Chapter 11
“I really shouldn’t hold you up,” Edie said.
But Joanne insisted, “Sit. Michael will probably call in a few minutes—he doesn’t text, I don’t think he knows how. Your boss won’t mind, will he?”
Edie laughed. “Yeah, no. I’m the boss.”
Joanne’s eyes crinkled into half-moons as she grinned. “Then hey, even better. No one will get bent out of shape if you stay a while.”
Just then the phone on the table rang. It was a tinny jingle, not some popular song masquerading as a ringtone but one of the standard sounds built into the iPhone. Edie saw the name Michaelacross the screen. “Told you,” Joanne said, before she answered. “Hey, bro. Are the babies here yet?”
She looked up at Edie and nodded. “Hmm, okay. Well, your contractor’s here with some paperwork for you to go over. Did you forget? I thought so. Do you want to talk to her?”
Pulling out the chair at the head of the table, Edie sat down as Joanne handed her the phone. “Hello? Mr. McConnell?”
“Ms. Davis, hi.” The man on the other end of the line sounded weary, as if he’d been up all night. “I’m so, sosorry about all this. I completely forgot you were coming over today—”
“No, it’s fine,” Edie assured him. “Your sister said your wife went into labor? How’s she doing?”
Mr. McConnell sighed heavily. “She’s still hanging in there. It’s been five hours since her water broke and the doctor’s talking about doing a C-section if something doesn’t start happening soon. I don’t really think I’m going to be able to go over the paperwork for the project with you today.”
“No, I realize that.” Edie heard a faint ding in her ear and frowned at Joanne. “Look, how about we table it for the weekend, and you can give me a call Monday once everything settles down some so we can reschedule? Will that work for you?”
Another sigh, this one relieved. “Yes, thanks. That’d be great. Can you ask Jo to pick the kids up from school?”
The phone dinged again. Edie moved it away to tell Joanne, “He wants to know if you’ll pick the kids up from school.”
“Sure,” Joanne agreed. From the living room came moans of disappointment.
Into the phone, Edie said, “She said she will. I’ll leave my card on the counter so you’ll have my number. Just give me a call early next week—”
“Will do,” he assured her. “Thanks again. I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t be,” she told him. “Good luck.”
With a weary laugh, he said, “Thanks. Tell Jo thanks, too. I have to get back to Shelly.”
He hung up, and Edie handed the phone back to Joanne. “It kept dinging…”
“It was a text.” Joanne swiped her finger across the screen to read the message, then scowled. Under her breath, she muttered, “Goddamnit. You have a stack of junk mail, nothing important. Get over it already.”
She didn’t reply to the text. When she looked up and saw Edie watching her, she gave a disarming grin. “Sorry, my ex. Never bothered to get her mail forwarded, and now she’s pissed she can’t stop by and pick it up whenever she wants. If I had known she was a crazy bitch before we started dating, I could’ve saved myself all the headaches she gives me now.”
Joanne’s explanation was straightforward and unapologetic—only the pronoun hinted that the relationship was non-traditional. In that moment, something in the way Edie saw her shifted; she’d been attractive and cute before, but no one Edie was particularly interested in. But at the thought that Joanne might reciprocate Edie’s feelings, suddenly she took on added depth and dimensions, no longer merely female but a woman, with kissable lips and plump breasts, and a lingering scent like fading perfume. Edie found herself wondering what Joanne’s short hair would feel like against the palms of her hands—coarse and cottony, as it looked, or soft and silky? What might her eyes look like first thing in the morning, so dark and depthless, like pools of ink in her pale face? How might her voice sound, throaty and low, whispered between the sheets while they stayed in bed?
Stop it, Edie told herself. She knew all about crazy ex-girlfriends, didn’t she? And she didn’t need to get involved with anyone else again, not so soon. Besides, just because Joanne had an ex didn’t mean she wasn’t currently dating anyone.