Page 23 of Wild Love
His matter-of-factly scheduling to woo me four weeks from now strikes me silent. If the situation wasn’t so painfully lackluster, it might be funny. If I wasn’t so offended, I might laugh. He should be dropping everything and rushing here. To talk. To apologize for not rubbing my back when I told him about what happened to me at work. For not sharing my rage when HR served me with a bullshit dismissal letter detailing my subpar performance—whichconveniently followed one of their company presidents sexually assaulting me.
The bell rings and I am saved by it, literally. Because with more peace and quiet and warm sunshine, I might have said somethingmeanto him.
And I know I’m not perfect. I know I haven’t pulled my weight in making things work between us lately. But I can also see that neither of us wants to pull our weight. We’re just here because we’re comfortable.Safe.
The doors blast open, and the squeals of happy children fill the air.
“Sure. I’ll check my calendar,” I mumble.
And then I hang up. Agitation courses through me, followed by a deep sense of shame that I’ve never felt before.
Shame because I’m too embarrassed to do anything about Ryan and my old job. Shame because my boyfriend of two years feels no inclination to take up for me over the whole debacle. And shame because I shouldn’t be letting it bug me this much. I’m happy, funny, good-time girl, Rosie Belmont—but I feel like a dulled-down version of myself.
I feel how Cora looks as she trudges toward me in a pair of clunky Doc Martens with a deadly scowl on her face.
I almost laugh, because she looks just like Ford did this afternoon. Moody and temperamental—and wearing black from head to toe.
“Cora!” I call out, raising my hand in a wave. “I’m your ride today!” I feel the weight of more than a few gazes on me, but I ignore them.
Her eyes roll and she hikes her thumbs beneath herbackpack’s shoulder straps. “You don’t have to yell,” she grumbles as she approaches.
“Want me to dance next time so you can pick me out of the crowd?” I give her a teasing elbow nudge as she walks past me.
With a glance over her shoulder, she shakes her head and juts her chin out at some of the waiting parents. “No. These pervy small-town dads would like that way too much.”
Oh boy. I remember this phase. Thinking you’re all cool and grown-up, when in reality, you’re chock-full of teenaged angst and every mood known to man. A bittersweet pang hits me as I watch her climb into the front passenger seat. Maybe she and I aren’t so different after all.
Which is why I plaster on a grin and yank the driver’s side door open before sliding in next to her.
“I meant the chicken dance, not a striptease,” I say with mock disappointment as I crank the key in the ignition.
She doesn’t respond, but when I peek over at her, I swear I see her lips twitch.
“What are you doing?”
Parked in front of Ford’s shitty office, Cora stares at me with her forehead all scrunched up. She even looks like him when she does that.
“Thinking.” My hands twist on the steering wheel of my Subaru.
“You look like you’re going to pop a blood vessel,” she says casually, right as she pops a stick of Juicy Fruit into her mouth.
“That’s an accurate depiction of how I feel inside too.”
“Is it Ford?”
I slump back in the seat, flattening my hands against the wheel. “It’s my entire life. You know?”
She nods, and I’m about to say something like,of course you don’t know, you’re a fucking twelve-year-old, but the look in her eye tells me perhaps she does.
“My job. My current living situation. My boyfriend. Having to tell my parents about all the above. A popped blood vessel would be a literal cherry on top.”
She perks up at the mention ofboyfriend. It’s subtle, but it’s there. The way she leans incrementally forward and inspects me a tad more closely.
“You have a boyfriend?”
I huff out a breath and shake my head. “Great question. I keep asking myself the same thing.”
Disappointment fills her responding sigh.
