“Oh. Um. Okay. Thanks.”
I let her take me outside and across the street to where a little food truck with the wordsTerry’s Tuckerpainted on it in green letters on bright yellow was parked.
I was introduced to Terry, which led to an explanation about alpha-gal, and Terry made me a turkey sandwich on rye and promised to come up with some more exciting options for me in the future. Terry also sold chips of several kinds, not just cheddar and sour cream flavor, so I got some salt and vinegar, and Terry gave me several fat garlic pickle spears.
Terry also promised that the cookies used shortening instead of butter, and then insisted on giving me two of them on the house to welcome me to Shawano.
By the time I finished my lunch, I was actually starting to feel like I might actually like living here.
I called Noah first,now that all the paperwork made it official.
“Hey, Sethy,” he answered. “You okay?”
“I’m good, Nono,” I told him. “I got the job.”
He whooped, although I could tell he wasn’t as excited as I wanted him to be.
“You still think this is a bad idea,” I said, his dourness dampening my excitement.
He sighed. “I’m glad you got the job,” he said slowly. “But I’m still worried about you. And Imissyou.”
“I miss you, too,” I admitted, because I did. This was the farthest we’d been from each other ever in our lives. “But I like these people, Noah. I think I’ll really like working with them.”
“And Elliot?” The way he said Elliot’s name was not flattering.
“He’s good,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding the question.
“You know what I mean,” Noah grumbled. He wasn’t wrong.
“It’s fine,” I replied a little shortly. It wasn’t, not really. Because I wanted it to be something it wasn’t and wasn’t going to be. Not because Elliot was being mean or callous or anything like that.
Noah sighed again, but he let it drop, although he’d already rained on my parade, so it felt like it didn’t really matter.
We talked for a while, catching up. I asked about Lulu, forcing myself to be charitable, which was—embarrassingly—easier now that I found myself in a situation where Noah wasn’t terribly happy with the state of my love life, either. Because I could hear the same defensive protectiveness in his voice that I felt in my own chest when it came to the people Noah dated.
When I hung up with him, I called Quincy, although she didn’t answer, instead shooting me a quick text telling me she was at a scene. I texted her back, telling her I got the job and that she should call me later.
And then I sent one to Hart.
I didn’t expect him to call me in return—a text, sure, but my phone started ringing, and it was his name on the screen.
“Hiya Hart.” I’m sure I sounded surprised.
“Mays,” he replied, sounding the way Hart sounded when he wanted something or was about to make your life difficult by asking you to do something that was going to eat up your Sunday afternoon. I had no idea what it might be, though. “I—I mean, congrats on the job.”
“Thank you…” I’m sure I sounded extra awkward, because I couldn’t imagine he’d called me just because he wanted to congratulate me. He easily could have done that by text, and inmy experience, Hart was generally a texter unless he thought it was important.
“They did a reference call day before yesterday,” he told me.
“Thanks,” I said again.
“I mean, no problem. I just—You need to know what you’re getting into, here, Mays.”
“What I’m getting into?”
Hart sighed. “Look, I didn’t tell you all the nitty gritty details of what went down out there last Christmas. But if you’re actually going to stay there, you deserve to know what kinds of people you’re going to be working and living with.”
And then he told me.
