by Rachel Hanna
Or think about my father and that dream, that I couldn't be trusted with fiduciary duties.
Or about Rick, who hadn't called or texted. He wasn't supposed to be part of the equation anyway. This just made everything easier.
I didn't expect to hear back for weeks. In Vegas it would certainly be that way. I'd been prepared to deal with the wait. There was a week with Sunny first, and during that I wasn't going to waste time brooding.
I didn't have to. They asked me to excuse them at the end of the presentation, after Q&A which had gone on forever, and they huddled in another small room off the conference room, where I could see but not hear them. Reminded me a little of bullies at school, the way they'd group together and discuss what antisocial thing they should do next.
This wasn't high school, though, and what they chose to do at the end of their conference was hire me.
"We were pretty sure," Jared said, walking me out. There'd been an offer of lunch but I wanted to get on to Roswell and see Sunny. "Part of the point of the visit is just whether you'd do it."
I blinked. We were walking through an atrium I hadn't even noticed on my way in. I'd been more nervous than I thought. "Were there candidates who weren't willing to come out?" I couldn't imagine.
"Oh, sure. One from South Carolina. Not like he had to come far. That was for a different job. For yours there was someone from California who chose not to travel unless guaranteed a job."
We were standing at the front entrance then, the sun blinding off the snow which here was thin and sparse, melting off dark and concrete surfaces and hiding in shadows. I tried and failed to imagine refusing to travel when it came to something I really wanted. That added up to refusing to go for what you wanted.
Fears and phobias or not, I couldn't imagine it.
I took my leave of Jared and drove to Sunny's house.
"You're here!"
Sunny burst out the front door before I got the passenger door open to grab my stuff. We threw our arms around each other right there on the sidewalk, already starting the fast, insane, nonstop chatter that would continue until I got back on the airplane in another four days. Tiny, honey blond, athletic, grinning, she led me into the house, dragging my carry-on.
I carried the messenger bag. It seemed like good luck now. I wasn't about to jinx anything.
"Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!" she demanded as we whirled into the kitchen so she could start slicing lemons for the iced tea. There was no snow in Sunny's town, and the spring day was moderate.
I couldn't wait. I put down the laptop bag and said, "I got the job!"
When I'm home in Vegas and Sunny is in Roswell, GA, we talk on the phone at least once a week. Because when Sunny got married and moved we were both insanely busy, and since that hasn't really stopped, we talk at midnight usually. That way her twins are in bed for the night and so, usually, is her husband. For me, it means my work day and workout are both behind me.
Even though the next morning sucks, there are nights we don't stop talking before three a.m. Mutual friends, my sister and Sun's husband, they've all at some point asked what we can possibly find to talk about for three hours. It's like they'd accept a smaller amount of time given over to Caffeinated Midnight, the two of us thousands of miles apart drinking our latest favorite beverage. Neither of us has really made a lot of attempt to explain. It's the same way we can spend four days together and not run out of things to talk about.
So for the next four days after my snow jam and hiring at City of Hanlin Economic Development we talked about my moving to Georgia so we'd be neighbors again and about the move and logistics thereof. We talked about books, and favorite authors, and why, with all her time at home, Sunny wasn't trying to write a book yet.
That was supposed to be ironic, given the twins were two, and it made her sputter in protest the same as when I'd asked, "What, they're both two? At the same time? That wasn't good planning, Sun." We left the twins with their dad and went hiking and then we left them with their dad and went running and then we tried to leave them with their dad to go shopping but he refused on the grounds that we'd come back from outdoors adventures but we might never return from the mall.
But sitting in Sunny's big, gleamingly clean kitchen while outside the world woke to spring and inside the day broke to chaos fairly often, the thing we most talked about was Rick.
"So," Sunny said after the initial congratulatory jumping up and down and conversations about my moving to Georgia and her mother-in-law leaving it were out of the way. "So you hooked up." Her eyes gleamed avidly. Sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, she propped her chin on one fist. "Do tell."
I faltered. This was Sunny. There was nothing we hadn't been able to tell each other over the years. But the experience with Rick, which should have been a footnote in my personal history, was somehow raw. I danced around it in my own head. It wasn't like I wanted to do otherwise aloud. "I, um, he and I, we, um. We hooked up." There.
Sunny rolled her big brown eyes. "I know that, Powers. So spill. You said the guy looks like a young Robert Redford, which puts him in the category of a god. What else? What happened? Why are you holding out?"
I cradled my coffee mug in both hands. "I don't know, I mean, it's..." Pause to think, like this was a big word. "Complicated."
I could see the change in Sunny when she switched right then from flat out tease to concerned but still playing at being a tease. "I guess it would be. You're here and he isn't."
"He has a life," I grumbled.
"In Atlanta," she said, and I realized I didn't even know that. We'd only just gotten past my story and into his – unmarried, lived in Atlanta, apparently, worked in advertising – when the snow had taken down the mean neighbor's tree and everything had changed. "If you'd hooked up and things were still good, he'd be here. He'd have driven you here."
