But what can I do? Salinger, fortunately, didn’t tell Bethany about my fuckup. But one more and I know I’ll be toast. I need something to show progress with McCarthy’s reputation.
But bringing him home?
It’s a final act of desperation.
It will pay off.
I have the footage ready, the copy written for the post, and content being cross-posted to all of RDC’s social media accounts. It was a stroke of genius that came to me last night when I was eating my reheated dinner after Nathan rebuffed my blow-job offer.
Makeshift wind chimes clang loudly as I drive us over the bridge and up to the rambling log cabin.
“It all makes sense now.” McCarthy manages to sound so smug that I can’t help but snap “What?” then kick myself for falling for the bait.
“Why you’re floundering in life. I mean”—he rolls down his window—“look where you grew up. It’s a failing farming commune. You were literally born and raised infailure. No wonder you can’t handle a real job. I bet you were homeschooled, too, weren’t you?” He leans over the center console. “No wonder you’re so bad at PR. You were never properly socialized as a child.”
I slap at his leg, and he laughs.
Seething, I park the car next to Cher. I step out of the car and breathe in the fresh, slightly salty pine-scented air. Then I say a prayer to the goddess, the spirits, and Satan himself that my crazy idea works, because thisismy last shot.
I let Truman loose in the yard, and he disappears into the wild berry bushes.
I have been given a Hail Mary. I was snatched out of the jaws of defeat. I should be packing my things in a box, but Salinger Svensson was uncharacteristically merciful. Or, more likely, he was just trying to piss off McCarthy.
I’m not blowing my second chance. I will not let McCarthy screw this up. We’re getting our photos and getting out.
Behind me, leaves crunch under imported Italian leather shoes. McCarthy is taking it all in—the dirty barrels repurposed as rainwater collectors, the lines of clothes drying in the breeze, the vegetable patches that are strewn haphazardly around the front yard in the small patches of dappled sunlight through the tall pine trees. The whole chaotic mess of my childhood is backdropped against the wildly overgrown garden of native plants struggling to survive among the wreckage of abandoned sculpture projects and disintegrating Burning Man floats that lie gasping for breath where my mother left them.
“So much sense.” McCarthy is standing too close to me.
I try to step away from him, but he drags me around to face him. “This is why you are the embodiment of disasterand why we will fundamentally never understand each other.”
He is not your boyfriend, I remind myself as I take deep, cleansing breaths.It doesn’t matter what he thinks of the house. We’re here to get a few photos with the seniors.
“Just stay here,” I order McCarthy. “Don’t wander off. Just let me make sure everything’s ready for you.”
“She has no plan,” he says to the trees.
The door leading from the porch slams.
“Jenna-bug!” My mom, Willow, who likes to describe herself as a buxom witch, hurries out of the cabin, sweeps me into her arms, and kisses my face. “Ooh, there’s my baby! I had a premonition that you’d come by, and then you called—voilà! The cards were right.” My mom’s eyes light up when they shift to McCarthy. “The cards didn’t say anything about a handsome stranger!” She throws herself at McCarthy and wraps him in a hug of spices and sage.
“Mom, I told you I was bringing my client.”
“But you didn’t say he was hot,” she purrs, tucking a fresh flower into McCarthy’s breast pocket, her hand then lingering on his broad chest.
I’m going to be real with you all… My mom hasstrongMILF energy.
One of the reasons I dated Brock was because he never tried to sleep with my mom, unlike a lot of the other guys I’d crushed on in my alternative, forest high school, who I figured out way too late were interested in me only because my mom liked to walk around topless at home.
McCarthy’s eyes drift to my mom’s low-cut peasant bodice and down to her narrow waist, which is framed in a pink-and-yellow corset.
He’s just like all the rest of them.
“Ma’am, I think you have a…” He points.
“Oooh! This is just Bernard. He’s my familiar.” My mom holds up the little lizard McCarthy had pointed out and gives him a kiss. “I thought I’d lost you!”
Then McCarthy’s eyes rest on me. I try not to pull at my boxy professional clothes.
