Eric palmed his forehead.
“Oh duh, of course! I had put it in there because you said you were coming to get it, Mitchell.”
“Well how nice of you to remember! Jesus,” Mitchell sniped.
“Mitchell, I have a lot on my mind, a lot more than your fucking favorite T-shirt. Jane will bring you the bag and you can find your own way out.”
“I wanted to spend time with the dogs!” Mitchell protested.
“They could use a break from you, Mitchell. We could all use a break from you! Please get your T-shirt and go.”
It was already getting dark when Esmé and Jane walked to their cars.
“Jane, you were the hero today! Thank god you found that shirt.”
“Just doing my job,” Jane said, reaching for her keys. “I’m sorry you got the short end of that stick.”
“I don’t care, whatevs with him. Eric was super sweet.”
“Yeah, he’s such a nice guy. I’d think he could do much better. But I guess it’s hard to find the right person.”
“Oh, so hard,” Esmé replied emphatically, then added, “You must be super nostalgic aboutSpellbound.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you take one of the box sets yesterday.”
Jane blanched. “Oh that, well—”
“Jane, it’s no big deal. I saw you slip it into your tote.”
Jane glanced down at her Goyard tote. Its provenance compounded her shame, and made her worry that eagle-eyed Esmé was speculating about how she had acquired it.
“I would never take anything of value.”
“Listen, I’ve been tempted. These people have so much stuff! But I need a really firm boundary between work and life, and for me, it would be like taking my work home.”
Jane resorted to her last line of defense: absolute candor. Well,almost. “You got me, I gave in just this once and of course you saw. He has so many duplicates, and they were all going to storage, so I knew it wouldn’t be missed. But I hope you won’t tell anyone, I’m so embarrassed.”
“Jane, they don’t pay us enough, really. Enjoy it!”
This sounded so patronizing. Jane felt provoked and she felt exposed, and it was all the worse because she had thought she was starting to like Esmé.
“I enjoyed working with you today, Esmé,” Jane told her as evenly as possible. “Drive safe!”
“Thanks, Jane! I love working with you!” Esmé exclaimed, ponytail bobbing for emphasis.
When she got home, Jane only wanted to curl up in bed, kick back, and watch more of Kelsey’s witch show.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t crawl into bed because she had plans. She had a Bumble date. There’d been intermittent text exchanges with Teddy, but she wasn’t sure if there would ever be a thaw, or if at this point she even wanted one.
Jane checked the time. If the guy wasn’t punctual, the date would be over before it started. A girl had to have some standards.
She wore jeans, a blouse, and one of her Hermès scarves. The flashiest thing she’d done was to apply the crimson red lipstick Kelsey had given her, and even that made her feel a bit licentious.
Dating in November, with the holidays looming, was fraught. The mass frenzy from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Eve—an orgy of gratuitous consumption and bathetic emotional display—was hard to navigate. Her first choice was to duck andcover and get through it, but without Teddy, she wondered if it would be lonely.
At five minutes past eight o’clock (a few minutes late so as not to appear overly eager), Jane walked into the restaurant and spotted Jake sitting at the bar. He was nursing a beer, immersed in his iPhone. He was a lawyer who probably worked long days, then fielded emails all night. He was the sort of man her parents would want her to marry.
