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“Oh, please.” I flicked a hand in a circle around the room. “Don’t act like y’all haven’t been talkin’ about my promotion this whole time. I already know it’s the subject of gossip.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, sitting in the chair next to mine. “But you haven’t said a word. Why’s that?”
“’Cause it’s not a big deal.”
“Well,” Phil said, “congratulations all the same. We’re happy to know you’ll be the one lookin’ after us. And Roxanne, Yellowstone?” She and Cal took their usual seats together next to Roxanne. “I bet that was interestin’. All those tourists. I’m Phil, by the way.”
“Phil?” Roxanne asked, no doubt trying to decide if she’d heard the name right.
“Philomena,” Billie supplied. “And that’s Cal next to her. I’m Billie by the way, and this is Ace.”
Cal raised a hand, wiggling her fingers. “Hello.”
Carly leaned forward on the other side of the circle with baby Donny in her arms. The kid could sleep through the apocalypse. “I’m Carly, and this little bundle is Donny.” She nodded to the rest of the group as they got situated in their chairs. “That’s Aubrey, Daisy, Juneau, and you already know Abey.”
Roxanne followed as Carly introduced everyone, then asked sheepishly, “Who’s Abey?”
I raised my hand in the air, then took off my hat and rested it in my lap. “That’d be me.”
Roxanne blushed and removed her hat, too, but hers was a county ballcap. This was the first time I’d seen her without it. Her hair was a light-brown color, and it fell just past her shoulders, but she’d worn it pulled back in a low pony like I usually did. There wasn’t a lot you could do with long hair if you wore a hat at work, and now that mine had grown longer, if we went on a call, I had to have it up and away from my face in a bun so it was un-pullable. Drunk idiots loved to pull hair. People were used to seeing me in a hat, though, so I never bothered doing anything cute with my hair anymore.
Roxanne seemed extremely confident on the job, but get her around a group of gossiping women, and she was shy as a rabbit. She winced when she realized she hadn’t known my first name, probably scared to piss off her new boss.
Shit. That was me. I was her new boss. Weird.
“It’s cool,” I said. “Don’t think I told you my first name.”
“Yeah,” Billie interrupted, “but what we really wanna know is, are you married? Dating? And if so, what’s their name?”
Subtle, Billie. Really freaking subtle.
Cal tsked. “Billie!”
“What, Cal? Tell me you weren’t wondering the same damn thing.”
Cal looked at her long plum-painted fingernails, then her eyes rolled up toward the ceiling.
“Uh,” Roxanne said, scanning the faces all looking at her, “I’m not married. Never have been. I’m almost forty, so that’s kinda sad, but I’m not datin’ either.”
“Aw, well, you just haven’t found the right person yet,” Carly said, smirking at me. “But if you were to meet someone here in Wisper, you could invite them to the dance.”
Jeez, these women! They were relentless. I knew they were all hinting at me. They were just as biased as everyone else around here, even if they didn’t mean anything harmful by it. Roxanne looked like someone people might assume to be a lesbian, probably ’cause of her stature, her hat and sunglasses, and ’cause of the plain look of her face without makeup. But I already knew from her reaction to Theo that she liked men. But even if she was bisexual, no, I would not be dating my new subordinate. I rolled my eyes and shook my head at my friends.
I’d already read them all the riot act for the awful date they’d set me up on earlier in the summer. I wouldn’t be taking their suggestions for potential dates ever again.
Besides, I’d already found someone. We had some stuff to figure out, but I had hope Devo and I could get there. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but I would not be clueing these loudmouths in on it. Except maybe for Sam. I’d told her about sleeping with Devo after the night we shared, but I hadn’t yet told her things had kind of been heating up again.
More memories of the night we’d spent together flooded my mind, and my cheeks got hot when I remembered the taste of Devo’s?—
Roxanne looked at me. “What dance?”
“Ignore her,” I said, trying to stop thinking about Devo and hoping I hadn’t moaned out loud.
I shook my head at Carly, clearly disapproving of her matchmaking efforts, but she didn’t even have the decency to look chastised. She shrugged and smirked, and little Donny startled in his sleep and threw his tiny arms out to the sides. She cooed to him softly until he cuddled back into the crook of her arm.
“We have a festival every year at the start of fall,” I explained. “Ace’s House sponsors it, and this year, there’s a dance. There’ll be live music and a big dance floor in the center of town. You’ll probably have to work it.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “’cause you know there’s bound to be trouble. Somebody will get stupid.”
