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“Looks like you’re doing a good job of it,” Chloe said, collapsing into a fresh round of giggles.
“Your mom really should have let you have a dog growing up,” Kim said. She was trying to keep her face expressionless, but her twitching lips gave her away.
“It’s actually not that funny.”
“It’s just so … you.” Sarah took a bite of the muffin Eloise had bought her and shrugged. “You never want to really be involved in anything or with anyone and you fight it every step of the way.”
“I do not.”
“Do you remember how long it took us to convince you to spend time with us outside the office?”
Eloise had no answer to that, so she’d gone back to ignoring them until they’d quit teasing her. She loved them but sometimes it was hard being around people who knew you almost as well as you knew yourself. She wasn’t just an open book with people scanning the pages. They’d worked their way down into the spine and found out what kind of glue was holding her together.
Somehow in the years since they’d met, the three of them had become more than just her friends—they’d become her family. The sisters she’d never been blessed enough to have. And with that came all the incredible and irritating things that families were good for.
They’d all been in a good mood that day, laughing and teasing her about Ethan and the dog. She wished it had stayed that way.
While her relationship with Ethan had become stronger and smoother, the same could not be said of her relationship with her friends. Eloise couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the problem was or when it had begun, but after several weeks of increasingly short tempers and few words, there was no denying that something was definitely wrong.
Work had been even worse than usual with rumors increasing about company restructuring and potential downsizing, but somehow that didn’t seem to be enough to account for their behavior.
Kim took every opportunity she could find to slip outside for a cigarette and had confided that she was up to almost a pack a day. Chloe had dark circles under her eyes and had gotten reprimanded for falling asleep at her desk. And Sarah, usually the most steel-spined out of all of them, was lingering over her phone calls and texts like a jumpy teen with a secret boyfriend. Eloise had tried to ask her about it but she’d been shut down every time.
None of them were willing to provide any reasonable answers and when Sarah did acknowledge the changes, she casually blamed Dwayne for a lot of what was happening, saying it looked like things that should have been taken care of in her department might have to get kicked to Kim in auditing.
Ethan kept trying to convince her that there was nothing to worry about, but if there was ever one thing Eloise was incredibly good at, it was worrying.
She dropped the collar on the table when her phone rang, pointing a finger at Winston as she picked it up. “Don’t get comfortable,” she warned. Ethan would end up taking it off but she wanted a few cute pictures before he got home.
“Hello?”
Eloise winced. She hadn’t looked at the screen before she answered, making the foolish assumption that the only people that would be calling her this late on a weekend were ones she’d actually want to talk to. Her mother was not on that short list.
“Eloise?”
“Yes, sorry.” There was no help for it now. She’d already answered the phone and was stuck with the consequences. “I’m here.”
“Good.” Deborah didn’t ask if she was interrupting, a fact that set Eloise’s teeth on edge. She didn’t ask because she didn’t care. Or perhaps because she assumed Eloise had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than indulge her. “I’m sure you know why I’m calling.”
“I …” Eloise frowned and ran the calendar of important events through her mind. It wasn’t a holiday or her birthday. It wasn’t either of her parents’ birthdays, either. She knew not having an answer would result in another lecture, but she was coming up blank.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Eloise,” Deborah said after a moment of tense silence. “Do you still not watch the news?”
The news? She did not. Eloise got her news online like most normal people but she pretended she didn’t have social media so her parents wouldn’t start monitoring her accounts. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Never mind that,” Deborah dismissed. “If you watched the news, you’d know there are still no new leads in that robbery case I talked to you about last time.”
Eloise thought back to their last conversation. She’d been distracted with Ethan stretched out across her couch, but she thought she vaguely remembered her mother telling her something about a robbery across town. It was exactly the kind of thing Deborah would seize onto. Something that truly had nothing at all to do with Eloise, but that she could use as an excuse to call and make demands about Eloise’s behavior. It was nothing more than an excuse and a flimsy one, at that.
“I’m sure they’ll find the people responsible,” Eloise assured her. It was exhausting but the fastest way to get her mother off the phone was to agree with whatever she said and make promises she absolutely did not intend to keep.
She glanced up as the front door opened, her heart rate skyrocketing as Ethan let himself in, arms loaded with late night snacks and a relaxed grin on his face. If her mother heard him here at this hour, she’d know Eloise was seeing someone and the resulting guilt trip was something Eloise was certain she could live without.
She held a finger to her lips, pleading at him with her eyes to be quiet. “Listen, Mother, could I call you back tomorrow?—”
“We’ll be busy tomorrow,” Deborah said, cutting over Eloise with a dismissive sniff. “I just wanted to call and make sure you were behaving sensibly. I’ve been thinking about how busy you’ve been, not answering my calls and such because of those friends of yours, and I think it might be a good idea for you to move home. It hardly seems like New Orleans is safe, what with the crime and all.”
Ethan’s eyebrows rose sharply when Eloise choked a bit on her own spit and made a strangled noise. “Mother, you know better than almost anyone how much crime there is in Chicago.”
