Page 23 of The One I Want
“What!” He stands up like he’s about to run away. “You can’t be!”
I shrug. “I am what I am.”
“I don’t know if I can handle this.”
I laugh at his dramatics as Emerson, Magnolia, and Peggy come walking over.
“What’s the matter with him?” Peggy asks as Hank starts pacing the yard.
“Hogwarts drama,” I say. “How are you?”
She just shakes her head. I have a feeling this isn’t the first time Hank has been crippled by fictitious ethical decisions.
“Oh, just fine, my dear. Just getting another day with my grandkids. I would ask you how you’re doing, but I feel like I already know the answer.”
We both turn our gazes to my shoddy-looking balloon arch as the kids start running around the yard, chasing all of the ones that have floated away. “You would be right.”
I walk up the stairs to my porch and take a seat on one of the chairs. “Whitley asked me to do this for her. It seemed easy enough when she told me how to do it. And I’m a pretty crafty person. But this? I can’t handle it. What kind of event planner am I if I can’t even tie balloons?”
Peggy pats my hand as she takes a seat next to me. “The kind that maybe isn’t meant to arrange large balloon arches.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, three balloons that I thought I had secured somehow get loose and fly away.
“Fuck me.”
I slap my hand over my mouth. That has to be worth at least ten dollars in the jar.
“I’m so sorry.”
Peggy waves me off. “I raised three boys, and my husband owns a construction firm. It’s nothing that I haven’t heard before. Plus, judging by the amount of balloons the kids are carrying back, I probably would have said it too.”
The more and more I talk to Peggy Taylor, the more and more I love her. She’s just so…motherly. She always asks how I’m doing or is making sure that I’ve eaten. Once a week she stops over just to talk. In fact, I think I’ve talked to her more since I moved here than my own mother. The few phone calls we’ve had have all gone the same way—her making me feel like a disappointment. So I quit calling. I’ll answer when she calls, but I do my best to make the conversations as short as possible. Because despite her passive aggressive digs, I am loving this town.
The job? Not so much.
“What’s the matter with me, Peggy?”
She looks at me curiously. “What do you mean, my dear?”
I nod down to the balloon arch. “This balloon arch is symbolic to my life. Every time I think I have it down, something happens and it ends up a disaster. I really hoped moving here and working for Whitley would help me find my path, but maybe this isn’t it either.”
That feels good to say out loud. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. Yes, the balloon arch is the first major thing I’ve messed up. But even if I had done that to perfection today, I still don’t know if I would have felt any sort of excitement or sense of accomplishment. Being Whitley’s assistant is fine. She pays me well and working with your best friend is the best. But from the moment I start until the minute I leave, I’m watching the clock. I literally can’t get out of there fast enough.
If I can’t even work for my best friend and be happy, then maybe I’m doomed.
“Growing up, my mom swore by Julia Child’s cookbooks,” Peggy says. “I actually still have them.”
This is such a random comment in the middle of my confession that I pause to wonder if she’s older than she looks and is having cognition issues. But I play along. “My Meemaw had Julia’s cookbooks,” I say. “That’s how I learned to cook.”
“Well then, one day we are going to have to tackle a recipe together,” she says. “But did you know that she didn’t write her first cookbook until she was fifty?”
“Oh, wow.”
“Wow is right. Do you know what she did before that?”
I shake my head. “Was it assemble balloon arches? That would make me feel a lot better.”
This makes her laugh. “She was a spy.”
