I fell asleep in my work clothes, just dragging the covers over me in my old bedroom. I dreamed crazy dreams about Bobbie and Aaron playing in Gage’s game room and Gage building a dollhouse out of hospital supplies. When I woke, it was to find my adoptive mother was sneaking through my dresser at nine on a Saturday morning.

“What are you doing?”

She whirled around, her stick-straight blonde pageboy swinging like a circle skirt. “Nothing! Putting away your laundry?”

Yeah, it was definitely time to do my own laundry again. Ignoring her strange look at my rumpled clothes, I dragged myself out of bed and joined her at my dresser.

“Uh huh.” I looked down into the open, and mostly empty, drawer.

At least she had the decency to blush. I rolled my eyes and fished in a lower drawer for some sweats to change into. Without even the prop of a laundry basket—really, she had to step up her game—she sat on the end of my bed.

“How’s the new job going?”

“Um, okay. I think I’m doing a good job so far.” After I pulled on a soft sweatshirt, I headed for the closet to hang up my wrinkled sweater. In fact, it probably just needed to go to the drycleaner.

“You sound surprised.”

“I guess I am. You know I’m not that great at keeping jobs.”

“You can keep a job, Maddie. You just have a tendency to choose not to.”

It was lecture time, and the theme was familiar. Hiding as much as possible behind the closet door, I shimmied out of my skirt.

“Here we go.” I rolled my eyes. “Maddie, quitters never win and winners never quit!” I parroted back the saying I’d been hearing for a few years now.

I stalked back to the bed to retrieve my leggings. Her silence made me wonder if I’d hurt her feelings. Her expression made me certain of it. Shit.

Sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, I lay my head on her shoulder briefly in apology. I wasn’t a hugger, and she knew that. She froze as my head cradled into her neck, but we breathed quietly in tandem. That was enough.

Only a moment later I straightened and began pulling on the rest of my “not at work” clothes. That was the one thing I hated about being a grown-up—wearing grown-up clothes. I’d never been one of those little girls that dressed up in my mother’s clothes. If I could, I’d live in pajamas, just changing into fresh ones twice a day.

“I’m sorry, Maddie. We just want—“

“What’s best for me, I know.” I sighed. “I appreciate it. You know I do. I just…” I trailed off, not quite knowing how to articulate what I was feeling. “I, um, started looking for her, you know.”

She went rigid and remained silent, probably not sure what to say. The thought of me finding my “real” mother threatened her, if I’d applied my intro psychology course knowledge properly.

I knew I was adopted. It was hard to miss, since it didn’t happen until I was a teenager. But as I’d told Gage, until a year ago I’d thought my biological parents were dead. It turned out I was half-right. The year before, I’d re-opened my adoption paperwork in Dad’s office while filling out my passport application, and discovered that the woman from whom I’d been separated when I was young had been on her way to prison, not the cemetery.

Yeah, that little bombshell sent me into a summer of spiraling regrets. I wasn’t dumb enough to drink too much or act out—after all, I’d spent ten years surviving the system by flying under everyone’s radar. My “parents” stoically put up with my confused, sullen state, constantly reminding me that they loved me and wanted me. But after two months of getting the silent treatment, they were ready to duct tape me to a therapist’s chair.

I got over it. Mostly. And I should be happy and proud that I wasn’t just working retail like some of my friends, despite still living at home. In fact, I counted my lucky stars every day that I had a home to live in. After way too many years in the foster care system, other kids would have been bitter troublemakers. I’d always tried to stay above my emotions, floating above the tension and insecurity, but I was also damn grateful.

The truth was that my hit and miss track record with jobs wasn’t just because of the economy. I used to joke that I had ADHD, but I’d grown up feeling like everything was temporary, and still approached life that way. I’d never kept a hobby or a pet or a boyfriend. Maybe if I tried to raise pet boyfriends as a hobby…

I’d survived childhood and adolescence, which was saying something in my case. I’d even gone to college, damn it! I had a relatively useless degree, a regretfully popped cherry from an ill-advised party, and a student loan to prove it.

Now that I was—in theory—an adult, I was supposed to have goals, but I was used to flying by the seat of my pants and it was a hard habit to break. Gage was the first person I’d spent time with who made me want to focus a little more.

“Can you see yourself staying in this job?” she asked gently. It wasn’t an unfair question.

I considered it. I liked the work so far. It beat answering phones at a car dealership or transcribing insurance reports from screwy dictations. It was a novelty to be considered almost an expert in something, and I couldn’t deny that it felt pretty great to impress somebody for once. Brian Gage’s icy eyes and sharp jaw flashed before me, his lips curving into the smirk that I was starting to strategize about eliciting from him. I shook the image out of my head, wondering where he was and how he was doing today.

“No?” She sounded disappointed.

“What?” I realized she had misinterpreted my gesture. “No, I like it. I, uh, like the people I work with—mostly.” One of them I liked a hell of a lot, in fact.

I looked around my room, comparing it to Gage’s house and finding it sincerely lacking. My mom followed my gaze, pausing on the blank walls and almost empty dresser top.

“You never did decorate in here,” she chided me.

I shrugged and sat beside her again with a sigh. My dorm room at school had looked eerily similar—just a narrow bed, a dresser and a desk. The only difference was that I had a TV in my room there and here I just watched stuff on my laptop. “I just haven’t gotten around to it. I haven’t been back long enough.”

“Mad, this has been your room for nine years.”

“What can I say? I have no personality,” I joked.

She twirled one of my long auburn curls around her index finger and tugged. “Now that is not true.”

But she didn’t push it, for which I was grateful. I was grateful to her for a lot of things, and the reminder prompted me to put my arm around her waist and squeeze affectionately. It was a rare enough thing for me to do that after a shocked pause, she looped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a hard sideways hug.

“Thanks… Mom. Maybe next week we could, um, shop for some curtains or something together. If I don’t have to work late...” I trailed off, wondering what qualified as “working late” with Brian Gage. Naked time probably didn’t count.

“But you like the job, right?”

My nod reassured her, until I added, “When I stop liking it, I’ll just quit.” I was kidding—almost. It was more like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was the first time that I felt really good at something, so the clock was ticking as to when I would screw it up.

I had a history of getting out before getting kicked out, but it was time to change that pattern.