Getting Her Money's Worth

By Annette Mardis

"Getting Her Money's Worth" is the story of two friends, two fates and too little time. Allie Charles finds that life often is cruel, but she still wrings all the joy out of it that she can. As she faces a series of life-threatening illnesses and emotional hits to her heart, Allie sets aside her challenges to enjoy various escapades with close friend Shelby Martin, the girl who gets the career, the guy and the good health. Join them on a canoe trip highlighted by an inopportune game of bumper boats and too-close calls with a corpse, spiders and snakes. Find out what happens during a piranha feeding at the National Aquarium. And join in an R-rated alternative to pin the tale on the donkey at Shelby's bridal shower. Get ready to laugh, cry and count the blessings in your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annette Mardis
• Release date: Jul 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301950904

Annette Mardis

A veteran of more than 30 years of newspaper work, Annette Mardis is still editing and writing, now on a freelance basis. She lives in Florida with her husband and three extremely spoiled pets and is a motorcycle, sports and animal enthusiast. "Getting Her Money's Worth" is her first novella.

Book preview

Getting Her Money’s Worth

by Annette Mardis

Published by Annette Mardis at Smashwords.

Copyright 2013 Annette Mardis. All rights reserved.

Cover image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

About the Author

For Charlene Allison, one of the most courageous, compassionate and selfless people I’ve ever had the privilege to know. Hope you’re keeping things lively in heaven, dear friend. I’ll miss you always.

For more on the National Marrow Donor Program, visit bethematch.org.

Chapter 1

Allie Charles had always gotten her money’s worth out of life, and she wasn’t about to get shortchanged now. Certainly not when the tick tock of her wall clock sounded more like a time bomb.

How much time did she have left? Mere months, her doctors seemed certain. But maybe she could stretch it; snatch a little here, a bit there.

She’d sure as hell try as if her life depended on it.

Which, of course, it did.

Ever since the doctors had confirmed her worst fears—that the bone marrow transplant hadn’t worked, that nothing more could be done—Allie had been inundated by a tsunami of tears, trying desperately to dog paddle toward dazed acceptance, at the very least.

She could handle her own grief, marginally. But everyone else’s? Not at all. She hated that stunned look on their faces, that hitch in their voices, that millstone on their minds.

She felt guilty—yes, guilty, for pity’s sake—that she was the cause of so much hurt, and she couldn’t do one stinking thing to change it.

And that just really pissed her off on top of everything else.

Well, she might not have any say about dying, but living? Puhleeeze! Her brain was still working and her mouth was still moving, weren’t they?

Sure she was tired, and in pain so much of the time, but she damned sure wasn’t going to hole up in her room torturing herself with why, what and if only.

Shelby Martin, one of her oldest and dearest friends—that was Allie’s favorite way to describe her, that and you skinny bitch, said lovingly, of course—had sent her a text earlier that day: Two words: bucket list. Think about it.

That had made Allie smile even while her eyes were leaking, and that had been precisely the point of Shelby’s message. But not the only point.

So Allie had texted back: This isn’t a damned movie, and I’m not Morgan freaking Freeman.

I’m not Jack bleeping Nicholson, either, but we can still have some fun, Shelby had shot back.

No skydiving, no Rocky Mountain climbing, no two-point-seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.

This isn’t a damned country song, and you’re not Tim flippin’ McGraw.

Does that mean I can’t live like I’m dying?

"It means you’d better live like you’re dying because you won’t get another chance."

Pleasant thought.

Life’s a bitch.

And then I die.

Pleasant thought.

You’ll have plenty of time to cry after I’m gone.

Glad to see the chemo hasn’t made you all cuddly soft.

Okay, wiseass, what do you want to do first?

Up to you. It’s your funeral.

How about we start with my foot booting your bucket butt?

Now you’re talking.

***

IT STARTED WITH A sunburn; a bad one; one of too many Allie had suffered over the years. Her milk-and-vanilla-creme-cookies complexion surely hadn’t helped. Neither had genetics.

She couldn’t, and didn’t need to, pinpoint exactly which overdose of damaging ultraviolet rays was to blame. The doctor had told her people probably get about eighty percent of their lifetime sun exposure during their first eighteen years of life, so she’d likely been doomed to get the dreaded Big C by the time she’d graduated from high school.

And later, when she’d spent so many hours playing softball during the most hellishly hot part of the day and, especially, when she’d lounged seemingly without a care on Shelby’s boat, Allie had meant to use sunscreen.

She really, really had.

But she’d been too busy thoroughly enjoying a few hours or a rare full day off—getting her money’s worth, as Shelby’s husband, Roy, liked to call it.

