“Oh, sorry. I thought you two were together.”
“No, just friends,” she said and then finished her beer. “I should go get myself another drink.”
“Okay. Nice talking to you.”
This was ridiculous. She’d see him on Monday. Harlow nodded at him and walked back toward the bar. She’d driven tonight, so she had to take it easy, and it was a work party, so she had to take it even easier because she wasn’t about to get drunk in front of these people. She waited in line and turned to watch some of her co-workers on the dance floor. Most of them were there with their spouses or significant others, and Harlow was there alone. When her phone pinged in her pocket, she pulled it out to see who was texting her, wishing it was someone with a good excuse for her to duck out of this party early.
Alicia: I found it. It was in a cabinet I never use. No clue how it got there, but small curls are in my immediate future.
Harlow chuckled a little, looked back up at everyone dancing, and texted Alicia back.
Harlow: Glad to hear it. Can I ask you for a favor now? It’s bigger than a curling iron.
Alicia replied immediately that Harlow could ask, but that she didn’t have to say yes.
Harlow: Can I stay over at your place tonight? Our old place?
Alicia: Why?
Harlow: I need a break from Larissa’s, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.
Alicia: I’m going out with some friends tonight.
Harlow: I still have my key. I can let myself in and just crash on the couch when I get done here. I won’t bother you. I just don’t feel like going there.
Alicia: You still have your key? I thought you gave that back.
Harlow: I had two. I gave one back. I didn’t even realize I had the other one until a few days ago. I was going to give it back to you, but it didn’t seem like a big deal.
Alicia: It’s not. It’s fine. Keep it for emergencies, like if you stole anything else of mine, and I need you to drop it off when I’m not there.
Harlow: Hey, I didn’t take the curling iron. You found it. As if I even need one of those.
Alicia: You can crash here tonight, but I don’t know that you should make a habit of it.
Harlow: Understood. And thanks.
Alicia: And don’t drink all my beer. It’s the kind you like, but it’s mine.
Harlow chuckled again, typed that she’d leave Alicia’s beer alone, and then ordered one from the bartender. Looking around the room again after that, she wondered what she was even doing here.
CHAPTER 15
“Hey, do you have to run out somewhere? Want to have breakfast with me?” she asked on her way to Harlow’s room, only to find the door open, but the room was empty.
Thinking Harlow was in the bathroom, she went back into the kitchen to start on some coffee for them, expecting her to emerge sooner rather than later. The shower wasn’t on, though, she realized. Larissa knew that because the plumbing in the house wasn’t exactly quiet. In fact, her dad had offered to come over and take a look on more than one occasion, but she’d turned him down every time, thinking her parents had already done too much for her. She waited ten more minutes before deciding to check Harlow’s room again, thinking that maybe she’d been so absorbed in the journal she was reading and hadn’t noticed her going back to her bedroom, but Harlow wasn’t there. Larissa then walked by the guest bathroom and took a chance, pushing the door open. No Harlow.
“Oh,” she said to herself and leaned against the doorframe. “She didn’t come home last night. Right. Of course.”
That really only meant one thing: Harlow had gone home with someone. That was probably why she hadn’t wanted Larissa to go to the work party with her. She had had someone there she was interested in and hadn’t wanted Larissa tagging along, orshe had wanted to go out after the work event and hadn’t wanted it to look like they were there together.
Larissa walked back to the kitchen table and found her coffee already cold. It didn’t matter. She needed to get going anyway. She had work in an hour and had to get dressed.
Working at a local bookstore part-time wasn’t glamorous, and it didn’t pay well, but itdidpay, and it made her feel like she wasn’t entirely depending on her parents to pay for everything. With this job and the little money she made from teaching when she did teach, she had enough to pay for her bills and a little more than that, but that was it. She hadn’t put anything away into savings, and she knew that would become more and more of a problem the older she got. Never wanting or expecting to be a millionaire, she wasn’t worried about how little she would make as a professor once she got a professorship somewhere, but it had crossed her mind that she wouldn’t teach forever and would need something coming in when she retired. The idea for the book hadn’t stemmed from that exactly, but having some kind of income that would be in addition to her teaching would help her build the kind of future she wanted for herself.
Her house was free because of her parents, but it wasn’t where she wanted to live forever, so her plan was to take good enough care of it for her dad so that when she found a home with someone she would, hopefully, meet and marry one day, he could flip this one and make a belated profit on it, and she’d have the house she wanted with the woman she’d spend her life with.
“I’m looking for a book,” a woman said to her later, when Larissa was at work.
