Page 74 of Fun Together
I know.
Those two words make me feel . . . warm. More than a physical attraction kind of warm. Like, I want her to tell me everything, and maybe I could tell her everything, too.
She looks back down at her hands, still fiddling with the towel. “How are things going at work?”
“It’s going okay. I’m still figuring things out.”
“What were you doing before? In New York?”
“I was doing something similar, but it was a smaller company. More of a mom-and-pop kind of place that sold electrical parts.”
The oven beeps, letting us know the cookies are done. Faye gets up to take them out and I watch the swish of her legs as she walks to the oven.
She places them on a plate to cool. “Do you like working in recruiting?”
“Does anyone like working in recruiting?”
She laughs. “I overheard Melissa talking about how you were fitting in well so far.”
“That’s good to know. My last job was . . . the opposite.”
“What happened?” she asks, taking a cookie from the plate, and handing one to me.
“Well, I kind of got fired.” It’s not my favorite topic of conversation, but since we’re talking about it, I might as well be honest. Not that I’m nervous to tell her, but it’s embarrassing because I knew better.
“I’m so sorry. Companies pull that shit all the time.”
“It wasn’t layoffs or anything. It was something I did.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
It was one of the worst days of my life. I’ve never felt the kind of shame I did that day. Turns out, companies do notice when you show up late to work almost every day but lie about it on your timecard. It was so stupid. I was so stupid.
It’s not that I think Faye will judge me, and she obviously understands not wanting to talk about something difficult, but tonight just doesn’t feel like the time to talk about my failures. “It’s a long story, and I’m getting kind of tired.”
“Yeah, same.” She nods and fights a yawn.
I stand up. “Okay if I sleep on your couch for a bit? Don’t want to drive yet.”
“Of yeah, that’s fine.”
She goes into the bathroom, and I hear her brushing her teeth. She comes back out a few minutes later, tugging on the hem of her shirt as if she’s nervous.
“Remember that night we talked on the phone about how sleeping alone sucks?”
I nod, unsure, but stupidly hopeful about where she’s going with this. “Yeah, I do.”
She swings her body around to gesture toward her bedroom. “You could sleep in here with me. If you wanted to.”
My heart starts to pound. Sleep in the bed with her. Sleep in Faye’s bed. In bed with Faye.
I need to calm down. She only wants someone next to her. It’s not like she’s champing at the bit to touch me like I am her. It’s just sleeping. No big deal.
She must take my silence as need to explain herself. “It’s just . . . we’re friends, and?—”
“I’ll stay over.”I’ll do anything you ask, I think but don’t say.
It’s just sleeping.
