“I was going to warn you. I swear. I just didn’t realize you actually accepted the position and were starting today.”
“Because you don’t listen,” I sigh. “You don’t, Joy.”
“I do too! I’m just . . . busy. I have so many balls up in the air right now . . .”
She continues on in some tirade about how hard her life is now that her parents have started to wean her off financially. They want her to get a job. She thinks they’re being unreasonable. It’s a little hard to hear when you’ve had a job, sometimes two, since you were fifteen.
“Mal?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” I say, stripping out of my dress. “I’m here.”
“Who’s not listening now?”
“I’m getting in the bath,” I say, turning the water off. After dumping in a handful of bath salts, I test the temperature with my toe. Perfect. After sinking in the tub, I rest my head against a towel. “There. What were you saying?”
“I was just asking how your day went. That’s all.”
“It went well, I think. It’s nothing too complicated and nothing I haven’t done before. They’re paying me really well too.”
She pauses. “That’s it?”
“Yeah. I mean, what are you wanting me to say?”
“Damn it, Mal! You know I’ve fantasized about the Landry boys since we were ten. The closest I’ve ever gotten to one is a quick kiss with Ford behind his mother’s car in sixth grade. I used to beg Camilla to have me stay the night just so I could try to see her brothers.”
“You’ve always been a little hoochie,” I laugh, my thighs pressing together as Graham’s chiseled face floats into my mind.
“So?”
We both laugh as the water soothes my tense muscles. I close my eyes and sigh. “Graham is outrageously good-looking.”
“You aren’t complaining, are you?”
“No, no, of course not,” I say hurriedly. “It’s just really hard to concentrate when he’s on the other side of the wall all day. I have to call in his office and alert him of calls or appointments, and his voice comes through the line, and I literally have to talk myself out of not taking a bathroom break and getting myself off. I just hope this works out . . .”
“I’m going to pretend I don’t hear that thing in your voice.”
“What thing?” I ask defensively.
“That bit of uncertainty. Just stop it. Everything will be fine.”
It’s easy for her to say. Her bills are paid regardless if she works or not. It’s not that simple for me. I only got into the private school that she, Camilla, and Sienna went to because I worked my butt off in middle school, filled out the paperwork for a scholarship, and practiced for a week straight for the entrance interview. We couldn’t afford it. And, frankly, my parents didn’t think a good education was really that important. I’d finish high school and go get a job at the factory or be a cashier at the hardware store and be happy. If I mentioned pursuing something different, they rolled their eyes and told me to be realistic. I wanted more.
Through pure determination on my part and maybe a toss of luck from up above, the administrators of the school let me in with a scholarship. It was the best day of my life.
Now I sit in this mediocre apartment and look around. The porcelain in the tub is cracking and the corner of the mirror above the sink is broken, and I fight off the unsteadiness that wobbles in my gut.
“Will it be okay?” I ask. “I feel so out of touch.”
“Out of touch with what?”
“With . . . me. I don’t know who I am or what I want or what’s even possible for me anymore, Joy. I’m having a midlife crisis,” I pout.
“You can’t have a midlife crisis at your age,” she scoffs.
“You totally can. I think it’s called a quarter-life crisis, actually.”
“Stop sounding all doom and gloom.”