Great Big Beautiful Life(9)
“Boredom,” he says dryly. “And sloth.”
“I had no idea there were sloths here!”
He stares at me, trying to determine whether I’m serious. I feel my smile growing.
Either way, he doesn’t get the chance to acknowledge what I said, because his watch starts ringing with a phone call. He eyes the screen, and I see something like satisfaction flare in his eyes before he drops his arm and meets my gaze again. “I’ll leave you to your morning,” he says curtly, and turns, tapping the call over to his earbuds as he stalks down the steps toward the lot.
“See you around!” I shout after him, forcing myself not to check out his butt. Or legs. Or back.
He glances over his shoulder as if reading my thoughts, and I look away right as I hear him answer the call: “Ms. Ives, hi.”
* * *
? ? ?
I tell myself that her calling him first is a good thing.
Obviously she’d want to get not-quite-firing-but-definitely-not-hiring one of us out of the way before sharing the good news.
But still my heart is in my throat the whole drive back to the hotel, and singing along at the top of my lungs to “Linger” feels less celebratory than desperate. Like doing jumping jacks to stem off a panic attack.
It will be okay, I promise myself. Either way, it will be okay.
I’ve been through way worse than losing out on a dream job. And since I barely told anyone aside from my literary agent, a couple of work friends, and Theo about this job, there’d be hardly anyone to let down.
Thank god I didn’t tell my mom. I almost did, multiple times. The temptation of finally working on something she was remotely interested in was nearly too great.
I love my mom, and I definitely respect her, but the list of things we have in common is short. In the Venn diagram of things she thinks are worth writing about and things I might actually have a chance to write about, the history of America’s most influential media family might actually sit in the middle.
In her mind, I’d be contributing to history, and for me, it would be a chance to find the love story inside all Margaret’s family’s tragedies.
Really, Dad’s the one I wish I could tell. He was the one who first introduced me to Margaret, when I was a little girl. He used to play all of Cosmo’s music while he and Mom cooked dinner, but he especially loved what the superfans called the “Peggy Quartet.” The four love songs Cosmo wrote for Margaret.
My father, the only other romantic in the family besides me, adored their larger-than-life love story. He used to call Cosmo the “Great American Storyteller”—He gives you just enough to leave you champing at the bit to get the rest.
A phone call interrupts the song playing through the car speakers, and I yelp like someone just grabbed me from behind, flicking on my turn signal and pulling into the parking lot of a small strip mall, the smell of sunbaked blacktop wafting in through my open windows.
I check the caller ID: Margaret!
Is it good that she called so fast after speaking with Hayden?
Or does that mean his call didn’t require the requisite apologies that came with passing on an offer? Was it, instead, only a quick see you on Monday, cowriter?
“You can do this,” I remind myself. Whatever this is. It’s just a job.
I take a deep breath and answer the call on speaker. “This is Alice Scott.”
“Hi, Alice,” a brusque, not-at-all-Margaret-like voice blusters through. “Jodi here.”
“Oh! Hi!” I recover. “How are you?”
She blows right through that: “Margaret was wondering whether you could come by for another meeting today. Maybe at dinnertime?”
“Yes! Definitely!” I say. “Around five or six, then?”
She snorts. “Good lord, I wish. She’s over eighty, and still eating dinner like a twenty-five-year-old in Rome. Eight p.m. But cocktail hour’s at seven thirty. Don’t be more than five minutes early. Or late.”
Frankly, I can’t imagine Margaret caring whether I landed in that precise ten-minute window, but I’d guess Jodi might care quite a bit, and that’s good enough for me.
“I’ll be exactly on t—” The phone line clicks before I can finish my sentence. “Hello?”
No answer. She’s already gone.
The Cranberries blast back into song, and this time when I sing along, it’s fed by sheer joy.
4
At seven twenty-nine, I shift the bottle of wine and bouquet I brought into one hand and ring Margaret’s doorbell with the other.
Heavy footfalls answer on the far side, and then the hot-pink door swings open to reveal Jodi in a different but nearly identical flannel, T-shirt, and jeans. “You’re on time,” she announces.
“And bearing gifts!” I thrust the wine and flowers toward her.
She eyes them skeptically. “Margaret hates trimmed flowers. They make her sad.”
“Oh.” I frown down at them, then meet her gaze. “What about you?”
Her square face softens a bit. “I don’t mind them.”
“They’re yours then,” I tell her, and because she did me such a solid, I add, “and if you tell me she hates wine, this is for you too.”
Her mouth turns up in an almost smile. “Sadly, I’m no liar. She loves wine.”