Chapter 31

Emma

“This one sounds interesting,” Willow called from the other side of the couch. “Creative individuals wanted for temporary, cash work.” She frowned, mumbling the next part. “Must be comfortable with nudity.”

“Someone else’s or my own?” I replied.

She shrugged, “Doesn’t say. Shall I send you the link?”

I laughed and tossed a pillow at her. Looking at jobs was stressful, but at least with Willow around it wasn’t as bad as it could be. I should have started scouring for any and every job I was qualified for the moment I decided to hand in my notice at Goodman-Westfield, but I’d been dragging my feet. Now I was officially unemployed. Just me, a dwindling lump of savings, and selection of listings to weed through to find ones that didn’t involve nudity. Mine or otherwise.

“Are you sure you want to leave the business world so soon?” Willow asked. “I’m finding tons of jobs for office admin and that kind of thing.”

“I’ll go to it as a backup, but I’d rather find something where I can flex my creative muscles a bit. I’ve got some money while I figure things out.”

Not much, though.

“As a kindergarten teacher, I completely agree that you should find a job that suits you spiritually as well as financially,” she said, her tone diplomatic. “But I do think you need to take into account the fact that creative jobs usually require some sort of post-secondary degree. Being a self-taught artist isn’t enough.”

I sighed, “I know, Will. Like I said, if I don’t find anything I can fall back on my office experience. I just really want to try something new. Something fresh.”

Something that wouldn’t remind me of Max.

“Maybe you don’t even need to be looking at jobs right now.”

I tossed a quizzical stare at my best friend. “What do you mean? Of course, I do.” My tone came out harsher than I intended. I sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. This whole process is just taking a toll on me, you know? I feel like I’m running out of time to find my place in the world, meanwhile everybody else seems to have it all figured out.”

“You could take some time off, do some soul searching.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes, still staring at the screen of her laptop.

She’d been acting strange all day since I first asked her to come over and help me look for jobs. Willow was normally a fairly strange person anyway, so I didn’t think much of it at first. But telling me not to apply to any jobs was distinctly out of character. When I first quit two weeks ago, she’d sent me an email with links to several job boards that very same day.

“I don’t understand you at all,” I mused.

Willow laughed. “Me neither sometimes.”

Her phone trilled from the arm of the couch, and Willow practically leapt into the air.

“Oh my God, relax,” I said, laughing. “It’s just your phone.”

She snatched it up and rose to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

I lifted a brow in response to her strange and sudden need for privacy, but didn’t press it. She was entitled to not have me listen in on her phone calls if she wanted.

Willow slipped off to the bathroom. While I continued searching for jobs, finding nothing that I was qualified for much less interested in, I was feeling even more demoralized by the second. The anxiety swirling thick in my chest refused to abate, and all I wanted to do was call Max. I’d been fighting the urge all week. Willow was great, but I knew a few words and a hug from Max, and I wouldn’t be worrying anymore. Too bad I’d burned that bridge.

She came back a few minutes later, smiling nervously at me as she resettled into her spot on the other side of the couch.

“Right... where were we?” She rubbed her hands together and pulled the laptop back over her knees.

“Maybe I should just go home.” The words came out small and weak, which was exactly how I felt for saying them in the first place.

“You are home.”

I tossed her a pointed look and her mouth formed into a silent “O.”

“You can’t go back there,” she said, less than a second later. “You hated it there. You spent all your teenage years plotting your escape.”

“True,” I said, “but I also know that my parents will take care of me. I’ve got some money to get me by, but rent isn’t cheap and if I don’t find a job soon then I’ll blow through my savings in no time.” I shrugged. “Besides, maybe it’s gotten less horrible. I mean, it’s not like they ever beat me or anything. Surely they can’t be as controlling, now that I’m a grown adult and all.”

She snorted. “Less horrible? I doubt it. If anything, you going back would just give your parents the motivation to tighten things down even more. I might never see you again.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This is all just stressing me out. I’m beginning to wonder if leaving Goodman-Westfield was a mistake.”

Willow reached down the sofa and rested her hand on my arm. “You did what you needed to do. Now you just have to trust that things are going to work out. Don’t go home. Stay in New York with me and we’ll find you a job if it’s the last thing we do.”

We lapsed into silence, save for the clicking of keys as we scrolled through pages of job listings.

I wondered if Max missed me. As an employee. As a lover. Probably a little of both, though I hardly found the idea comforting. At the end of the day, he had still let me go. He’d let me leave. It wasn’t like he was supposed to chase after me on a white steed or anything, but he didn’t exactly put up much of a fight. I barely spoke to him during those last two weeks, and he did the same. Maybe he was secretly relieved that I quit the job… and him.

Our quiet was interrupted once more by Willow’s cell phone. She swore and jumped off the couch, bounding to the bathroom without even excusing herself this time.

I tried to listen to see if I could catch any lines of her conversation, but she was too far away and I didn’t think it would be right to get up and snoop. She returned a couple minutes later, her face a little pinker than when she’d left.

“What is going on with your phone today?” I asked jokingly, even though I was completely serious. “Have you started a telephone sex line or something?”

She burst out into nervous laugh, “No, nothing like that. I’m getting a haircut next week and they keep having to move my appointment.”

That was one of the worst excuses she’d ever come up with, but something about her evasiveness told me not to press further. She leaned over her laptop, letting a curtain of her hair cover her face as she got right back down to business.

“You know Emma, if it comes down to it, that telephone sex line thing, might not be a bad idea for you.”