The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale by Stephanie Eding

Author:Stephanie Eding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

20

Leftover Love

Josie had no choice but to resume obsessive cleaning. The week off school for the holiday break proved a bit too much for her mental health. She had coffee with Ella in the mornings, but when the kids napped in the afternoon, she had to return to her house—and her roommates.

Her stomach brushed against the windowsill as she wiped the glass. The entire room smelled of cleaning product and pumpkin vanilla candles. The gray autumn sky made for quaint mood lighting with little to no inside lights necessary. City of the Sun played softly from her phone on the kitchen counter.

It would have been the perfect relaxing environment, if Ben hadn’t been sitting at the table typing away on his laptop. She strained often to see what he was doing over there, but couldn’t get close enough without making her snooping totally obvious.

Kevin passed through the room with a laundry bag slung over his shoulder. “We still have leftovers for lunch?”

“Yup.” The three of them had accumulated enough Thanksgiving foods from their families that they wouldn’t need to grocery shop for a week.

“Sweet. I’m starved.” Kevin proceeded toward the laundry room near the basement landing.

“Me too. I’ll start heating it up. Ben, do you…” Her words took on a robotic tone. It should not be that hard to speak to him. “Do you want some lunch?”

Ben rubbed hard at his eyes. “Please.”

Josie got to work, setting out the containers of food, thankful to have something to do that didn’t involve dusting for the second time in the past two days.

Kevin returned empty-handed and set to work at Josie’s side, spearing turkey pieces onto a microwavable plate.

Across the room, Ben groaned. “Kevin, I kind of hate you these days.”

“Why now?” he answered.

“Because of your stupid pact, I’m looking up online associate degrees. It’s stressing me out.” He shut his laptop a little more intensely than he usually did.

“Degree in what?” Josie couldn’t keep from asking. She missed speaking freely to him with no weirdness.

Ben sauntered up to the bar top and dropped his head in his folded arms without looking at her. “Electrical technology. It’d get me a hell of a promotion at work. Plus, I wouldn’t have to work on a line anymore, and I’d make about twice as much.”

“Get that dream job, Benny.” Kevin used his fork to point to the pact hanging behind them.

“Yeah, except I don’t want to go back to school. I’m thirty, dude. School should be over forever.” He stretched across the counter to snatch up a dinner roll. “Izzy thinks it’s funny, at least. She said we can do homework together.”

Ben smiled then and took a big bite of bread.

Josie spilled a spoonful of corn over the edge of the bowl as she watched him and quickly tried to clean it up before anyone realized. Ben rounded the corner to grab his cup off the sink ledge. He squeezed in between his two roommates, but Josie zigged when she should have zagged and stepped backward onto his foot.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.