Chapter 43
The weekend at Oakbrook had been bittersweet, and Josie spent the following days feeling sorry for herself.
“Can’t you just go back if you miss it so much?” Stella asked on Wednesday morning.
“No, she can’t,” Brenda hissed. “What would we do without her?” She beamed at Josie. “You’re not going to leave us, are you?”
“No. I’m not going back. I can’t.”
“But if you love this Sam fella” – Stella chopped vegetables as she chatted – “and he was happy to see you again, can’t you just go back and work things out?”
Josie shook her head. She couldn’t, even though part of her wished she could. “I can’t go back to him. I miss him but I’m still angry with him. He should have been supportive about my job offer. I hate that he wouldn’t look at it from my point of view and wasn’t willing to make any sacrifices. It’s not the sort of person I want to be with. Even if I do love him.”
“And you do love him?” Brenda said.
Josie slouched against a kitchen unit. “It’s irrelevant. Relationships don’t always work out. Ours didn’t and I’ve moved on.”
“Really?” Stella asked. “Because you spent all day yesterday looking like the world was coming to an end.”
“Not because of Sam. I moved to London for my career but I hate the TV work. It’s not the career I wanted it to be and it’s never going to be.”
“Oh, hang on,” Brenda said playfully. “It sounds like you are thinking of leaving us.”
“I love working here,” she said. “I just want something more fulfilling. Something where I can grow and develop.”
Brenda squeezed her arm reassuringly.
“What about doing a college course or something?” Stella suggested.
“I’ve no idea what I want to do, though. I was so sure I wanted to be an actress. Now I need to find a new career path.”
She was still mulling it over that evening when her phone rang. Sam’s name flashed on the screen. To say she was surprised would be something of an understatement. She answered hesitantly.
“Is it a good time?” he asked. “I didn’t know if you’d still be at work.”
“I just got home.” Why was he calling? What did he want?
“How was filming today?”
She rubbed her eyes. Did he just want to chat?
“Work was fine.” She didn’t want to lie but she also didn’t want to tell him that she actually worked in a café most of the time. “Tiring. I was just about to go to bed. Did you need something?”
“Heather logged herself out of the Twitter account and couldn’t find the password. I told her I’d ask you.”
She pressed her lips together. Either Heather was completely useless or Sam was making up excuses to call. “It’s on the corkboard in the study. All the passwords are up there. Heather knows that.”
“She must have forgotten.”
“She could also have called me herself,” she said tersely.
“Aren’t I allowed to call you?”
She paced the room. “I’d rather you didn’t, to be honest.”
“I thought we could still be friends.”
She gave a short humourless laugh. There was no way she could be friends with Sam. Being in the same room with him felt like torture.
“No. We can’t be friends. And I find it really weird that you’d call and ask me about work since you didn’t want me to take the job and broke up with me when I did.” She swallowed hard and hated the tears which pooled in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was full of emotion.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry.” She couldn’t help crying and her words were muffled. “You didn’t want to be with me any more. You don’t get to be my friend. I don’t need friends like you.”
“I was an idiot,” he said quickly. “And I miss you—”
“I don’t want to know!” She stopped pacing and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Don’t call me again.” She spat the words out and then ended the call with trembling hands. Sinking onto the couch, she sobbed. It was the last thing she needed. Every day it was an effort not to think about him, to push away thoughts of going back to him. Knowing that he missed her too, and that he wanted her back, made it so much harder.
She needed to look forward and think about her future, not dwell on the past.
***
In the following days she forced herself not to think about Sam. It was made more difficult by his daily phone calls. She didn’t answer them and focussed on figuring out how to get her life back on track. She knew she needed to make some big changes, she just wasn’t sure what.
It was a week later while opening the café that she saw the woman with the toddler and the noisy golden retriever stop outside. Josie went out and made a big fuss of the dog and then held the door while the woman lugged the buggy inside. The dog obeyed when Josie told him to sit.
“Did it take you long to learn that?” The woman parked the buggy next to a table and took a seat. “The dog training stuff.”
“Not really,” Josie said vaguely.
“You just did a course or something, did you?”
Josie looked slightly confused. “I just learnt on the job when I worked in a kennels.”
“That’s good. I thought you’d have to do some sort of training if you were working in a kennels.”
“No,” Josie said thoughtfully. It had never even occurred to her.
“I keep thinking I’ll sign up for one of these doggy schools. You know the ones, they meet in the park and teach you how to control your dog. I just never get round to it.”
Josie took her order and wandered back to the kitchen. The day passed in a bit of a blur, and the conversation with the dog owner played on her mind. Josie got her laptop out as soon as she got back to the apartment that evening.
“Did you know you can do courses in dog training?” she mused aloud as Emily flicked through the TV channels beside her.
“I can’t say it’s something I ever thought about much. But I suppose that makes sense. Why?”
“It just never occurred to me that you could train in this kind of thing. I always thought it was something you were either good at or you weren’t.” She scanned the course list for a small local college which specialised in animal care. “There are courses in dog grooming, dog nutrition, health and well-being. All sorts of stuff.”
Emily mumbled a vague response, clearly unimpressed by the revelation.
Josie’s mind raced.
Her phone lit up and vibrated round the coffee table.
Another call from Sam.
She ignored it.