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Work I suspect Mandy’s been tasked with managing, behind the scenes.
“It sounds like you think he’s asking too much of you,” I say.
She’s practically inhaling the donut now in her hands. With her mouth full, she moans. “Sugar, I love you. I really, really do.”
She washes the bites down with coffee and then gives me a pleading, desperate look. “The thing about Brock is, he never sits. You know? Like he’ll go for a run first thing in the morning, then work out, and then pace all over the place, going from here to there. It never stops. Never. I am so stressed. No?—”
She shakes her head, stuffs the rest of the donut between her lips, and chews frantically. “Stressed doesn’t even begin to?—”
The phone in her hand rings loudly again.
Her petite, narrow shoulders jerk up toward her ears in a flinch. Coffee sloshes out onto the sleeve of her white blouse. “I swear, I want to drop this thing into a garbage disposal and see what happens.”
We both wait until the ringing stops.
Even I’m beginning to dislike the sound, and I’m in no way responsible for the problems on the other end of each call. Thank heavens.
She frowns down at the phone like she’s calculating how best to destroy it. “I even hear this thing ringing in my dreams,” she grumbles. “My brain is traumatized.”
“I know what you mean. Only, I’m haunted by linoleum these days.”
“Linoleum?”
I wave the question off. “It’s a long story.”
A long story that involves a trip to the hardware store that my brother bailed on, a poor estimate of the surface area of a kitchen floor by math-challenged moi, and a feeling of dread that I way over-purchased.
I should have measured.
I don’t have money in my budget for mistakes like that.
“What am I going to do, Gwen?” Mandy asks.
“You need to prioritize your happiness.” In a flash, I realize I’m doling out life advice that I really should be listening to myself. “You have to put yourself first at least once in a while, Mandy. He should give you breaks, for one thing. You can’t help anyone else if you’re bone dry on inner resources, frazzled to the max. It’s like that saying about the plane and the oxygen tubing.”
She scrunches her brow. “Plane… plane… Why did that word just make my stomach drop? Oh, shoot.” Her eyes grow wide. “Plane tickets! I was supposed to call Leo’s PA, Tate, with the details after booking Brock’s flight… I totally forgot…”
She grabs the tablet she abandoned on the table and swipes at the screen frantically. Then, while staring at the tablet screen, she texts on the cell phone, muttering aloud as she goes: “Tate, touching base with you regarding… Florida, March… first class flight… eleven a.m. from Boston Logan International…”
She glances up at me with a frown. “Oh my gosh, Tate will freak out that I didn’t get him this info earlier. He knows as well as I do that Brock and Leo like to travel together. I really screwed this up. Give me a minute while I get this message out. Sorry.”
“No problem. Sounds important.”
I again wait, and when I spot tears gathering in her eyes, I resist the urge to take the phone from her. When she finishes tapping the screen, I step in and wrap my arms around her in a hug. “Mandy, if it’s this bad, you have to talk to him.”
“He won’t understand. He’s a monster, Gwen. No, an Energizer Bunny. No, an Energizer Monster… I don’t think that’s even a thing. Is that a thing?”
“Not a thing.”
“I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re balancing a lot of things. It’s understandable. This will pass… What can I do to help?”
“Can you go back in time six months and warn me not to work for him?”
“Time travel is not my area of expertise.”
“Drat.”
