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“What?” Eden was so confused. “I’m sure that they…it’s just that…this month happens every year. I mean, of course it does, but a lot of people don’t know that the whole month is dedicated to, well, yeah. There are millions of people who have broken hearts because this happened to them. It was an important show to do. I’m sure no one meant to hurt you.”
“No? Then why are you out here looking like a kicked puppy?”
She wasn’t going to rise to it. If Jos was angry and hurt, then let her blow off steam. Her words weren’t going to cut through Eden’s skin. Jos was barely even looking at her. She was lashing out and it would have been at anyone who had dared follow her out. She was boiling with fury. The air was hot with it. Hot and metallic with rage, and all of it tainted by the unmistakable undercurrent of pain.
“Because I can tell that you’re not okay. I know what you told me, and I’m sorry that you’re hurting. That’s not right.”
“Not right? Do you think anyone cares about what is right and not right?”
“Honestly, I hope so.”
“That’s right. You’re still young and fresh enough that you’re not jaded.”
“Actually, I said that this industry was shit. You were the one who convinced me it wasn’t. Is there something I don’t know about? Why do you feel like you’re being attacked?”
Jos’ hand froze on her car door. She was a great, raging storm about to break wide open. She looked totally unsuited to driving and Eden rushed forward. She stopped at the cold look Jos gave her and didn’t come any closer than a foot. She did hold out her hand. “Give me the keys. You shouldn’t be driving when you’re upset like this.”
“Suddenly you know me and what’s best for me?”
“No. I just…please Jos, don’t leave like this. You look like you’re going to explode. If you got in an accident and hurt someone, you’d never forgive yourself. Let’s just go somewhere and talk.”
“I don’t want to talk about anything. The only reason you’re out here is because you know far more than you should. I told you that in a moment of weakness, and you’re already out here exploiting it.”
Jos tried to open her car door, but Eden stepped forward and slammed it shut with a hard shove of her hand. “I am not exploiting anything. You can rage at me if you want. I know it’s not really me that you’re mad at. I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t want to do anything to you. I’m just here as a friend, because God knows it looks like you need one.”
Jos tried to wrench the car door open, but Eden kept her hand there. She could feel the tension building in Jos, feel the way her body stiffened dangerously, and she felt like she was pushing her to something, to a breaking point that was going to get ugly.
Eden didn’t want that to happen here. Not in the damn parking lot of the building where they both worked. Not in some place that was overly public. Jos would never forgive her, and Eden wasn’t sure why that mattered, but it did.
More than that, Jos hadn’t left Eden standing at the curb of some pub, waiting on a cab that might not have materialized, when she was so drunk that anything could have happened to her. Eden felt like she owed her, and she was going to repay the debt no matter how angry Jos was with her for interfering.
“Let me drive you to your house. I’ll get a cab back here for my car.”
“I’m fine.” Jos spat the words. Her face was doing something funny. Arranging itself into a mask of blankness, of numbness, where there was nothing to be read. She was shoving the pain and the anger deep down inside herself where it couldn’t be touched.
That was more frightening to Eden than
anything.
“Jos,” she prodded. “Let me drive you home. I’m not going to take no for an answer. You’re going to have to run me over if you want to leave this parking lot.”
“I’d do it with pleasure.” She was lying. There was no heat in it. Her voice broke at the end, and she swallowed hard. She raised her head, and her eyes were so hard, so full of pain that Eden’s heart stuttered and died out. In the next instant, she raised her hand and silently handed over the keys.
Eden slid in on the driver’s side. She had to press the button on the side of the seat to get anywhere close to the wheel. Jos was already tall. How the hell did she drive in heels?
Jos slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window.
It had been a good long while since Eden had driven a car this expensive and her heart raced, but she was far more worried about the woman next to her.
“I don’t know the way,” Eden admitted. She waited while Jos furiously punched her address into the car’s GPS on the big screen in the dash. She said nothing. The silence was oppressive. Eden’s worry filled up the car. Jos wouldn’t look at her. She refused to see the care or concern on Eden’s face. She hated accepting help. She hated being vulnerable.
Her words played over in and over in Eden’s head all the way home. They’re trying to force me out. This is what they want. Eden needed to know what that meant. She needed to know what she’d just put her name to, what job she’d just taken, and what was really going on. It was more than Jos was telling her. She needed to know if she’d been lied to. Tricked, somehow, into taking a job she didn’t even really want.
More than anything, she needed to make sure Jos was going to be okay.
Eden knew enough about unhappy people to know one when she saw one, and Jos had let her armour slip. She wasn’t happy. She wasn’t fine. This was about more than what happened at work. This was about something bigger, something so much bigger, something Eden could only guess at. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if Jos wouldn’t give her answers. Jos was closed off, shut down.
Eden parked in the triple garage and killed the engine. She’d told herself she wouldn’t leave until she could do it without her conscious being stabbed at by guilt.
