Page 45 of All the Ugly Things
I made a face that pulled at the gash on my cheek and cringed. Fixing my ponytail I’d thrown up haphazardly, I shrugged. “Anyway, he just said his dad wanted to help or whatever and gave me their card again. And then he hunted me down on campus.”
“He followed you?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. Again, they seemnicealmost. But I don’t know if I can trust that.” I picked at a patch of fraying denim on my thigh. When Nancy didn’t ask any more questions, and wasn’t writing anything, I met her gaze. “Do you know who David Valentine is?”
“Valor Holdings, CEO? Sure, everyone in Des Moines has heard of him…” Her voice trailed off and those brows rose again. “Is that who comes into your diner?”
She sounded surprised as hell. She could join the club. I hadn’t even yet mentioned running into Hudson last night. Was I totally sure he hadn’t been waiting for me for another surprise visit? No. But he’d seemed irritated with himself over that wine he ordered when I refused it.
“Yeah, it was him, and his son Hudson. They told me they’d help me get a job there, at the Holdings place, or whatever, an interview at least if I wanted it.”
“Hmm.” Her pen wenttap tap tapon the notepad and her foot swung in a matched rhythm, dangling the red shoe from her toes.
“So?” My impatience had hit its peak.
“So what?”
“What do I do?”
“I’m not your parents or your boss or your priest, Lilly. My job isn’t to tell you what to do, it’s to help you work through your problems so you can make a decision.”
That impatience gave way to frustration. Didn’t she get it? “Well, my parents suck and I’m not Catholic, so who in the hell is supposed to help me?” I grunted. Obviously her job wasn’t to be my personal life coach. I already knew that.
Iwantedsomeone to tell me what to do. What steps to take. Having it all at my hands with no experience always felt like I was grasping at thin air.
I essentially went from being a teenage minor with no responsibility to an inmate and then limited freedoms, living on my own when I’d never had to do so much before as balance a checkbook or clean a bathroom.
I was thrust into adulthood with a ‘good luck,’ a pat on the back, a prison record, and Ellen. Now Nancy.
And maybe the Valentines?
“Do you want to work in an office? Isn’t that what you’ve been going to school for?”
I’d once wanted to be a lawyer and follow in my dad’s footsteps. I now knew I’d been seeking his approval. Didn’t take a genius to figure that out. Didn’t take a genius to figure out I’d never get it, either, but that revelation came too little too late.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to own an equestrian farm.
After that, a hairstylist.
I could be a mechanic or a bottom feeder in some corporate conglomerate, one of the many thousands of mice hired to run their races with small rewards.
All I knew was that I was desperate to do something to make all the ugly things I lived through worth it. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to give myself a decent life even if it was vastly different than what I’d always imagined. I wanted to do work I was proud of that would allow me a small savings for a rainy day.
I was smart enough, that I knew. That was all I knew.
“I don’t know,” I finally said.
Decisions, decisions, decisions, with little opportunity.
“Seems to me you’re being given a chance to figure out if it’s something you’d like. I know Valor Holdings. They’re a respectable company. Not too large you blend in, not too small you stand out.”
“So I should call.”
She ignored me and kept talking.
“I think David Valentine has done a lot of good for this community and he’s as stand up as they come, but working for him is your call. If you want a character reference, I can only go off what I read in the papers and see at fundraising events, but he’s always come across as a trustworthy guy.”
He did.
