Digging In: A Novel(6)
“You want half of mine?” Jackie winced slightly when she caught the harshness in her tone. We’d shared lunch plenty of times, but suddenly sharing meant something more. I’d always joked that Jackie was my work spouse—were we getting a divorce, too? The thought brought on a wave of sadness. Not the Big Kahuna of grief, but a breaker that drew my energy out to sea.
I stood and smiled at her, trying to counter the uneasiness between us. “Thanks, but I’ll just buy something from here,” I said, gesturing toward the white tents. “Can’t be too bad, right? Fresh, local—”
“Expensive,” Jackie finished.
“I’m sure.” I dug through my purse and thankfully found my wallet. “Wish me luck,” I said, but she just nodded, her mouth full.
The view from inside the market was impressive. Bustling with vitality, healthy-looking, sun-kissed vendors conducted brisk business with the hordes of downtown workers on lunch breaks. Cheese, meats, veggies, honey, flowers, baked goods—my head spun as I tried to take it all in. Everything seemed a little brighter, and gave the impression of people living lives that were better, richer, more wholesome, like the produce they were hawking.
“What are you looking for?” called a woman wearing a brightly colored housedress over a pair of destroyed jeans. She’d piled her bright magenta curls atop her head and secured them with what looked suspiciously like a carrot.
I smiled tightly. “Just browsing.”
“You can be browsing with purpose,” she said, grinning back. She was missing an eyetooth, and I felt shameful relief at the evidence of poor life choices.
The girl went on in a singsongy voice. “We’ve got every little thing you need.”
Oh, yeah? I wanted to shout. You’ve got my husband in your truck? Job security? A teenage son who doesn’t seethe with unexpressed anger? You’ve got all that hanging out with the asparagus and early onions?
She separated out a bunch of vibrant greens, tied them together with a spindly length of raffia, and tossed them on the table between us. “What about these?”
“What are they?” I snapped.
She smiled again, and I wondered if she was amused or smug. “Dandelion greens.”
“People eat those?”
“They do. Cleans the liver. Helps you flush out the bad stuff.”
She was smug. Just a little, but it was there. I was sick of people younger than me feeling superior. Sick of hipper than thou looking on me with pity because I was so ignorant. “I have a toilet for that.”
She laughed, unperturbed. “Why not give this method a try?”
The greens were a perfect verdant green, maybe too perfect. “No, thanks,” I said, and walked straight back up to the office, pausing only to stuff a few crinkly dollars into the vending machine Lukas had threatened to do away with. The machine stuck, and I had to shove my hand up into it, freeing my energy bar from its noose.
CHAPTER 3
The employees of Guh spent the afternoon trying to prove that Petra’s common-space concept was a revelation, not the awkward, slightly adversarial game of workplace musical exercise balls it was proving to be. The millennials were nothing if not polite, but after a few hours I’d grown tired of the constant “Is it okay with you if I take a look?” and “Would you mind explaining why you do it that way?” Fidgety, I stood to adjust the blinds and found myself plopping down on Seth’s lap when I sat back down. As we fumbled to right ourselves, bouncing halfway across the room, I could see Lukas in his office, arms crossed, watching us.
“I wanted to see what you’ve done with the salted caramel gelato ad,” Seth explained quickly, and I could see a blush rising from the edge of his scruffy beard. “I thought you were getting up. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” I replied, my smile so broad it hurt. I brought up the ad I hadn’t yet finished, swallowing down my irritation at showing my work before it met my standards. “The background color isn’t right yet, but I’m happy with the dominant image.”
“I can do some tweaking,” Seth offered, loud enough for Lukas to hear behind his closed office door. “If you’re okay with that.” He ran his gaze over the ad, frowning. “I can see what you mean about the color. And are you sure you’re happy with the size of the image? I can mess around with it for a while.”
I was fairly certain Petra Polly disapproved of intraoffice strangling. “Knock yourself out.”
During our exchange, I’d noticed Jackie slipped out for a smoke break. I found her at the bottom of the stairwell, door open to the parking lot. “I don’t know if I can do this for three months,” I said, leaning against the wall next to her.
Jackie turned to me, tears threatening to make a black, soupy mess out of her mascara. “Why didn’t you come back to eat lunch with me? What were you doing? Did you go to talk to Lukas without me?”
I gestured to the still-bustling market. “I felt overwhelmed by all that, so I came upstairs and ate an energy bar. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
Jackie stared at me for what felt like a long time. “I don’t want to think that of you, that you’d go behind my back. We’ve known each other a long time.”
“We have,” I agreed, wishing for a moment that our friendship wasn’t locked into the workday. We didn’t do girls’ nights out or Saturday trips to the mall. Hell, I hadn’t been inside her apartment in years. But we’d grown into the middle years sitting next to each other, and that counted for a lot. I put my arm around her shoulders and resisted the urge to wave the smoke away. “We’ll show Lukas that letting either of us go is not in the best interest of . . . Guh.”