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I paused the podcast so I could focus all my attention on her. “Hey, how’s that work situation?”
She exhaled heavily. “Awful. My female boss doesn’t see any problem with a male coworker leaving kneepads on my desk.”
“That’s gross. For both him and her.”
“Yeah, it gets worse, though. My friend Mindy told me my boss Laura has a thing for Austin, the guy who left the kneepads. So she’s not doing anything about it, and she’s jealous and pissy toward me.”
I cringed. “She wishes he would have put the kneepads on her desk?”
“I guess.”
“You need to either find a good lawyer or get the hell out of there.”
Sam hated her job as an insurance adjustor, and I hated it on her behalf.
“I just updated my resume, and I was hoping you’d take a look at it for me?” she said.
“Of course. Send it to me.”
“Thanks.” She swiped some of the dip into a wonton chip and ate it. “Oh wow, that’s amazing.”
“Good. I was hoping it was a good recipe.”
“Have you seen your dickhead neighbor since moving day?”
The spark of defensiveness that flared in my chest surprised me. I was no longer convinced Ford was a dickhead. I was set in my views about pro football and hockey, but I’d never disliked the men who played the sports. And after talking to Ford last night, I regretted some of my word choices in the columns I’d written on the subject.
I got off on the wrong foot with Ford, but he reached out to me when he saw I was upset. I wasn’t ready to tell Sam about that, though.
“I’ve seen him a couple of times, but we haven’t talked,” I lied.
“He’s probably used to women falling at his feet. Telling him he’s the greatest and his average peen is the biggest one they’ve ever seen.”
Eager for a subject change, I said, “My brother called me yesterday.”
Sam’s expression turned serious. “Is he okay?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so. He said he needed $4,000 immediately or some bad people were going to hurt him.”
“Oh, Elle.” Sam reached across the kitchen table and squeezed my hand. “Why didn’t you tell me this when it happened?”
“I was overwhelmed. I kept trying to get him to tell me who he owed the money to and why, but he had a headache and he was very irritable.”
“Did you give him the money?” my friend asked gently.
My eyes flooded with tears. “Yeah. I knew I would hate myself if I did but also hate myself if I didn’t. There’s no way to win. Our dad and our grandparents cut him off a couple of years ago and now I’m all he has left.”
“I can’t imagine being put in that situation.”
Sam had been my friend since I moved to Denver to work as a reporter at theChronicle, right after my college graduation. She worked at the front desk in the lobby of the newspaper and we’d hit it off immediately. After six years of friendship, she knew some of what my brother struggled with, but not everything. She didn’t pry, but she listened when I wanted to talk about it.
I wiped the corners of my eyes and took a big sip of my slushie. “I want Luke to know I love him, and I know sending the money is a fucked-up way of doing that, but…” I shrugged. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s crashing on a friend’s couch in Chicago.”
Sam opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it.
