing
with four kids but she’d done it all while working full -time for years
and years. Now here Isabel was working part-time for just a few weeks, and
already it was beginning to feel like too much.
    But there was no way she was admitting this may’ve been a
mistake. She knew it had everything to do with her need for everything to be as
meticulous as ever despite her having less time to do it. Her only consolation
was that Romero would be all for her quitting. Still, it was humiliating to
think she couldn’t hang in there for at least a few months. What kind of
example would she be setting for her kids if she quit this quickly?
    Another consolation was that the job itself was gratifying.
Elliot was more than pleasant to work with, and it was nice for a change to be
able to engage in adult conversation for the better part of her days. She
remembered there was a time in her life when both kids were very little and she
lived for the playdates with Valerie and the other girls so she could get some
adult conversation instead of just baby talk when she was home alone with the
kids all day. It wasn’t so bad anymore now that they were a little older, but
it was still nice to discuss things that even some of the adults in her life
didn’t get. So being in a university setting was the ideal job for her, and
discussing these things with Elliot was incredibly refreshing.
    She was even beginning to get over the initial awkwardness of
being alone in the