"No, he wouldn't," I protested. "I have a rental car. He had his own car. How would he have driven me? And why? I'm still capable of taking care of myself."
Sunny face palmed. "Oh, right, that again. Big, bad Mya can take care of herself. Powers, I know you can. It's just sometimes not having to? It's pretty wonderful."
Which was enough of an invitation, I thought. After all, Sunny's the one I'd wanted to run home to, even if I'd never lived in her city. We're best friends of that sort. "It's not quite that simple," I said hesitantly. The only thing that's ever come between me and Sunny is her marriage. Something about it makes me all the more determined to put up the I can take care of myself walls. Maybe because I don't like Kurt and I don't think he likes me (or anyone, possibly including Sunny). Maybe because she's got the marriage and the kids and the work from home freelance writer career thing all going. It just seems like I shouldn't be running to her with problems that still seem like they're from our college days. The does he love me variety, or the savings took a hit, can't pay the rent, just need to vent variety. Sunny growing up forced me, at least in my own mind, to grow up too. Growing up meant putting up even more walls because seriously, I'm like that old saying about perfect hostesses: serene like a duck on the surface of the water and paddling like hell underneath. That's me. Only given that Sunny stood by me during the worst of it, the Dad the Embezzler part of it, my paddling is especially frantic. I do not want to fail or even flail in plain sight.
Sunny, of course, doesn't know any of this. "Spit it out, Powers," she said, getting up to refill our cups.
"Fine," I said, and it all came tumbling out. The rescue by this guy who even when covered by a scarf was Greek Godian in nature.
"That's not a word. I'm a writer. I know these things."
"Shush," I said, and rushed on. About his letting me make my own way the first time I said it (her expression said, "Giving you what you asked for! Perish the thought!") and about leaving me to slip and slide and get my own bag. It didn't help that Sunny was laughing by now. About sliding about in the snow, and getting locked out, and about him calling me Princess, and about the di
nner and conversation.
"Sounds like he's determined to treat you exactly the way you asked to be treated and you don't know what to do about it," Sunny said archly.
"Shut up," I replied with great wit. I sipped coffee. I stared around her kitchen. "Why is he calling me princess? I don't act like that, do I?"
Sunny put her mug down. "Now you're getting somewhere," she said. "You know how some guys claim to hate cats?"
Worried now. "Yes, but I don't see how that helps. Not a cat." Waving a hand down my own non-feline body.
She waved that away. "Men react to cats because cats are independent. They say what they want and when they want it. They don't – " she grinned – "Pussyfoot."
I made a face. "Bad."
"You didn't ask him to come get you, true. But you also didn't fall at his feet with gratitude."
"I was supposed to do both?" If I kicked off my shoes and planted my feet on her polished concrete kitchen floor I could enjoy the radiant heat.
"Yes. It's guy thing. Don't think about it too hard or you will go mad."
"Great. It's all I've been thinking about." To my own disgust. "OK, fine. I can see wanting the frail fem to be ever so thankful that she's been saved. But what about the rest of it?"
Sunny frowned. "Maybe like elementary school where the boys have to pull your hair to let you know they like you?"
I rolled my eyes again. "No. Try again."
She did, more seriously. "At the risk of defending him – and he did act pretty bad – it sounds like he's every bit as defensive as." She stopped talking suddenly, her eyes wide and innocent.
"As me?"
Wry face, mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. "Sorry, hon. But you do keep people at arm's length."
Or farther. "OK," I said and was quiet again and like a good friend, she let me be quiet and when the time spun out, she got up and washed some dishes until I said, "But I can't stop thinking about him. I've been able to stop thinking about all of them the minute it went south," I said, referring to the last four years since college and the four years of college and the two years before that in high school when I was dating. There wasn't one boyfriend from the last ten years of them who adhered to my heart or brain a second after the breakup. So what the hell.
I said just that.
Sunny looked at me with infinite patience and pity, both, and said, "Maybe this one matters, My."
After that she did something more useful than making me think.
She went and asked Kurt about Rick.
Chapter 5
Our four days went fast. We went out for meals, sometimes with Kurt and the twins and sometimes by ourselves. We made plans for what we'd do when I got moved and we were only a couple hours apart. We strolled through bookstores and parks and went running and talked long into the night and nothing had changed between us. Staying up until the wee hours because the twins were restless or because we were talking, it made no difference.
Good friends are like that.
I didn't dwell on Rick. He hadn't called and wasn't going to call, that was clear, and that was fine. He'd been an aberration in my life, a short and strange one that had left me feeling stronger rather than confused, clingy, needy, lonely or brokenhearted. Relationships weren't what I was looking for right now, so the fact that he wasn't offering (wasn't doing anything where I was concerned) was fine.
Last day of my visit was warm enough to stand around in the direct sunlight with a heavy sweater and a cup of coffee cradled between otherwise chilly hands. Sunny found me in the back yard staring at all the twins' toys and baby swings and the ground where Kurt meant to put up a greenhouse.
"Whatcha thinking?" she asked, trying to bump her shoulder into mine. I'm five-six. She's five-nothing. She bumped my arm.
