Mom's Club

Chapter Two

Ellie Lecoy sat in her Chevy Traverse under the yellow glow of the streetlight, wiping away the small tear that managed to escape down her cheek. Her shift officially started in ten minutes and she was already exhausted. And tired. It had been a rough twenty-four hours.

It didn't help that she was up for twenty of those hours and was obviously sleep-deprived. There was nothing she could do about it though. It wasn't as if she was behaving like a petulant teenager who had no regard for her responsibilities. By the time she got home from her job and showered it was four am. She had really hoped her two year old son Jensen would at least sleep until eight, at least give her four solid hours.

But of course, he had other plans. At six am sharp, he was crying out to her through the monitor. Her eyelids were so heavy and her head was spinning, like she was hungover. She reached over, shut the monitor off and planted her feet on the floor. It wasn't even like she could ask her husband Jake to get up with Jensen.

Because Jake was gone. It was going on day number four that Jake had been gone. Ellie wished and pleaded with Jake to get a delivery job that would allow him to be home more often, but he just wouldn't hear it. He was a truck driver and was often away more than he was home.

"What if we didn't live with my parents?" Ellie had asked him the last time they had this conversation.

"Well, we do, so why do we have to play the what if game?" Jake countered.

"I just need your help. I am so exhausted. Working these midnights and then getting up with him every morning is so hard."

"I know it is Ellie. But we need the money. I have to work and the cross-country routes pay way more than the day deliveries. We knew this was how it was going to be when you got pregnant."

"When we move out of here," Ellie said, while folding the laundry, their bed acting as a makeshift counter, "you're going to have to be home. My mom won't be there to listen to the monitor while I'm gone."

Jake, who had been laying on the bed, said, "No shit Ellie. But if I don't work these better paying routes then we're never gonna get the hell out of here."

It had rubbed Ellie the wrong way, the way he said it like that. Like it was so horrible living in the upstairs apartment at her parents. Like it wasn't just as much his idea to sell their little fixer-upper and move home for awhile to pay off some student debt, to buy a bigger, better house in a couple years.

Granted, it had been a couple of years now and they still weren't prepared to move, but it really wasn't that bad. They had their own room, Jensen had his own room, they had their own living room, own bathroom. They only had to share the kitchen with her parents and her younger brother, Tandem. And it wasn't like everyone was home at the same time anyways. They were all on different schedules.

Despite everything that was boiling up in Ellie, and everything she wanted to say, she decided to drop it. Jake was going to be leaving the next day, for one of his longest trips ever--two weeks--and Ellie didn't want to spend their last day fighting.

But to be honest, more than needing the help with Jensen and more than the sleep she needed, Ellie really wanted Jake to bond with their son. It broke her heart every time whenever Jake would try to give Jensen his bath or get him to bed, that he'd cry and cry for her. Jensen needed his father. It made her resent Jake that he didn't seem to care how much he truly was missing out on.

So after two teasing hours of sleep, Ellie started her day bright and early with her beautiful little boy who shared her brilliant sky blue eyes. They spent the morning running around the large yard, playing with their golden lab, Romeo, drawing with chalk, and chasing bubbles. After lunch, she lay Jensen down for his nap, where she then crawled into her own bed for another two teasing hours of sleep.

Because just like that Jensen was beckoning for her again through the monitor. Again, she dragged her feet out of the bed and returned to a day of play. They played with the mega blocks, the cars and trucks, the books, and so on and so on. Then it was time for dinner, a bath, and then finally bedtime. As much as Ellie loved spending the days with her son, as much as she would never change it, she truly enjoyed when bedtime came around. Especially on a night where she had to work. She lived for those couple of hours a day where she got to be herself again, where she got to focus on herself. It was nice to catch up on a show or two, or to spend the time to make herself presentable for work.

But, unfortunately, Jensen had other plans. For whatever reason, this night he would just not go to bed. She tried rocking him, tried turning on a nightlight, tried standing over his crib, brushing his hair from his face. But nothing. Those little blue eyes would just not close. He was too much like his mother already, and apparently thought he didn't need sleep to function.

At nine-thirty she called her mom. "My shift starts in a half hour. I don't know what his deal is tonight, but I just can't get him down." Ellie could feel the lump that formed in her throat while she tried her damnedest not to cry.

"I'll be right up," Arlene, her mother, said. "He just needs some snuggles from his grandma."

Then Ellie hauled ass the whole way to work because one thing she hated more than anything was being late. In fact, she firmly believed that if you weren't ten minutes early, you were late. As she sat in car and continued to wipe away the tears that, despite her best effort, kept falling, she just all around horrible. Why couldn't she get her own kid to bed? Why wasn't Jake home to get his own kid to bed. She hated having to ask her mom--it wasn't her mom's responsibility.

Yes, she would bring the monitor downstairs when she'd head to work, but Jensen hardly got up in the middle of the night anymore so it was different if her mom was just on standby. She grabbed her phone, sent a quick text to her mom asking if he went down and that she was about to head in.

All good. He's sleeping, the text came back almost immediately.

"Ugh," Ellie groaned. She wasn't sure if that text should've made her feel better or worse. She imagined that it was supposed to make her feel better, but, with the way her stomach was turning, it only made her feel worse.