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“And then, it happened. I was on my way to work, and I felt warm and wet. I went to the bathroom and there was blood. I called in sick. Went to the hospital. I thought I was far enough along, but there is no safe zone or safe time. I went back to work the next night. I had to tell Alden because I’d told him about the pregnancy in the first place. He didn’t know what to say. I know he relayed the message because, well, never mind. That’s not important.” A shadow flickered over her face. Something close to regret, but then it was gone. Smoothed back out into the professional, detached mask that she’d worn the entire time she was talking.
Eden hated it. She’d never been talked to that way before and she’d interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who were homeless. She’d interviewed people while they were high. While they clearly needed help and were suffering from conditions she couldn’t begin to understand or name because she wasn’t a doctor.
“I think that maybe we should sit down,” she whispered, her voice thin and reedy.
Jos’ eyes flicked to her and there was a flicker of surprise there. Because she was still standing there? Because Jos hadn’t realized she was saying anything at all, it all just came out in a rush? Because she had so much practice at being a professional while she went somewhere else in her mind? Because she didn’t allow herself to feel and think and grieve? Was that a reaction from childhood, or just part of her job as a journalist?
“I think we should absolutely sit down.” Eden proved it by stumbling over to the edge of the bed and collapsing. She fought the sheet until it loosened its hold on her, but she felt no less smothered. No less compressed.
She held out her hand on instinct and Jos stared at it like it was a viper, but then her face changed, and something shifted. She wasn’t softer on the outside, but she did walk over and sit down next to Eden on the bed without touching her. She folded her hands in her lap.
“I shouldn’t have told you any of that. I didn’t want to. I don’t know why I did it. I just couldn’t stop talking. Kind of like how I couldn’t stop anything I shouldn’t have done with you.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Not one bit.”
“Oh. I…” Eden searched Jos’ face to figure out if she was lying, or even using a very dry sense of humor, but she couldn’t tell. It was impossible to tell. Jos had shut back down and if she didn’t want to let someone in, she made sure she didn’t. She probably wasn’t going to get anywhere pursuing that route, so Eden tried something else. “So, your main argument against me coming here again is that we work together?”
“That, and I’m old enough to be your mother,” Jos huffed. “It’s a biological possibility.”
“So what? My parents are ten years apart.”
“Ten. Not sixteen. And before you use the whole age is just a number line, there’s something else that matters more than the fact that we work together and more than any age gap.”
Eden’s hands shook. “What’s that?”
“The fact that I like being alone. I’m freshly divorced. Happy that way. I have no desire to be in any kind of relationship with anyone. Probably ever again.”
Eden swallowed hard past the giant lump in her throat. She was a fighter, though, and she was far from giving in without at least understanding what Jos wasn’t saying. And what she was. And what she might actually want to be saying instead. With her, it wasn’t straightforward, and it wasn’t easy. Eden knew those things and that was probably more than the world would ever know, and for some reason that made her hope. What she was hoping for was still in question.
“But I’m here,” she dared to say. “I’m here and you just told me those things and they weren’t easy.”
A muscle in Jos’ jaw jumped. “No. They weren’t. But that was a moment of weakness, and it won’t happen again.”
“It wasn’t weakness.”
“It still won’t happen again.”
“What won’t? Having me here or telling me anything?”
“Both.”
Eden still wasn’t going to admit defeat, because there was something Jos wasn’t saying. It was written in the gaps of all the things she put out there because she thought she should or because she thought she had to. Eden didn’t imagine it was because she actually wanted to. She could be wrong, but she took the risk anyway. “I think it’s because we work together that we should stick together.”
Jos gave Eden a look that she couldn’t begin to start picking apart. It was filled with conflicted emotion, all while being blank behind that. Like a door that opened up to another room and another room and then nothing, but it was maddening because there was something behind that door. It was just unreachable.
“At work maybe. I think everyone needs to stick together and work together. If people did that everywhere, it would be a much better world.”
“But we can. You and me. We’re going to be cohosts. I’ll make sure nothing like what happened today ever happens again, accident or not.”
Jos gave Eden a sad smile that she didn’t expect. It made her feel like she was bleeding out on the inside and could do nothing to stem the loss. “I don’t think that’s up to either of us.” The hardness in her voice couldn’t hide the raw edge. “But it’s a nice thought anyway.”
Chapter 14
Jos
It had been two weeks since her meltdown in the studio parking lot and so far, Jos had been good to her word. She hadn’t slipped up again. She hadn’t allowed her feelings to rise to the surface in a complicated melee she couldn’t understand or control. She wasn’t sure what happened, except that it had happened with Eden and that nothing, not one more thing, could happen with her again. Jos had been nothing but professional at work.
