If I was honest, it was a thin case. Like one of those flimsy, plastic phone cases you bought off Amazon on a whim because it was uber cheap and has kittens on it, and then, twenty-four hours into using the damn thing, you realized it’s utter junk and did jack shit to protect your device.
Trust me, I did not have an Otterbox, will-survive-anything, kind of case to plead in this conversation.
Even after I’d spilled a hot guy’s pee on myself, I hadn’t been too hip to the medical assisting game on my first day on the job. I’d mislabeled shit, knocked down Lisa’s tower of pee cups more than once, and three players had to be retested because I’d forgotten to tell them not to flush the toilet.
But it was a two-week temp job that paid forty bucks an hour.
I needed that fucking job. I had a gorgeous Gibson acoustic guitar in my sights, and I was only a few hundred dollars and a couple weeks of eating ramen noodles away from buying it.
“Please, Mable,” I begged. “I really need that job.”
“Honey, if I sent you back there this morning, they’d have my ass with a stick that is far too big in diameter even for me,” she responded in her raspy voice with wayyy too much information.
Good God, I think my ears are bleeding.
Mable was notorious for smoking Marlboro Reds in and out of her office, and the woman’s voice was so damn throaty and deep, it sounded like a cat had attempted to remove her vocal cords with its claws. Especially when she meant fucking business.
Unwilling to subject myself to any more of her visuals, I finally gave up the fight for the job I sucked at and started exploring other avenues.
“Well, what else do you have available this week?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that. Just stay patient, Gemma. I’m sure I’ll find you something in a day or two.”
Not the news I want to hear. We ended the call shortly after that, and I tossed my phone back down on my nightstand, shoved my face into my pillow, and groaned.
Not only did I officially have no stream of income, I had nothing to occupy my day. That might seem like a godsend to a lot of people, but ever since I’d dropped out of college, if I wasn’t moving, I felt like I was sinking.
It was probably the weight on my shoulders courtesy of disappointed parents and no concrete life plan, but whatever. Busy feet kept me out of the quicksand.
Instead of sulking in bed, I dragged my ass up and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee. As I passed through the living room, I was on a one-woman diatribe about the ridiculousness of getting fired from a job that entailed collecting urine.
“You’d think it’d be simple, Gem. It’s only something you’ve done since you were a toddler. But no. You have to mess up peeing. Who gets fired for collecting urine? Of all the things. And you had to do it while God’s gift to women—”
“What are you freaking out about?” Abby asked from the couch, and I just about climbed to the damn ceiling in surprise.
“Jesus Christ!” I put a hand to my chest and tried to stop my heart from jumping out of my throat. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry,” she said, but her voice said otherwise.
“When did you get here?”
“Last night.”
“You’ve been here since last night?” I asked and looked around my apartment in confusion. “How did I not know you were here last night?”
She shrugged and sat up on the couch. “You were already asleep when I got here.”
“I never should have given you a key,” I muttered and headed into the kitchen.
Abby was my best friend and the most unpredictable person I’d ever met in my life.
Honestly, I don’t even really know how we met, but ever since that fateful day three or so years ago, she’d become a staple in my life. And my apartment.
Her life’s activities included working at a coffee shop up the street whenever she felt like it, late nights that revolved around house parties and pub nights, and almost never sleeping at her own place. She showed up arbitrarily and without permission and made it seem like the most natural thing in the world.
If I stopped and paid homage to her unexpected arrival every time it happened, I’d probably take up an entire year’s worth of my life.
Hell, she might as well have been my damn roommate with how often she ended up staying at my place.
She followed me into the kitchen a few moments later, my favorite afghan from Grandma Louise wrapped around her body like a cocoon.
“So, you got fired from collecting urine?” she asked, and I groaned.