"Just looking forward," I said. I'd gotten the job. All the other stuff came next, transferring bank accounts and mailing addresses, new ISPs and cell carriers and when to disconnect what and connect the other so I wasn't paying for things where I wasn't living and wasn't living in the dark ages where I was living.
Despite the packing and moving and driving and so on to come, I was excited. Happy. The job would be interesting. The department would be largely mine, reaching out to new businesses and existing that wanted to expand, meeting with support businesses that come in behind primary businesses. My boss would be in the communications division of the economic development authority, my job would include getting out of the office routinely to meet with new prospects who might want to move their companies to Georgia and, better still, Hanlin.
Even the end of the visit with Sunny was OK. I'd be back within six weeks at the outside. We'd be living a couple hours apart. Everything was ahead of me. Nothing behind me.
Except maybe something I hadn't wanted and wasn't offered.
Sunny looked up at me like she was judging something, then pointed to the patio furniture. "Sit," she said.
"Not really that warm out here."
"Sit anyway." She lit the patio heater and a warm glow enveloped us. "OK, now that's awesome. I've never seen those outside restaurant decks. I want one that makes it stop snowing where I am." I watched her expectantly.
"Right. I'll get right on that. Meanwhile." She searched my face. Feeling blank, I said, "What?"
Sunny plunged. "I talked to Kurt last night." Then she stopped.
I gave her a goofy smile. "Good for you. He is your husband."
"Shut up." It's hard to take instructions from a tiny bubbly sprite. But I shut up.
Sunny took a breath. "I talked to him about Rick." Then she gave me the weird teeth bared thing she'd always done when she was waiting to see if I was mad at her.
Being mad at her didn't even occur to me. I leaned forward. "And?"
"I knew it!" she said happily.
"Fine, fine, I'm at least curious. What did he say?'
She instantly sobered. "That Rick was married."
My heart did a weird dropkick and twist that left me breathless.
"No!" Sunny said, waving her hands at me like she could erase the effect of her words. "No, no, not now!"
"Um, what?" Even with the heater thing on half of me was still getting chilled.
"He's not married now. He was."
I can see why he isn't anymore, I thought, but didn't say. There was something else. Something she hadn't said yet.
"Mya, his first wife killed herself."
I sat back fast, as if I could get away from her words.
He'd gotten home late from work one night. They still lived in Nashville at the time, and his star had been rising in advertising agencies that worked with country music stars. Victoria had been going through a bad patch in her life. She was a graphic artist, and on the side she did her own work, and she had a lot of depression, but he'd thought they'd gotten a handle on it. Her latest meds had been working. She'd been better. Right up until the moment she wasn't.
He'd found her, apparently sleeping, but she'd overdosed and he was home late. Too late.
"He doesn't get close to people anymore," Sunny said. "He pushes people away." She was carefully not looking at me. "He doesn't trust easily. He builds walls. If someone gets too close, he fights them off."
She didn't say Remind you of anyone? But then, she didn't have to.
We went running the evening of my last day of visit. It had been a quiet day. The twins had an appointment with their pediatrician Sunny couldn't reschedule. I'd had some time alone to work out what she'd said.
Once we were on the trail near her house and moving, she said, "So what's the plan?"
"Go home, pack, wait for Hanlin to tell me when to show up." I was only a little concerned that I hadn't heard from them since they'd hired me.
"Is it weird they haven't contacted you yet?" Sunny asked.
"No," I said resolutely. But it was.
"Have you thought about the other thing?" she persisted.
"No," I said resolutely. Might as well. She'd get the truth out of me.
"Yes you have. Probably nonstop. What are you going to do?"
Go back in time and avoid the Snow Jam. Everything would be so much simpler.
"Nothing," I said.
She stumbled over nothing in the path. "Oh, come on, Mya. Really?"
I sped up a little, hoping to make her too breathless to talk. Apparently she'd been running regularly. I hadn't. She won. I slowed to a walk.
"It was chance. It was one night. It happened and it's over. He's not my type, maybe – " forestalling the inevitable objection – "Because he's so much like me. I know the woman can call the man in today's world but the way we left it – "
"The way you snuck out?"
I ducked my head, blushing. "Sunny, if he wanted anything to do with me, he would have called."
We finished the run, though not the conversation, and I went home to Vegas to pack.
The call came from Hanlin, but not the one I was waiting for. It was Jared, bearer of all official news, good and bad, and they weren't canceling on having hired me.
They were postponing. By at least four months.
I went to work for some temp agencies and bided my time. Sunny and I had midnight teas by phone. Jenna moved in with me to save both of us rent money. She'd keep the apartment when I moved.
March, April and May passed and one day in early June I got a call from Jared again. "We've hired a new communications director. That's been part of the hold up. Then our admin quit and moved out of state, so we've been scrambling around. Since we still had part time from your predecessor, seemed easier to get you started when the dust settled."
Fine. Not like I myself had been growing dusty. And then he asked the important question. "When can you start?"
