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done and they started clearing plates.
    “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, guys,” I warned, grabbing my notebook and sitting at the counter so I was in the middle of them and wouldn’t have to yell over the water. “Trial week, remember? Let’s make sure we make it past one fun night.”
    “So it was fun for you too, right?” Teak checked, glancing at me over his shoulder as he loaded the dishwasher.
    “Yeah, you guys are great. I’m just not used to being around people all the time,” I reminded him. “And there’re three of you. Let’s see how it goes before we move into buying appliances together and overwhelming me.” They all agreed and my point had been made… But I also didn’t want to make it a thing or beat a dead horse. “So we should make a Costco run with the way you guys eat.”
    “What’s Costco?” Aspen asked as he stuck the condiments back in my fridge.
    “Like Sam’s Club,” I answered, not looking up as I continued to make my list.
    “What’s that?” Cypress hedged.
    I slowly raised my head and glanced at each of them in turn, my eyes going wider and wider as I saw each of their blank expressions. Where the hell had they grown up that they hadn’t even heard of Costco or Sam’s Club. Then I felt a smile that could only be classified as evil grow on my lips. “Oh, this is going to be fun. Aspen, we’ll need to take your truck. Promise me you guys won’t look up what it is and I’ll take half a day off and we’ll go on a field trip. You’re going to fucking love this.”
    “Yeah, we won’t look,” he agreed, scrunching his eyebrows together, looking at his friends who nodded. “What do we need?”
    I thought about that a second and remembered the only quirk. “They don’t do credit besides AmEx. So you have to make your purchases with a debit card and of course the money in the account to pay for it all. Is that going to be a problem?”
    “No,” Cypress snorted, before clearing his throat, trying to cover his slipup.
    “Then we’re all set. Be ready to go at nine-thirty. I have a membership so that’s all we need,” I assured them, ignoring the additional clue they were loaded. I’d already figured it out. Aspen had hinted, they hadn’t mentioned jobs, but they’d bought that big house… Yeah, I wasn’t stupid.
    I also didn’t care .
    We talked a bit about foods they liked as they finished cleaning up, then they each gave me a big hug and thanked me for dinner. Again I was energized from them all touching me in a row. Was I really that deprived of attention and human contact that a few hugs left me feeling lighter and almost younger? Maybe. Or maybe I’d been through so much the past year I simply needed some good and happy rubbing off on me to lift my spirits and I read too much into things.
    I did tend to do that. Deciding to go with that, I finished up a few things for work, emailing my editor with the edits I’d completed. Then I paid some bills and some other basics before starting the work week tomorrow and my new book I’d been plotting. I like getting the details of being an author done on the weekends while everyone else was busy with their personal lives and not adding to my workload. Then I wrote during most people’s normal work week.
    Did it always pan out like that? Fuck no. A creative, fast-moving, and chaotic career like mine did not fall under typical nine-to-five parameters. More like hundred hour work weeks because I loved writing. The more stressed or upset I was, the more I wanted to write and get lost in writing. But the more I wrote, the more extra stuff that came with it… And those were the things that tended to stress me out.
    My mother called it the vicious cycle that would someday eat me alive. I, on the other hand, called it the hardcore and kickass roller coaster ride I never wanted to get off. Everyone’s job stressed them out and had aspects to it that they didn’t like or weren’t good at. Mine still was my dream