“I sat at a bar for hours last night because I didn’t want to go home to her.”
“No, you absolutelydidwant to go home to her, but you were afraid. It happens.” Samantha shrugged. “Relationships are complicated, and you’ve known her forever. I get it. I just think it’s time, Harlow.” Samantha sighed. “I’m about to say something contrary to that, but you look so pathetic right now, I feel like I should offer. I’m going bowling with some friends tonight. I know it’s lame, but we usually drink beer and have fun for a few hours. None of us is any good, so we mostly roll gutterballs and make fun of each other. We like to play four on four, so the timing works, but one of my friends canceled. Would you like to be the fourth person on my team and go bowling with me tonight? We can eat fried food, drink, and embarrass ourselves. It’ll get you out of the house you share with Larissa for a few hours. Maybe she’ll even be asleep, and you can avoid her when you get home.”
Harlow laughed again and asked, “Why are you enabling my bad behavior?”
“Like I said, you look pathetic right now, and I feel bad for you. Plus, I need the fourth. Up to you, but let me know soon because I need to call around if you’re a no.”
Harlow thought about it for a few seconds but decided to politely decline the offer. Then, she looked at the door to the lobby as it opened and saw Larissa walking in with her bag over her shoulder and her eyes roaming the room. Larissa smiled when she saw her, and Harlow smiled back at her.
“I’ll be there,” she stated, changing her mind. “Text me the info. I’ll be out of here in about an hour. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, no problem. And I saw that, by the way,” Samantha said and stood up. “Hey, Larissa.”
“Hi, Samantha. How are you?”
“I’m good. Just wrapping up and heading home soon.”
“Have a good night,” Larissa replied.
“Thanks. I’ll text you,” Samantha added to Harlow.
“Okay. Sounds good,” Harlow replied and opened her laptop when she realized that she had no idea if the program she’d been using for the paperwork she had to sign had saved her progress.
“Everything okay?” Larissa asked as she sat down next to her.
“Yeah. Why?” she asked back and found that the programhadsaved.
That was good because she was already on page thirteen of thirty-two of this document, and she had to initial every page, so it had taken forever to get this far. Harlow wasn’t the kind of person to sign a legally binding document without reading it all the way through, so that took longer.
“You look deep in concentration there.”
“Oh, it’s my lease stuff.”
“Lease?”
“For the apartment we saw. I got the email this morning that they’d accepted my application, so I have to sign all of this and get it turned back in to them by a deadline, or they give it to someone else. Then, I have to sign other paperwork and pick a move-in date that also happens to work for them, or they give it to someone else.”
“You got it?” Larissa asked.
Harlow looked over at her and said, “Yeah. I’ll be out of your hair shortly.”
“You’re notinmy hair now, Harlow,” Larissa replied.
“Harlow, your guests are here.”
She looked up to see Samantha packing up her things behind the main desk and two women standing in front of it, turned to face Harlow and Larissa.
“I’ll get them. Do you need a minute to finish this up?” Larissa asked.
“I’ll have to save it and return to it later. I thought I’d have enough time to get through it before they got here, but it took longer than I expected.”
“Because you always read every page, and sometimes, write down questions to ask if you don’t understand something.” Larissa smiled at her. “Why don’t you just finish up and join us when you can? This is more important than the interview anyway. It’s a place to live, versus helping me on some silly book.”
“Hey, it’s not silly,” she defended. “It’s something you care about.”
“Yeah, but it’s not school, and it’s not going to do anything, like make me real money or help people. It’s more of a passion project. I don’t even know if I’ll go through with it. I might just use whatever reliable data I get from these interviews in my paper, if I can, and not write the book at all.”
Harlow squinted her eyes at Larissa and said, “You had lunch with Aggie today.”
