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“Oh, Harriet. Stop being such a drama queen. You and your sisters take after your father.” I pressed my lips together at her words. Everyone said we took after our mom. She was the drama queen in the family, but she was the only one that seemingly didn’t recognize it.
“Anyway, Mom. I’m going to go, okay?”
“Have you seen any interesting jobs in the paper, darling?” She added as an aside and I frowned slightly. Was she paying attention to me or not?
“Not really, but thanks for asking.”
“Okay, darling. And I’ll see you for dinner?”
“I don’t know, Mom.” I stared at my box of half-eaten pepperoni pizza.
“But your sisters are coming, and I’m making meatloaf, your favorite.”
“That’s nobody’s favorite, Mom. Your meatloaf sucks.” I heard her gasp.
“Well, I try my best. It’s not my fault that I’m not…” She paused, waiting to see if I was going to say anything. I didn’t. “It’s not my fault I’m not Julia Child. Would you rather she had been your mother?”
“Maybe,” I said, wanting to annoy her.
“Oh, Harriet. You’ve broken my heart yet again.”
“Mom, just speak to Dad.”
“I told you I’m not talking to that man anymore. We’re getting a divorce.”
“Okay,” I said and hung up. I couldn’t deal with her drama, not right now, not when I had real-life issues to deal with. Almost every other month, my mom threatened to divorce my father for something he’d said or done. For all I knew, my father didn’t even know that she threatened divorce yet again. As an inventor who was always in his study or lab, he was very absentminded, which I understood could be really annoying if he was your partner, but Mom had been with him for over thirty years now. It wasn’t like he’d suddenly become absentminded; he was always this way.
I sighed as I jumped out of my chair and walked to the window in my bedroom. I looked out at the garden, at the beautiful roses and hydrangeas. I would miss this view. It was a gorgeous house, and I’d been lucky to live in this room for a great price for a long time. I heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said.
“Hey, what’s going on?” my roommate Brittany asked me as she walked in, eating a sandwich. I sniffed, not loving the smell of pickles that had filled my room.
“I’m just trying to figure out where I’m going to live and where I’m going to work,” I said, shrugging. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I might go and live with Tony. You know Tony, right?” I nodded. Tony was her friend with benefits that she’d been seeing on and off for the last two years. “He’s got a pretty cool studio apartment, but then I’ve also got David.”
“David?” I raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t David her boss?
“Yeah, David. You know. You met him at my office party?”
“But he’s your boss, right?”
“Yeah. And sometimes more,” she said, arching an eyebrow as she bit down into the sandwich.
“What do you mean, Brittany?”
“I just mean that I’m a free spirit, and he’s a free spirit, too, and we may or may not have hooked up on a couple of occasions.”
“But isn’t he married?” My jaw dropped. I knew Brittany was not in a monogamous relationship, but I didn’t think she’d sleep with a married man.
“Oh, his wife left him a couple of months ago.” She shrugged.
“She left him? Why?”
“I think she wanted to travel around France and Italy and go shopping.”
“You mean she left him on a trip or she left him like she left the marriage?” Brittany looked at me vacantly and shrugged.
“I don’t know, but she wasn’t there when we fucked.” I bit down on my lower lip. I had nothing to say.
