Page 70 of (Not So) Mad About You

Chapter Twenty Eight

Bea stared at her phone, trying to work out what was going on. The message just said to stay at home, that Alli was on her way.

Why? She wondered.

She missed Alli, missed seeing her every day, missed being close to her, seeing her smile. But she was adult enough to realize that real life had to intrude at some point. They both had adult lives to get back to, and they’d talked about this, talked about how to compromise, how to make this work.

And at lunchtime on a Monday, Alli very much should be at work. Unless, Bea thought, unless something had happened. Maybe Alli had lost her temper again. Or, and this looked a little more possible, maybe Alli had quit.

Yes, that was it. Maybe she’d gone back to work and discovered that it wasn’t what she wanted at all, that it was too stressful or… or something.

She was pacing around the living room, still stumbling over boxes. Marilyn and Robbie were both at work. She and Allie would have the place to themselves. She should be happy about this, excited, but… But she wasn’t. There was something wrong. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.

And when the doorbell finally rang, her stomach was twistingitself into knots and she was shaking as she walked to the door.

She took a deep breath and opened it. Alli was standing there, her face almost unrecognizable, her skin flushed, her eyes fiery. Bea swallowed. “Hi.”

“Don’t ‘hi’ me,” spat Alli. “Don’t even… How could you? How could you do this to me? You know how important it is, you know what I had to lose and then you go and do something like this… like…” She stumbled, stuttered, the words not able to get out fast enough.

Next door, a door opened and Bea’s neighbor stuck his head out. “You alright, Bea?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” Alli said.

Bea made a judgment call. Perhaps the wrong one, but she still didn’t know what this was about, still didn’t know what was going on. “I’m fine,” she said. “Totally fine. Thanks though.” She smiled at him and opened the front door wider. “Come in,” she said to Alli.

Alli practically barged past her. “I can’t believe you’d do something so fucking stupid. Or so cruel. How could you?”

Bea closed the front door. There had to be some mistake here. “How could I what?”

“And now you’re going to play innocent,” said Alli. She was standing in the middle of the living room floor, hands on her hips, cheeks flaming red. “I trusted you.”

“Of course you can trust me,” Bea said, offended at the thought that Alli might think she couldn’t. “What’s going on here?”

Alli rolled her eyes and looked like she was going to spit. “I got fired, that’s what’s fucking going on. Fired. Do you understand that? Fired as in I’ve got no job, as in the thing that I’ve worked for my whole life is over. As in my career is down the toilet. As in, I’ve lost everything. So thank you so much, Bea.”

Bea just stared at her.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” Alli said. “Not surprising. There’s no defense really, is there? You’re either colder and crueler than I expected, or you’re actually stupid.”

“I’m not stupid,” Bea said automatically. “And I still don’t understand what the hell’s going on here. Why did you get fired?”

Alli snorted. “Yeah, right.”

Bea stood her ground. “I don’t understand.”

???

For a second there, Alli almost bought it, almost fell for it. Then she remembered the look on Darren’s face, remembered the burning shame in her stomach, remembered that there was no way anyone else could be responsible for this. And the anger took over all over again.

“You don’t understand?” she screamed. “You don’t fucking understand? What is there to understand? You got me fired. You lost me my job. You and your stupid report.”

“What report?” Bea asked.

Alli closed her eyes, took big, deep breaths, but they did nothing to calm her. Nothing to change anything. The whole drive over, she’d tried to think of another explanation, tried to find a way to calm the anger inside her, to direct it at someone else. But she just couldn’t.

The job hurt, but Bea’s betrayal hurt more. How could she have done this? The one time she let her guard down and trusted someone, the one time she let someone in, and then this happened and Alli just realized all over again why she was better off alone.

She might not be broken, but she was definitely an army of one.

---