Allie obviously had learned her lesson in the hardest possible way.

Removing the resulting melanoma, the least common of all skin cancers but the most deadly, had left a deep and ugly divot in the back of Allie’s left leg. She’d also lost the clump of lymph nodes in her groin on the left side.

God, that had hurt like ten hinges of hell.

She’d gotten a reprieve from chemotherapy, thank you, Lord, because her doctor had said there was no strong medical evidence that sending such poison coursing through her veins would keep the melanoma from coming back.

No, the melanoma hadn’t come back, but that had turned out to be only minutely small comfort.

Chapter 2

Allison Jo Charles and Shelby Marie Martin met on an unseasonably frigid fall night on an afterthought of a softball field tucked into a lonely corner of a Little League-dominated sports complex in Clearwater, Florida.

It was the mid-1980s and both women were single and blonde, but the similarities pretty much ended there.

Allie had almost five years, forty pounds and two cup sizes on her new teammate.

Shelby, still in her twenties, had a wry, often sarcastic sense of humor, was soft-spoken unless sorely provoked and was prone to self-doubt.

Allie’s booming voice and full-bellied laugh easily commanded the attention of anyone within a two-mile radius, and she reveled in the limelight.

Allie’s bat was bombastic, too, and easily the best part of her game. Shelby’s value was her versatility—at one time or another she’d played every position on the field, although not equally well. She was best used as pitcher; she too often flinched at sharply hit ground balls when playing shortstop or one of the bases.

But she could hold her own in the outfield, which was where she found herself on that blustery evening, shagging fly balls beside Allie.

Shelby certainly was no gazelle, but she could cover far more ground than Allie, who moved with all the grace of a wounded wildebeest.

Both women were determined to impress their new coach, a former Marine grunt who relished giving the orders for a change.

His small stature didn’t help his disposition, either. He purposely cranked screaming line drives, wicked worm burners and Babe Ruthian blasts out to where Allie and Shelby took turns trying to corral the cowhide.

That sadistic, Semper Fi son of a bitch, Shelby griped, growing increasingly agitated watching Allie lumber after yet another ball that dropped mockingly beyond her reach.

Hey, Gomer! Dump the lead outta your shorts and catch the ball for Christsakes! coach Jarhead hollered.

What the hell?! Allie protested, bending down, grabbing her knees and struggling to catch her breath. "You haul your tight ass cheeks out here, Sgt. Carter, if you think it’s so stinkin’ easy!

Sheesh, Allie groused as Shelby retrieved the ball and flipped it toward the infield. Next he’ll be telling us to drop and give him twenty!

I’ll bite a hunk off my glove if he can convince me anybody in our league can jack a ball that far, Shelby replied.

Well, get some mustard to slather on it, then, because you haven’t seen Allie hit yet, another teammate stationed in the outfield hollered over to Shelby.

It wasn’t long before she learned just how hard Allie could sock a slow-pitched softball. Shelby was pitching batting practice a couple of weeks later when Allie nearly took Shelby’s left ear off with a scalding shot straight back through the box.

Incoming! coach Jarhead jeered gleefully.

Allie turned the next pitch into a shin-seeking missile that Shelby somehow dodged, nearly tripping herself in the process.

Hey, Martin! Jarhead sneered. My grandmother coulda snagged that, and she’s been dead for fifteen years!

Shelby purposely threw the next few pitches inside, outside, too high, too low—anywhere but over the middle of the plate.

Hey! Allie said indignantly. How about giving me something to hit!

Why, so you can maim me?

Now, would I do that?

In a heartbeat.

Puhleeeze, I don’t see any bruises.

Not yet, you don’t!

C’mon, Shelby, Jarhead barked. Quit dickin’ around.

Fine, she huffed, but I’m not letting her use me for target practice anymore!

With that, Shelby turned and stomped toward second base, stopping a few steps shy of the bag. With a smirk and surprising accuracy, she lobbed strike after strike from a safer distance while Allie whaled away to her heart’s content.

***

SHELBY HAD NO REASON to hurry home after Sunday morning softball practices; she lived alone and didn’t date often. Her mother said she was too picky. Shelby preferred to think she was just being selective.

She did tend to boot guys to the basement pretty quickly once she started mentally tallying all the reasons, real or imagined, a relationship wouldn’t work out.

It’s not like she was pushing herself to find a husband. Shelby was doing just fine, thank you very much, on her own, carving out a career as a low-key Lois Lane and making a livable wage doing something she’d aspired to since being selected for the school newspaper in junior high.

Her apartment was nothing to write