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A better person would naturally want to mend things, but in doing so, I would be accepting what she had done and I wasn’t ready for that.
So it was just me and the newspaper, taking another look at a host of job offers I wasn’t suited for. I wasn’t the kind of person anyone would hire to do manual labor, and I didn’t have a college degree for any of the entry-level so-calledrealjobs. My heart sank a little as I stopped reading the ad and started browsing through my past mistakes. Not only did I not have money to afford going to college, my dream career was one for which there were no courses and lessons.
I just have to do things the hard way, don’t I?
Without really knowing what I was doing, I put the newspaper down on the table and set my head in my hands.
Maggie glanced up from her laptop, which she had brought along to assist me in my search. “Giving up?”
“I’m not qualified for anything else.” Suddenly, I was so tired that I didn’t care what would happen. “I’m mad at you, you know.”
Maggie shut the lid of her laptop and pushed it to the side. “I know you are.”
“I told you I didn’t want your help.”
“Sure,” she agreed, voice soft, “but you needed it. Look, you’ll feel more secure now, as soon as Deacon installs it.”
The “it” in question being the deadbolt lock she’d brought with her, despite me saying I would buy one my next paycheck. She’d come right in through the door and shoved it into my hands like a Christmas present she couldn’t wait to deliver, declaring it to be overstock from a hardware shop where a friend of hers worked—meaning she’d obtained it for nearly nothing. And then she had gone on to say she invited her brother out to my house to install it, that he would be along shortly. While he did that, we could look for jobs together, as was the original plan, before going out, all three of us, as a reward for Deacon’s efforts.
She had gone and invalidated what I wanted, and she had made plans for me without first discussing them with me.
I thumped my fist on the kitchen table, gritting my teeth to restrict a hiss of pain. “I told you—”
Maggie also thumped the table, making a considerably larger sound. Her gaze snapped with an argumentativeness I could never hope to match.
I was inadequate in so many ways.
“You are my friend. Sure, maybe I could have tried to talk you into this first before going and doing it on my own. But you can be so stubborn, Megyn. I’m not going to let you argue your way into being unsafe because of your pride.”
“We wouldn’t have known this was a problem if you hadn’t busted my door down.”
Maggie got up. My heart lurched. I thought she was about to take her laptop and walk out, leaving me truly alone in this world. Instead, she walked around the table and hugged me, stroking the back of my head with her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured into my ear. “I just worry about you so much. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Her voice shook. Maggie wasn’t one to get overly emotional.
I turned in her arms and hugged her, and lay my head to hers. We stayed like tshat for a few moments. My racing heartbeat slowed, my aggravation dissipating like water spilled in a desert. I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “I’m sorry.”
I felt her smile against the top of my head. “Now that we’ve both apologized, can we put this behind us?”
“I’d prefer that,” I agreed.
“For you, me, too. You’ve got enough to deal with.” Maggie sat down in the chair next to mine, pulling her laptop over and opening it. “So, any luck with the ads?”
“I’m not qualified for anything.”
Maggie gave a sympathetic little murmur. Unlike me, she had gone to college, because art was apparently something that could be taught. She turned her screen a little to let me see. “I thought I’d look up events in the area, see if there are any job fairs you could maybe go to and make connections. There’s this…”
Her voice faded out.
“Mags?”
Her mouth opened, like she was about to speak, but it kept getting wider and wider until her jaw hung loose. Her eyes performed similarly, opening up so wide I had a brief, absurd vision of them popping out of her head and rolling across the table.
“Maggie?”
Maggie clicked on an advertisement, which brought up a page colored orange and black, the typical Halloween colors. Huge font at the top of the page read “Carter Bryant’s Halloween Bash.”
“What’s that?”