“I don’t doubt that,” Lenny agreed. “But she’s been handling herself for a long time, and I’m not keen to make her life any harder. While she could get another job easily, she’ll never find a place as cheap as I can give her. Not in Santa Monica.”
He was quiet for a few long beats. The passion in her voice was undeniable. She liked Cami as a person, but she liked all her employees, even the lazy stoner kid. This went beyond that.
“You’re going out of your way for her.”
Beside him, Lenny stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just an observation. Most people wouldn’t give their employees heavily discounted rent in addition to a job that works with their school schedule.”
“I’d do the same for any of my employees.” In the dim light of the street lamp they were passing under, her fingers tightened around the strap of her purse.
“Would you?” He had to tread carefully here. She trusted him to a degree, but she was defensive about her relationship with Cami. If he pushed her, she’d tell him to get lost. “It seems like an awful lot of trouble.”
“We’re family,” she insisted. For a moment, she let that lie, then sighed. “I know that’s what a lot of managers tell their employees to guilt them into accepting shitty work conditions,but it’s true. I treat my employees like kin, because they may not be my kids, but they’re somebody’s. I hope somebody out there would care for my son the same way.”
“You have a son?”
She had never mentioned any family of her own, and if she was worried about having a legacy to leave to her kids, then that could be another obstacle to the sale. But if that were the case, he would have expected it to be her first objection, not an afterthought.
She drew to a halt on the sidewalk but didn’t face him. “I did. He was killed in Afghanistan back in ‘06. Helicopter crash.”
“Shit.” The word was out of his mouth before he could come up with something more appropriate to say. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“No reason you would.” She shrugged, and she spoke evenly enough, but her voice had gone low and sad. “Look, kid. This is me.” She gestured to a red brick building on the other side of the street, the corners of which looked like they were crumbling. “I’ll give some thought to what you said, but don’t hold your breath. Now get outta my hair.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He waited as she crossed the road to her building and shuffled up the steps. She rifled in her knitted messenger bag for her keys and unlocked the front door. As she pushed open the door, a Great Dane nearly bowled her over, but she heartily shoved the dog off her and stepped inside. When she closed the door behind her, she didn’t glance at Des, but the change in their relationship hung in the air between them.
Santa Monica Collegelooked less like a college than a hotel. Though the glassy, modern buildings made Cami think of business and academics, the campus was littered with tall, swaying palm trees and beautiful water features that lit up at night. She’d never been to a tropical resort, but whenever she left an evening class, she liked to imagine she was leaving an all-inclusive bar with a sweating daiquiri in hand. She doubted in-class daiquiris would help her GPA, but a girl could dream.
Mondays were busy days for her. Since she was working as well as going to school, she tried to schedule her classes to fall on certain days in specific time blocks so she could have full days of class on Mondays or Wednesdays, and be free to work Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. It made for tiring weeks, but her scholarship only covered her tuition. Rent, food, and school supplies all came out of her paycheck from Sex on the Beach.
She crammed the tail end of a bagel into her mouth as she exited one of the on-campus coffee shops. She’d been scrolling through AncestryDNA for new matches while she caffeinated, but there was nothing identifiably Dad-related. She reminded herself that plenty of people had tested with different companies that didn’t share databases, or hadn’t had their DNA tested at all, and that her lack of results right now didn’t mean a lack of results forever. New people submitted their DNA all the time. All it would take was an aunt, a cousin, a second cousin whose surname she didn’t recognize, and she could extrapolate from there. But the constant failure to come up with anything useful was draining, least of all because all she could do about it was hurry up and wait. She released a long breath and hurried toclass, gathering her thoughts to focus on something she could control.
She tried to study when she had downtime between classes, but she’d just finished the pop quiz she’d been expecting in her Scripting class, and was eager to let her mind recharge with internet nonsense. Besides, social media was the only way she kept tabs on her friends in Baxter. A comment here and a like there made her feel like she was still part of that circle; not that she’d been a huge part of it even when she lived there. Working three jobs and taking care of her ailing grandmother hadn’t meshed well with having a social life.
Her life wasn’t the busiest it ever had been, even when she was eating and power-walking at the same time to get a good seat for her HTML5 class. Still, her to-do list swelled in the back of her mind as she swept into the building, flopped her bag into a chair and started fishing out her laptop just as her cell phone buzzed in her pocket.
“Weird,” she murmured. No one ever texted her on school days. The only people she knew in California were Lenny and Tristan, and they both had her schedule.
She opened her laptop one-handed while unlocking her phone with the other. She had a new text. From Des.
It was a rabbit emoji.
She paused with her laptop booted up to the lock screen, staring at the phone in her hand and trying to parse the emoji. When studying it didn’t reveal its secrets, she laid her phone down next to her laptop and resumed her usual pre-class ritual, pulling out her pen and a notepad, and logging into her laptop to open the lecture slideshow.
Her phone vibrated again, rattling noisily on the desk. She bit her lip, snatched it and turned it from vibrate mode to silent.
Get it? Like the rabbit vibe.
Another text popped up on screen, a few seconds later.
Her smile was wide and conspicuous. She tried her best to force herself into a neutral expression, to act natural. The instructor entered at the front of the classroom and started to lay papers out across her desk. At this point, Cami would be waiting attentively for class to start. She would be spinning her pen between her fingers and going over the slides, maybe checking her notes from the previous class for any questions she needed answered. But a few texts from Des had set her all aflutter. Maybe orgasms were good for her attitude?
She chewed her lip as she typed.
I’m in class.
