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English
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Part 12 of Weekly Words
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SDV Writers Guild Weekly Word Challenge
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Published:
2025-11-18
Words:
979
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
8
Kudos:
7
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23

Mom Stuff

Summary:

Jodi hasn't gotten out much since Vincent was born. Caroline and Robin decide to do something about it.

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Prompt: A Taste of Freedom
No required characters

Notes:

Shout out to the three middle aged women who were getting their groove on in the Chelsea 16 Handles in the spring of 2012. I was the stressed out college student sitting in the opposite corner, and even though we didn't speak, you made me feel a whole lot better about the prospect of becoming a "real" adult. Wherever you are now, I hope you're still breaking it down in public ❤️

Work Text:

The unenthusiastic young woman behind the counter handed Caroline her change. Thankfully, she didn’t roll her eyes or make any comments when she wrestled it into her purse one-handed. “Thank you, have a great day,” the cashier recited in a monotone.

“Thank you too!” Caroline responded with way more energy, because this was already shaping up to be the best day she’d had in ages.

It was Robin’s idea to steal Jodi from her house and smuggle her to Grampleton for ice cream. She hemmed and hawed, of course. Her first protest of “I can’t leave Vincent for that long!” was met with passionate arguments to the contrary. Kent was a perfectly capable father. Besides, Vincent had just had his first birthday, he was hardly a helpless newborn anymore.

“But I have so much to do around the house!” Jodi had tried next, as if the laundry couldn’t wait in the hampers for a couple of hours. Caroline knew exactly how clean the rest of the house was, too. It was always clean, because Jodi refused to give herself a break. That’s why Caroline and Robin needed to rescue the poor woman in the first place.

“Ice cream before dinner would set such a bad example!” was Jodi’s last half-hearted refusal. That one had made Robin laugh out loud.

“Most of our kids are old enough to be setting their own bad examples,” she’d pointed out.

Caroline had no issues agreeing with that. She loved Abigail, but her dramatic entrance into puberty had not done her household any favors. 

“And nobody needs to know exactly what we’re doing,” Robin had continued. “They’ll just assume it’s boring mom stuff.”

Accepting that logic with a smile, Jodi finally caved. One bus ride later, she was sinking into the hard, plastic chair at the ice cream parlor as if it was a plush sofa. She and Robin were already diving into their cones as Caroline joined them with her own. The shop had only just opened for the day, so they had the whole place to themselves. Even with light street traffic outside, even with cheesy pop music playing through overhead speakers, it was the quietest moment they’d experienced all week.

“Thank you so much for talking me into this,” Jodi said between licks of butter pecan. “I really needed it.”

“You did!” Robin emphatically agreed, pointing her own strawberry cone in Jodi’s direction for emphasis. “I don’t know how you’re surviving with a baby and a teenager.”

“They’re sweet boys,” Jodi countered, with a guilty edge that implied that she also didn’t know how she was surviving the not-so-sweet parts.

“Abby’s a sweet girl too, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need a break from each other every now and then,” Caroline chimed in. She took a spoon to her cone, earning a playful eye roll from both of her friends, and lifted an indulgent bite of double fudge ripple to her mouth.

“And there’s only one Abigail!” Robin said. “I swear, with the noise in my house, it feels like Maru and Sebby are multiplying.”

Jodi nodded. “I’m so proud of both of our boys for learning instruments, but between the guitar and the crying baby…”

“It’s impossible to think!” Robin finished for her. “You’re lucky Vincent’s too young to make chemicals explode in his bedroom.”

“It’s only a matter of time!”

Jodi’s joke elicited a round of giddy, sugar-drunk laughter. Caroline couldn’t help feeling like she was a teenager herself, playing hooky without a care in the world. She knew she was lucky to have as much time for herself as she did. Pierre and Abigail never begrudged her a morning hour in the tearoom, and they were both supportive of the aerobics class she ran out of their living room. It was rare that she had moments like these, though, free from anything resembling work. Now that she was in one — on a weekday in spring, no less — she could feel long-forgotten parts of her brain shifting back into place.

The song playing overhead changed, fading out from a synthetic dance beat to a soulful guitar riff. When the lyrics came in, memories came flooding in with them. This was a much older hit, something her own mom would have played around the house when Caroline was Abigail’s age.

Robin’s eyes lit up with equally happy recognition. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Oh my goodness, I can’t remember the last time I heard this!” Jodi said, tapping her foot in time to the beat. When she realized she was making the flimsy table wobble, she stopped and steadied it with an apologetic grimace.

On this afternoon of freedom, Caroline was having absolutely none of that. She chair-danced with more enthusiasm, hips rocking from side to side, half-finished cone serving as a microphone when she joined in with the chorus. Conspiratorial gleam in her eye, Robin added off-key harmonies for the second verse. Jodi blushed a deep red, but her smile gave her away. Before long, she was shimmying her shoulders and giving into the radiant noise, noise that was entirely theirs.

Caroline felt eyes on her when the song ended. She turned around in her seat to find the cashier looking notably less bored. When they made eye contact, she raised her arms from the counter for a brief round of a applause.

Reality trickled into Caroline’s good mood. “Sorry! We didn’t mean to be so obnoxious.”

The cashier chuckled. “Girl, please, the whiny toddlers are obnoxious. You guys just made my whole day.”

Caroline smiled her appreciation. When she turned back around, Robin and Jodi’s hands were both pressed to their mouths to mask their giggles. Joy poked through their embarrassment in streams of sunlight, lifting Caroline right back up along with them. This was the best day she’d had in ages, without a doubt.

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