Love Buzz by Neely Tubati-Alexander

Author:Neely Tubati-Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

21.

I TRY TO RATIONALIZE ACCEPTING A RETAIL POSITION AT A BOUTIQUE ON Chamber Hill as a logical thing to do. One, I need a job. And this is a paying job. It certainly doesn’t pay as much as my accounting position though. In fact, I realize when I leave the store I haven’t even asked what it pays, and I have to call Tatiana to find out what I’ll be making. This “new” me seems to delight in shocking the old me, who never would have accepted a job without knowing what it pays. Then again, old me wouldn’t have sought out a job in a boutique either.

Once I learned the wage, I reviewed the numbers and realized I will still be eating into my savings each month, so unfortunately The Flatterie has to be a temporary fill. My dining menu for the foreseeable future will include Totino’s instead of Pagliacci to offset the discomfort I feel of pulling unnecessarily from savings. I certainly know how to grocery shop on a budget, though something inside me still winces at the thought.

But the number two reason, the obvious, is I now work on Chamber Hill. While I don’t particularly expect Julian to wander into a women’s boutique to riffle through the items on the Bust rack, it does mean my chances of running into him have increased substantially.

It’s a win/win, really.

It’s been a week, five days of work, and I have yet to regret my decision. It turns out Tatiana is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. My favorite part of the day has quickly become when we are prepping the store to open. No customers yet, just the promise and hope of a good day, when we talk about life.

“I wish I was as well-traveled as you,” I tell her as she regales me with accounts of her globetrotting. She has trekked the world and has stories about living that make me realize I haven’t done much of it myself—living, that is. “What was your favorite place?”

“Man, that’s like picking a favorite child I think, or at least, what I imagine that would be like.” She smiles as she straightens clothes against their hangers on the Butt rack.

“I spent a year in my early thirties serving as a mahout at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand to an elephant named Mae Mai. That was pretty special.”

“Wow,” I breathe. “Tell me everything about it.”

Tatiana smiles greedily. “I prepared her meals and made sure she stayed healthy. We grew so close I could recognize her trumpeting and know it was her instead of one of the others. It was marked, like a voice. She was saved from street performing for tourists. Don’t ever pay for an elephant ride,” she warns me. “They treat those animals so poorly.”

I nod, wondering if I’ll ever be in a position to turn down an elephant ride in the streets of Bangkok or Phuket.

“Where else have you been?” I ask with a kidlike enthusiasm. This life of Tatiana’s might as well be magical—straight out of Harry Potter or The Polar Express.

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