Free Stepping Up To Love (Lakeside Porches 1) by Katie O'Boyle Page B

thought after seeing how much this cell phone is going to cost me every month. Fair enough?”
    Joel nodded. “You can get anything from a no-frills phone with a year’s worth of calling time to a sophisticated smartphone with video, texting, international calling, and apps to the max. The no-frills option will run about a hundred dollars a year.” He started to ask, “Do you—?” and stopped.
    “What? Out with it.”
    “It’s my understanding that most college grads are twenty-to-forty thousand dollars in debt, between college loans, car loans, and credit card balances. Do you even have a credit card?”
    “I paid cash for my car four years ago. I have no college loans. Although I have a credit card, I only use it to establish a credit history.”
    “Satisfy my curiosity. Do you ever actually use the card?”
    Manda nodded. “For car repairs, gas and groceries. I pay it off every month.”
    “You’re telling me you have no debt?”
    “I have no debt.”
    Joel sat back and folded his arms.
    “What? You’re looking at me like I’m an alien species.”
    “I’m torn between admiring your frugality and wanting to choke you for being cheap with yourself. What drives that?”
    Manda took a swallow of coffee. “Fear.”
    “Of?”
    “Not having enough to take care of myself. It’s on my fourth-step inventory as both an asset and a liability,” she admitted, referring to the effort alcoholics made to examine their character strengths and failings.
    Joel was quiet, thinking. She noticed he didn’t need an explanation of “fourth step inventory.”
    “So tell me how you see me being cheap with myself.”
    “Not having a phone, for one thing. Not eating meals when it means paying outside of what you’ve budgeted. Not having clothes that fit. Am I offending you?”
    Manda had looked away in embarrassment. “No, it’s just humbling to hear how other people see you.”
    Joel reached for her hand. “I see you as bright, beautiful, and way too worried.”
    Manda stared at him, not believing what she’d heard. Beautiful? Her?
    “You are about to graduate with a solid business degree that is very marketable, and I think you’re planning to go on to grad school, which will instantly increase your earning power. You can afford to make some small investments in your future by being safe, comfortable, fed, clothed and even happy.”
    “Good to hear, because I’m buying breakfast.” She plucked the bill out from under his credit card and beat him to the register.
    An hour later, they sat with their heads together on a bench in Overlook Park, programming Manda’s no-frills cell phone. “You’ve got Campus Security, me, Tony, nine-one-one and the local AA number on speed dial. You know your voicemail password?”
    “Eleven-eleven.”
    Joel laughed. “You’re not supposed to tell me!”
    “I trust you. You know all my secrets.”
    “So what’s eleven-eleven? Just something easy to remember?”
    “No, it’s the day of surrender—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day.”
    “Got it.”
    “A constant reminder that I have surrendered to my alcoholism and am changing almost everything about the way I live and think.”
    “Do you really have to do all that to stay sober?”
    Manda nodded. “People in the AA program tell me that’s the way to do it, and I believe it’s true for me.”
    He let her be quiet with her thoughts. They sat looking out through the bare trees to the lake, brilliant blue on this sunny day. Joel was thinking the lake was exactly the color of Manda’s eyes.
    Manda said quietly, “I am so grateful you gave me a chance and sent me in the right direction.”
    “I’m glad it’s working out.”
    “I would be dead by now. I realized that last night.”
    Joel shivered to hear her say it. “I agree. Listen, let’s take a look at the studio apartment I had in mind for you.” He pointed through the trees to a row of white houses that marched up the hill on their own little