It really is. Working with my best friend made even the worst days better. “If I ever get another job?—”
“When,” Emma stresses.
Always the optimist. I smile from where I’m sprawled out on the floor with the pile of laundry I’ve been ignoring. “Maybe you can come work with me. Get the gang back together.”
I can’t imagine Emma ever being without a job. She’s the most capable person I’ve ever met (even though she would never brag), but that’s not why I love her. It’s the giant heart underneath, the same one that I worried for when she was still pining over her piece-of-shit ex, before she and Charlie sorted themselves out.
“I’d follow you to the ends of the earth,” she says.
I haven’t been to church since I hit puberty, but if there’s a god, the proof is in how lucky I am to have Emma in my life. “Have you spoken with your mom yet?”
“No,” I say, throwing myself back on the pillows I pulled off the sofa, sinking into them like they can protect me from the oncoming train that is going to be my mother’s disappointment. “And it’s getting harder not to tell her. I can’t lie to her, but if I tell her before I have a job worked out, I’ll wake up tomorrow to fifty news articles she’s sent me about the decline of the economy and how ungrateful and irresponsible our generation is.”
Either that, or I’ll get an email the length of a small novel that I’ll inevitably have to call my therapist about, and I was sort of hoping to talk about something new for a change. My therapist has been through enough.
No. It’s better this way, even though it’s slowly eating away at my insides. There’s enough on her plate right now with Ciara and the baby, and I certainly don’t need any help with freaking out over my current situation.
I’m managing that just fine on my own.
“Surely she’d understand if you explained wanting a break,” Emma says.
Maybe. I throw the striped blouse I’m holding on to the clean pile without folding it. What’s the point in ironing anything when I’ve spent the past two weeks exclusively in gym gear?
“In my senior year of high school, this local newspaper came by to do a piece on our end-of-year-show. Nothing special. A photo of the cast and some sweet stuff about how enthusiastic we all were.” A total puff piece, but nothing beat how cool it felt to see my face in the paper. “I stuck it up above my bed, and when it came time to choose a college, she sat me down, looked at it, and said, ‘I know you’re going to miss it, but you need to think about your future.’”
I inspect a pair of jeans for stains and find none, rolling them into a ball and putting them on top of the clean pile. I get that it’s my mother’s job to protect me and all, but wow, dagger straight to the heart.
Emma slides off the couch to tackle me into a hug. “I want you to know I support you, 100 percent, no matter what you do. Also, we’re missing two very important things right now.”
I squeeze her back, blinking away the heat prickling my eyes. “Those two things better be tacos and booze.”
“Great minds think alike,” Emma says with glee, standing and grabbing her phone. “I’ll order, and you can tell me all about your date with Lincoln.”
That sly, sexy bitch. Where the hell do I even begin?
I give up on folding a camp T-shirt, throwing it back on the dirty pile to stretch my legs out. “I don’t know what you want me to say. It was good, and weird, and completely unpredictable.” I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
“All your favorite things.”
“I know,” I groan. “First dates will be doomed after this. And the sex… Record making. Scale broken. Tens across the board. I’d let that show run into the ground just for one more season.”
The tip of Emma’s button nose scrunches. “While I’m happy for you, it’s a little strange to think of him like that. All I know of him are glimpses of the cocky kid who used to walk his sister to my house and swim in my pool every summer. We weren’t close. Back then he was too cool for everyone.” She finishes typing and places her phone to the side.
“He’s still like that,” I say. But boy, does it turn me on. I’ve always been a sucker for a guy who had enough of his shit together to not be bothered with petty crap.
Emma smooths out her hair, which is barely damp. Meanwhile I look like I ran face-first into a hurricane. “And the masquerade? I know you were looking forward to it.”
I pause, because this is Emma— gorgeous, smart, looks incredible in a pantsuit, got her shit together, Emma— and I may have oopsied a little too close to the sun this time.
I bury my face in a blue sundress. “I accidentally told his mom we were dating.”
Silence. I open a single eye to find her staring at me, fighting a smile with her jaw dropped.
“It wasn’t on purpose!” I clarify.
“I gathered that from the accidentally,” Emma says. Through the ceiling come the harsh stabs of piano keys that mark Hania’s weekly lessons. “What happened?”
I abandon the pile to slide into the seat next to her. “I told him that I was wondering who I would have been if I’d made different choices in life, and he said to be whoever I wanted because no one would know the difference. In my defense, I had no idea it was his mom until after I said it.”
