Baggage by S G Redling

Author:S G Redling [Redling, S G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9781503950603
Google: taAjswEACAAJ
Amazon: 1503950603
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2016-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After Meredith leaves, I can’t tell if I feel more awkward or less. It’s not the first time my boss has made me aware of just how bad I am at being a person. Emotions flow through her naturally and logically; they tend to fall off of me like scabs. Sometimes I feel like watching her and learning from her. This is not one of those times. Jeannie is here with a case of wine. It’s snowing again and the day is not going to get any brighter, literally or metaphorically.

Meredith was worried about me. She was upset about Ellis and she seemed to be having a hard time forgiving Jeannie for her innocent but snarky remarks about the dead man. She looked tired and she could probably smell those delicious enchiladas Jeannie put in the oven. I should have invited her to eat with us. I should have apologized for being so weird. At the very least, I should have given her her thirty dollars back, but I didn’t. I let her leave in an unsettled state.

And now that she’s gone, I relax.

I’ll make things better with Meredith later. This isn’t the time for that. My job and my boss will keep. The letters on my floor and coffee table will keep. Later, I’ll scoop them up and put them in the box that’s waiting for them in the closet. Later. I’ll take care of everything later, but not now. Now Jeannie is here. February 17 is behind me and we’re going to make sure it stays there for another year.

This is what we do.

We eat. Chips and guacamole, enchiladas, ice cream. We drink bottles of red and open a bottle of Baileys but because of all the food, I don’t drop off that cliff of oblivion. Instead I float on this warm ocean of carbohydrates. We play backgammon and rummy; we watch two episodes of Judge Judy. Jeannie beats every contestant on Wheel of Fortune and I shut her down during Jeopardy!.

Jeannie pulls out her phone and a little bullet speaker and starts DJ-ing blasts from our past. We bounce from Britney Spears to Korn to Eminem to Queens of the Stone Age—songs we both know all the words to, songs we’ve both been drunk on. Songs that came after the worst of my childhood.

We sing songs we sang when I was in high school and she was in college, and when I was in college and she was in grad school. We sing songs we sang together in bars and in cars and on double dates. We howl through “Nookie” and roll through “Country Grammar” without a bump or a worry. We interrupt each other with mentions of guys we slept with or didn’t sleep with or wanted to sleep with or shouldn’t have slept with. We shout names and bars and drinks at each other and respond with eye-rolls or shrieks or groans.

Jeannie drives this bus but I copilot right beside her. We know this road and we don’t veer out of our lane.

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