“We. Yes.”
Whoosh. Josie pulled the phone away from her ear and let all the air in her lungs go out in one big stream of holy shit. Managing one man was hard enough—why were the two women closest to her suddenly handling two? Was there a message here?
A light bulb went on.
“Oh, honey,” Josie said. “Do you want a job?”
“A job?”
“I’ve always told you that if you want to move out here you can, Darla. But you always said you needed a job along with a place to live. I’m changing jobs and can hire someone to work as my office assistant, and I’m offering it to you. The whole shebang—a place to stay and a job. What do you say?”
Josie held her breath. This was the first time Darla hadn’t snapped a negative answer when begged to move out to Boston. Maybe, just maybe…
“And I know you’ll claim you can’t leave Aunt Cathy, but you know that’s just a chickenshit excuse you’ve been using for years to avoid changing your life. You’re too timid, Darla. You need to take more chances.”
Too much silence. Darla must have been wavering, which meant there was a chance. Time to put on the thumbscrews. “Hint: The correct response is a breathy ‘OMIGOD AUNT JOSIE YOU ARE THE BEST.’” She made a derisive snorting noise. “Not this silent, pensive shit.”
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Just start when you come out here, maybe in a week or two?”
“So what’s the company?”
Shit. How was Josie supposed to explain?
“Josie?”
“It’s not pole dancing.”
“Well, thank goodness, because the only pole I dance on is—”
“Too much information, Darla Josephine. TMI.”
“You’re not really giving me enough details to leap and leave behind my entire life, you know.”
Another snort. “I’m going to guess that right now you’re either getting ready to go work at the gas station where the highlight of your day will be changing the urinal cake in the men’s room, or you’re trying to find a way to keep wiring the cable line from your neighbor so your mom can watch Pawn Stars again.”
“When you put it that way,” Darla said through gritted teeth, “it’s kind of hard to say no. But you have to give me something. What does this company do?”
Buying time, Josie tried to think of how to say this. But then again, maybe not. If Darla was impulsive enough to jump into bed with two guys from her favorite band, surely she wouldn’t care about working for a ménage dating service.
Right?
Finally, she said in a controlled, professional voice, “Let’s just say you’re a perfect match for the job.”
“Okay, Aunt Josie,” she said. “You got a deal. Give me a week or two and I’ll be out there.”
Squeeee! “Darla Jo, it’s the best decision you’ve ever made.”
“I’ve made some whoppers.”
“Yes, you have, and this one’s not one of them.”
This must be what adults feel like, Josie thought as she walked in the front door of Jeddy’s to find Madge waving a half-friendly “hello” and Laura, Dylan, Mike, and baby Jill already settled in a large booth, coffee cups in front of the adults with Jillian nestled in Laura’s lap, attached to one breast discreetly.
The walk from the entrance to the booth where her friends had settled in felt transformative, like some sort of vision quest that took place through a ratty old diner with torn vinyl seats and scratched stainless steel grills. Each step felt like one more gravid foot closer to being expected to act in a more mature manner, to managing relationships with friends, with godchildren, with… what could she call Madge, exactly? Her not boyfriend’s grandfather’s girlfriend? There had to be a word for that, right? Whatever it was, she wasn’t mature enough—yet—to figure it out.
The pity party she’d indulged in for the past month faded as she strode closer to the group. Instead of feeling alienated and like a fourth wheel—a fifth, now that she thought about it, with the baby here. A fleeting thought went through her mind like a ribbon unfurling: These are my people. I belong here.
And she did.
She brought to the group a sense of sarcastic fun, a jauntiness that Dylan, she supposed, was closest in delivering. Lately, though, her main contribution was to hold the baby so that Laura could go to the bathroom alone while the guys developed bags under the bags under their eyes—all three so sleep deprived in a way that Josie could barely identify with. Maybe it was something like working double shifts, back to back, in the early days after getting her nurse’s license when money was tighter and student loan payments nearly crushed her.
Smart enough to know that that wasn’t a good analogy, she realized that she didn’t have to have something comparable in her life, something that she could measure against their experience to feel as if she had a tiny sliver of involvement or understanding. Instead, she chalked up their exhaustion to something she couldn’t fathom and wondered if there would ever be a time when she’d want to nurture a little nine pound thing so much that she would let it rule her world.
“Where’s Alex?” Laura asked, her face hopeful and bright.
The scowl that Josie shot back made Laura’s grin turn quickly into a frown, a melting of her features that made Josie feel a pang of guilt, as if she’d hurt Laura herself. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Dylan muttered something unintelligible to Mike, and if looks could wither, she had just turned him into a desiccated raisin.
“I hope everything is okay,” he said, and then, again, she had to feel something, a halting within herself where everything that she assumed had to be rolled back.
She squared her shoulders and reminded herself that no one here was judging her. “It’s all, well… it’s not good,” she said, “but it’s not bad. I just don’t want to talk about him right now.” Not in front of your happy family, she thought. “I do want to talk about the business.”
“Yes,” Mike said, swigging back the final bit of coffee in his cup and banging it down on the tabletop just enough like Thor to make the corners of Josie’s mouth pop up. “Let’s talk about the business. How do you want to structure it?”
Josie and Laura exchanged a look. “I thought we’d figured that all out,” Laura said.