At her request, I nod. “Do you have a preference?”
“Yes. I’d like to be paid weekly.”
“Done.”
We look at each other in silence for a brief second, and then she speaks again.
“After Monday you won’t be here anymore.”
“Wednesday,” I correct her. “Wednesday is my last day.”
“Wednesday. And after that it will be the new manager until Denice gets back. Right?” she says.
“That’s correct. Why?” I can’t stop myself from flashing a grin at her. “Going to miss me?”
She folds her arms and narrows her eyes at me. “No.”
“Not even a little bit?” I say, zipping my bag and then standing up. My grin widens at her response: another flat “no” that she delivers without apology.
“But I do want to make sure I can continue working at your home on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” she goes on.
“By all means. Speaking of which”—I glance at my watch to double check—“aren’t you supposed to be there right now?”
She grimaces. “There’s a lot to do today; several people are out sick.”
“I saw that,” I say with a frown.
“And…” she begins, stretching the word out, “I’ve been shooting myself in the foot because I’m petty. It finally caught up to me.”
My eyebrows jump as I wait for an explanation, and she sighs.
“I’ve been emailing Bart instead of going over to his desk and talking to him,” she says.
“Naturally.”
“But he responded to an email at five-fifteen. So…I was working on some stuff now that I heard back from him.”
See? Even this is something I find amusing, something that has me fighting against another smile.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” I say. “If you don’t make it over to my house today, that’s fine. Just come on Monday.” I round the desk and nod to the door; Aurora steps out of the way to let me past. She smells like something sweet but sharp. “I need to head out.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Of course.”
I tilt my head to her and then make myself turn away, striding out of my office and down the hall. Out of curiosity I try to gauge how strongly I feel the impulse to look back at her, and as I suspected—or maybe worried—the urge is definitely there.
“Interesting,” I say under my breath. But I don’t allow myself another glance, and it’s a relief to reach the parking lot.
Rarely do I meet a woman who falls outside the parameters of “out of sight, out of mind.” I’m present when I’m with a woman, but once I’m alone, she usually won’t cross my mind.
Aurora is proving to be different.
Denice,Louis, and Nessa live in a neighborhood near mine, close but significantly nicer. Their home is still warm, though,and comfortable, and when I knock on the door, I only wait a moment before letting myself in.
“Denice,” I call, stepping inside.
“In here,” she responds, and I hear Louis’s voice too, nearly obscured by the sound of a kitchen fan and the hissing sizzle of a frying pan.
I step through into the family room where sure enough, Denice is on the couch, propped up more than actively sitting. Her blonde hair is in a messy ponytail, and she has dark circles under her eyes, but it doesn’t look like the normal kind of tired—more like a bone-deep exhaustion. And yet when I enter the room, she doesn’t even look at me; her eyes are on Nessa, the tiniest human I’ve ever seen in my life, roughly the size of a very large burrito and fast asleep in Denice’s arms.
