Page 1 of Bingeworthy
Chapter One
Ihit “send” on the message I never thought I’d send.
I can’t come home for Thanksgiving. I have to work.
The name “Lucille” pops up on my phone no less than half a second later.
It’s no use sending my mother to voicemail.
When I tap the red button, the woman doesn’t bother with small talk.
“But you have to come home!” she insists. “Thanksgiving isn’t the same without my Tiff.”
With a pang of longing for Dad’s prize-winning pumpkin pie, I take a deep breath and shore up my resolve.
“You’ll survive. It’s one Thanksgiving,” I say.
I stare across the expanse of the office. Workers scurry around, closing out the final details of their various projects before jetting off for their holiday weekends. The coworker on the phone across from me looks irritated, with deep grooves in her forehead.
Lucille won’t hear of it.
“One Thanksgiving,” she repeats back to me. “Sure. That’s what you say this year. And next year it’ll be some other excuse, and then before you know it, you’ve forgotten all about us.”
My god. Nobody knows how to be dramatic quite like Lucille Morrison. As if I’d forget my family.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to divert her with talk about my sister, her wife, and the kids they share. “But Jill and Jen and all the grandkids are coming over. You’ll be so busy, you won’t even miss me.”
The sales rep across from me shoots me a dirty look. Jean, I think her name is.
“But who’s going to help me make room for leftovers in the fridge?” Mom asks.
At this, I have to laugh. “Spraying all the Reddi Whip into my mouth hardly contributes to freeing up space in the fridge.”
“Just trying to lighten the mood. I think you might still be depressed about Carl.”
“Mom! Carl and I broke up months ago. I’m fine.”
If looks could kill, Jean in sales would be shoveling dirt on top of me right now. She slams down the phone, stands up, and marches away.
“Are you sure? I have to ask because you were together for a year, and they say it takes twice as long as the length of the relationship to get over someone.”
“I broke up with him because he’s a cheater. That accelerates the healing process by a lot.”
“By how much?”
I lower my voice and spin my chair to avoid eye contact with any other coworkers who might overhear me on a personal phone call. “In the negatives. I was already kind of over him three months before I saw the nudes on his phone. This truly is about me having to work.”
When did my mom become curious about how “over” I am with Carl? She never liked Carl. In fact, Mom and Dad have never been fans of any of my boyfriends in the last five years. Which lines up with the time I dated my first boyfriend, Matthew. They loved Matthew, until they didn’t.
Mom is relentless. “There’s no way that office is open on Thanksgiving Day, or the day after. Something else is going on that you’re not telling me.”
“Nothing is going on,” I insist.
Uh-oh. I am not about to tell her I’ll be in the office alone to catch up on work because my last performance review was less than stellar. She’ll tell Dad, and they’ll both freak out and start strategizing an exit plan. Dad will call his restaurateur friends in the city to find me a bookkeeping job. Mom will pressure me to join her event bartending business, Bottoms Up. She’s been hinting that she wants to create a CFO job for me so she can focus on the creative side of her hospitality empire.
I want to see what I can do without their help.
And right now, all I want to do is try not to lose this job, though my stomach growls thinking about my dad’s roasted turkey and cornbread stuffing.
