Chapter 16
“I’d like that,” she said, surprised that yeah, she really wouldlike it.
Joanne flashed her a warm smile. “Great. Then it’s a date.”
* * * *
Edie could count the number of women she’d gone out with on one hand, and still have fingers left over. She’d never been that interested in dating as a teenager—partly because she hadn’t known any other girls like herself, girls who liked other girls, and partly because she’d been too busy. She ran track all four years of high school, which kept her focused, not only on the sport but in the classroom, as well. Her working class family didn’t have the money to pay for her to go to college, so she knew early on that anything after graduation would depend on her own hard work. Between her grades and her standings on the track team, Edie managed to snag a coveted four-year scholarship. Even when she started working admin fresh out of college, she had her sights set on a long-term goal—her own business. There was little room in her plans to waste on romance.
Charlene had snuck up on her in a moment of weakness, Edie realized that now. She’d been lonely and didn’t know it, and letting Charlene take advantage of that had been a mistake.
Then again, Edie’s previous relationships hadn’t been much better. True, none of her other girlfriends ever cheated on her the way Charlene had, but none had ever worked out in the end, either. Her first real girlfriend in college had been her roommate Amber, a party girl with a blond spiral perm who wore way too much makeup, but things between them only lasted as long as their freshman year together. When they returned to campus as sophomores, in different dorms, they found they had little in common and, by the end of their second fall semester, they had gone their separate ways.
Amber had been a distraction, and Edie buckled down after their split, concentrating on track and school and bringing up her GPA. Sure, there were girls she flirted with at sporting events, and a drunken one night stand at an off-campus party one New Year’s Eve, but no faces she could recall, no names she remembered. No one who mattered, when all was said and done. She didn’t have time to date, what with track and her classes, and the part-time job she took preparing labor compliance paperwork at a construction company in her junior year to help pay for her move from the dormitory to a student apartment.
It was there she met her second serious girlfriend, Rhonda, who was older than Edie and already world-weary and worn out at twenty-nine. She had short hair, a nimbus of burgundy curls dyed a shade too dark for her pale skin, and the only makeup she wore was thick, black liner circled like war paint around each eye, which made them pop from behind the frameless glasses she wore. Rhonda was the office manager at the construction company—receptionist, HR manager, payroll clerk, admin, bookkeeper; she did it all. She liked to say she was a jack of all trades, master of none, and she had a small soapstone plaque on her desk some of the workers had given her one Christmas that read, Do you want to speak with the man who owns the company, or the woman who knows what’s going on?
They dated for years, and it was Edie’s first seriousrelationship. At some point, Edie moved out of her student apartment and into Rhonda’s downtown condo. When she graduated from college, Rhonda helped her get an admin position of her own, at the Richmond office of the construction company where they both worked. At first Edie didn’t mind the commute—the money was good, and traffic wasn’t toobad.
But she found herself spending more time away from Rhonda, sometimes even renting a room in Richmond to stay closer to the office so she wouldn’t have to make the drive home if she worked too late, and before long she had an apartment again, this time farther south. She and Rhonda only managed to see each other on weekends. Soon Edie had her own friends, her own plans, and so did Rhonda. It became too difficult to keep up with each other any longer. When they managed to get together, it was like two long lost friends meeting up again after years apart. The sex was still great, but afterwards they found they had little in common outside of work, and who wanted to talk shop while snuggling in bed?
It was almost a relief when, the next time they met up, Rhonda didn’t rush into Edie’s arms but rather said, “Honey, I think maybe we need to talk.”
She was right, they did, and it was long overdue. There were no hard feelings—in fact, Edie was surprised at how relieved she felt when they finally ended things between them, and they remained friends. Even after Edie finally left the company to start her own business, Rhonda still stayed in touch. She sent a card every Christmas, and included a handwritten note to keep Edie up to date with coworkers they both knew.