Page 18 of Stay Here Tonight
“For sure.” Joanie nodded. “I get it.”
No, she didn’t, but that was okay. Lydia didn’t know if she got it either.Might be best to hang out at home.So much for riding out the weekend with those butterflies in her stomach. Was it really so much to ask for some amicability between her and Maxine? Lydia needed to decide how she would act the next time Ms. Woodward sauntered into the resource center.
“Hey.” Joanie put her hand on her friend’s. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah. Wanna go see a movie?”
“Hm?”
“Movies. You and me. If we leave now we could still catch a matinee.”
“Sure. What movie?”
“Dunno.” Lydia laughed with the hopes it wouldn’t turn into hysterics. “Don’t care!”
They went and saw some movie about aliens invading earth and all the explosions it caused. Lydia felt alittlebetter afterward.
Chapter 7
The moment of reckoning happened late Tuesday afternoon. Lydia sat at the welcoming counter, staring at her Facebook timeline and trying to think of something witty to say about a friend’s bad date, when Maxine Woodward marched in with a laptop bag in her hand.
She stopped halfway into the room and stared at Lydia, tanned face paling.That’s right, asshead, I work here.
“Lydia,” Maxine said with forced politeness she probably learned at some boarding school somewhere. “How are you?”
“Fine. Yourself?” Oh, wait. That was a shitty thing to ask, considering what the papers were rolling with the past few days. Oh, well! That’s what she got for being a dick.
Her face settled into a slight scowl. “Never better. Is Francis in?”
Lydia jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Conference room. She’s waiting for you.”
“Hm?”
Lydia shrugged. Maxine would have no room calling her unprofessional. Which was probably why she blithely thanked Lydia before going into the conference room where, yes, Francis sat with her work laptop open and offered a hug to one of her closest friends – the recent fundraiser and $30,000 donation Maxine had made over the weekend solidified that friendship.
Lydia turned back around in her chair and kept her focus on her work (what there was of it by the afternoon, anyway) and the people walking by on the sidewalk outside. A few minutes later, a young man new to the neighborhood stopped in to find out what classes and social functions were coming up before leaving with an armful of materials. Interacting with the public was actually Lydia’s favorite part of the job, but few people came in at that time of day. With her administrative work finished… well, she really hated that Joanie had already gone home for the day. At this rate, Lydia might have to post something on her mother’s Facebook wall and await the inevitable excited phone calls about nothing important.
Around 4:30 she was expected to make the rounds, alerting stragglers in the LGBT library or free conference rooms that they were closing in half an hour. Nobody was in either one today. Lydia stopped off in the bathroom, but it wasn’t until she was halfway through washing her hands that she realized the light no longer flickered.
Huh.She dried off her hands and left the bathroom. The resource center remained dead on the slowest day of the week. Lydia made sure the lights were turned off in every room and that there was no trash left behind. By the time she made it to the main conference room where Francis and Maxine worked, she had almost forgotten that they were even in there.
The blinds were left slightly open. Instead of seeing two women going over binders full of spreadsheets and pulling their hair out over facts, figures, and legalities, she found Maxine crying against her friend’s arm.
Maxine. Crying.
Wow. She does feel emotions.Lydia stepped out of the way in the hopes that neither saw her. Sobs peppered the air, penetrating the glass windows looking into the conference room. When Lydia pressed her ear against the glass, she heard Maxine’s distressed voice pleading for Francis to console her.
“I simply can’t believe it,” Francis said with an admonishing sigh. She patted Maxine’s back with the kind of consolation a mother offers. Until then, Lydia had never really seen her boss as a motherly figure. “What a disgusting thing to accuse you of.”
“I never!” Maxine reiterated, as if for the tenth time “I never once laid a hand on her like that. I never meant to cause her pain or harm. Why would she say this kind of foul shit?”
“Because she’s an egomaniac who wants everyone to feel sorry for her. She thrives on every kind of attention. Supermodels are ridiculous.”
Maxine lifted her head and wiped her eyes. “Shouldn’t have gotten involved with one, huh?”
“You followed your heart. There’s nothing wrong with that. Now, she was never my favorite person in the world, but Ididthink she cared about you. Don’t beat yourself up over getting involved with her. Nobody could have anticipated a divorce like that happening.”
“I don’t know what she wants from me. The divorce was finalized. She got more than she deserved after… you know.”
