“When it’smyturn for this shit,” I reply, “I want to spend the day on Lake Travis with no bachelorette props and exclusively drink Corona.”
“Deal.”
“Do you want to paint the sign or stuff the tote bags?” I magnanimously offer.
“I’ll paint,” Gio says. “You stuff.”
We get to work, and Gio selects a Spotify playlist to keep us company. “This one’s called ‘Country Pop Hits—Singers Not Yet Canceled,’” she says.
“Sounds promising.”
“So, about those hydrangeas.” Gio dips a paintbrush into thepink paint and eyes the faint pencil tracings I marked on the butcher paper. She’s kneeling over the sign, elbows on the carpet. “How many household tasks are you currently outsourcing?”
“All of them.” I grab a tote bag. This one’s for Mariana, Cami’s cousin. “I have a landscaper, a house cleaner, a pest guy,andsomeone helping me with minor renovations.”
“Like what?”
“A garbage disposal!” I announce enthusiastically, stuffing Mariana’s tote bag with a shot glass necklace. “Now I won’t have to use a plunger in my kitchen sink!”
“Remind me why youdidn’tbuy a house from a decade more recent than the thirties?”
“I like this place.” I look around at the sunny yellow walls, the old hardwood floors. “It’s homey.”
Gio makes ahumphnoise and keeps painting. “Have you furnished Cami’s old room yet?”
“I will, as soon as I have a guest. But I never have guests.”
“Not evenmaleguests?” Gio asks.
“Why would amaleguest stay in the guest room?”
“He wouldn’t, ideally.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Theproblem,Josie,” Gio says, her voice exasperated, “is you own a house you’ve lived in for six years and a company you’ve been heading up for seven. Those are very impressive facts. But you haven’t dated anyone since you and Clay broke up after college—which is just fucking absurd, because you are gorgeous and also accidentally hilarious. I mean, as long as you aren’t talking about inventory. You bore me to tears when you talk about inventory. But, like, even back in college, I don’t think I ever saw you get drunk enough to take a man home from the bar. You’ve never made asingleimpulsive decision in my presence.”
I flinch and briefly squeeze my eyes shut.
Gio doesn’t know about the impulsive decision I made in high school that sort of ruined the concept for me. The only person I met after high school whom I told about that is Camila.
“What exactly are you getting at?” I ask.
“Don’t you ever wish you were living a little bit more like a twenty-something with a tasteless wardrobe and a perpetual hangover who doesn’t have it all figured out?”
“First of all, wardrobes are personal. There’s no such thing as tasteless, in my opinion.”
“Okay, Grace Kelly.”
“And second, I donothave it all figured out,” I retort, shoving the sparkly cowboy hat into the tote bag. It doesn’t fit.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“You’re the one in a stable relationship.”
“You should try it. Codependence is sexy.” She turns and shoots me a wink.
“Do you know the look I get from most men when they find out who I am?” I tie the string of the cowboy hat to the strap and put Mariana’s party bag in a corner. “It’s like…” I look at the ceiling, thinking back on all the occasions over the course of my singledom in which a man has hit on me. “It’s like the fact that I have a CEO title instantly emasculates them. I canseethe change on their face when I say it, and any flirtation is squashed from there.”
