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Estelle shrugged. “Better to be hated outright than the limbo I’m caught in,” she answered. “I still don’t know why I’m treated better than you. I’m not like her protégée, Janine. She practically worships the ground that Daniella walks on and acts just like her, her little mini-me.” Estelle made her voice small and demeaning when she saidmini-me.
I laughed quietly at her antics, welcoming the familiar loosening in my chest that I felt whenever Estelle was around. We had become fast friends while working together, but though she always invited me out with her other friends, I never took her up on the offer. We were bonded by the work trauma dealt out by Daniella, but I didn’t think we had much in common otherwise. Still, I cared about her and didn’t want her stranded with Daniella and Janine if I was fired.
“Regardless of the reason, I thank God and the cosmos that we have jobs,” I said. “As the Bible says, weeping will remain for a night, but joy will come in the morning.”
Estelle snorted, plopping the Hemingway College baseball caps down less than gently. “Sure. I think you and I are envisioning ourselves at two different parts of the Bible. I’m still ripping my clothes and putting on a potato sack like Job.”
I giggled. “It’s notthatbad here,” I said.
Estelle raised an eyebrow. “Rich, coming from you,” she shot back. “You and I have been working here for five years, and Daniella has been torturing you for three of those years. If anything, you should be ripping your clothes and putting on that potato sack. You do inventory and restock all the shelves, and then there are all the extra hours she forces you to work…she looks at me with slight disdain, but she outright hates you.”
I shrugged. “The wheel of karma comes back around eventually. It’s not up to me to enact it.”
Though she still looked skeptical, Estelle shrugged and continued stacking the hats. “So, who were you looking for, anyway?” she asked casually. Too casually.
I smiled. Estelle was always looking for tea to spill; she was almost as bad as the other gossips in town. “No one,” I said. “Just…a friend.”
Estelle turned fully toward me, a spark in her narrowed eyes. Her round face lit up with the promise of juicy pieces of information, and her shoulder-length curls bounced slightly as she leaned forward.
“I know that look, though I’ve never seen it on you,” she said, pointing her tiny index finger toward my face. “You have a crush on someone. Who is it? Do I know them?”
I rolled my eyes, moving away from her and toward the Hemingway College-branded shot glasses. “It’s no one.”
“Uh-huh, sure.” Estelle followed me, looking over her shoulder and then looking back at me. “Daniella’s nowhere near us and neither is Janine. Spill.”
“It’s no one,” I repeated, hiding a smile. My lips twitched with the effort. “I promise.”
Just as I was saying that, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I tried to ignore it, but a sly grin made its way across Estelle’s face as she eyed my pocket. “You gonna get that?” she asked.
I shook my head, trying to ignore the fact that I was blushing. “Nope. I’m at work; whoever it is will have to wait.”
Before I could stop her, Estelle yanked the phone from my pocket, looking at the name on the screen. Her eyes widened, and she turned the phone toward me with an accusing glare. “Tell me this is just another person named Nathan Hemingway and not thehottestguy in our town.”
“First of all, he’s not the hottest guy,” I said. “And secondly, he doesn’t even live in town.”
“How would you know that unless you knew him??” Estelle came closer, eyes even more narrow than before. “This istheNathan Hemingway, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Oh, it absolutely is. Pick it up.”
“Nope.” I snatched back the phone, stowing it back in my sweater pocket and turning so she couldn’t reach it. “It can wait.”
“You can’t just putthe Nathan Hemingwayon hold! What if it’s important town business?”
I smiled. “I’m a nobody,” I said. “There’s no such thing as someone calling me for important town business.”
“Despite what you’re trying to convince me of,the Nathan Hemingwayis calling you, so anything he has to say is important.Pick it up.”
I raised my eyes to the ceiling, asking for divine intervention. Maybe God would open up the floor and just take me so I wouldn’t have to explain to Estelle that Nathan was just using me to keep his estate intact—not because he actually liked me. I caught his look of disdain when he first saw me, before he was able to conceal his expression. I knew that if he had any other option, he wouldn’t attach himself to the likes of me. After all, what else did I have to offer him other than assurance that his estate was safe?
But as time went along during our coffee date, I reassured myself: I wasn’t in it for love. We were in it for mutually beneficial reasons—none of which had to do with attraction.
On his part, anyway.
The phone buzzed three times, two short buzzes for a text, and one longer one for a voicemail. I tried to school my face so Estelle wouldn’t ask questions, but I wasn’t so lucky.
“He sent you a text, didn’t he?” she said, squealing.
