Giving It All

by Christi Barth

  She’d fallen in love. What was more life-affirming, joy-embracing than that?

  “I had a hard spring. And summer,” Brooke admitted. “My life derailed. No, worse than that. It stagnated. This is the first party I’ve thrown in longer than I want to admit. I appreciate it. I’m so grateful that you all took that leap of faith and let Madison drag you to the house of a woman she barely knows.”

  Chloe smiled at her. “I told you, you’re one of us now. No matter what.”

  “And you’re filling us with delicious snacks,” Annabeth pointed out.

  “Today is a treat for us.” Summer poked a finger into the strawberry mask, sniffed it, and then dipped into the banana honey mask with a longer, appreciative inhale and closed her eyes. “You’ve made goopily wonderful face masks that will have us looking like we bathed in the blood of virgins.”

  “Um, hopefully not.”

  “No, that’s a good thing. Countess Elizabeth Báthory did it once a week to maintain her youthful glow.”

  Huh. So the trendy boutique owner had a love of gory history. Maybe everyone in this group had hidden depths. “I’m going with the less politically incorrect avocado and salt scrub to create a glow. Remember, I used to do these in class. The school district frowns on sharing bodily fluids with your students.”

  Annabeth topped off her mojito. “Why are you pampering us with your home spa savvy?”

  “Well, quitting my job—or finally having them accept my resignation—this late in the summer left Roosevelt Prep in a bit of a lurch. I agreed to substitute teach the Family and Consumer Science class. For no more than one month, so I don’t get sucked into staying. I’d mentioned to Madison that I want to test all these”—Brooke waved her hand to encompass the mask mixtures for different skin types, as well as the polishes and foot baths she’d set out—“so I can do the moisturizing masks as a lesson plan for the first week. It’ll combat summer-scorched skin. At the same time, it’ll show them how to make a mask that costs twenty-five dollars at the salon for only two. And that will segue into a class on economics. How you pamper not just your body and spirit, but your bank account. That’s an important lesson for kids to learn, especially those from such a privileged background.”

  Summer raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “You don’t just teach them how to cook and sew?”

  It was the same question Brooke fielded at every open house, at every cocktail party. Basically anytime her job came up. “No. Because this isn’t 1954. That’s why we changed the name from Home Ec to Family and Consumer Science. It’s a far larger curriculum. About preparing people for living on their own. More to the point, it prepares them to live without a safety net. That means taking care of yourself financially and physically and emotionally.”

  “Now I’m wishing I’d taken your class. It sounds really useful,” Chloe said.

  Annabeth snorted. “Heck, forget the high-schoolers. I know people our age who need to learn those life skills. Men and women equally. In this world of daily take-out and delivery everything, so many people don’t have a clue how to do things for themselves.”

  Katrina popped up like a cork thumbed out of a Prosecco bottle. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  She threw out her arms like a game-show hostess revealing the showcase grand prize. “That’s my new business!”

  Laughter burbled out of Summer. “Life Skills 101?”

  “The name might need tweaking, but yes, essentially.”

  It struck Brooke as just another one of Katrina’s crazy ideas thrown at the wall in an attempt to find something that would stick. Like well-cooked pasta. But her role as best friend demanded that she tease a few more details out, considering Katrina’s level of excitement. “I don’t get it.”

  “Lots of adults never took Home Ec. They never learned the basics. Do you remember when David took the maid and the cook when he split? I had to call you to come over and help me with the wet laundry. I had no idea how long to cook it in the dryer.”

  “Seriously?” Annabeth shot her a look that was half pity, half contempt. “A dryer’s not complicated.”

  “Not to you, maybe. But I had visions running through my head of Michael Kors blouses dried out and shrunken to the size of doll clothes. And where do all the missing socks go? Is there a compartment in the dryer, like the filter in a swimming pool, that you need to clean out once a month to find them all?”

  Madison pursed her nude-glossed lips. “No, but that’d sure explain a lot.”

  Brooke set her glass on the coffee table and moved to the center of the room. “I know I’ve shot down all your other ideas, Katrina.”

  “Yes. All fifty-three. I kept track so we could put the final number on a cake to celebrate the day my business does open.”

  Only fifty-three? It felt like twice that number. “Anyway, I shot down the others because either they wouldn’t work, or they were too expensive. Or occasionally just dumb. But this…this is brilliant. This is gold-plated genius-level brainstorming.”

  Annabeth’s hand shot up. “I still respectfully disagree. Are there really more than five people in D.C. who don’t know how to use a dryer?”

  “Oh, yes. I could name twice that many before my next blink. Not just people going through divorces, either. Widowers. Business travelers who finally plant themselves and have no idea how to live without room service. Millennials who never learned how to do anything for themselves. But it isn’t just how to operate a washer/dryer. You could have a slew of different instructors. Someone to teach first aid, and self-defense, and a sex expert, a cook, and—ooh, Chloe, we could bring you in to teach them how to write a letter.”

  “I’d be happy to pitch in.”

  “This is exciting.” Katrina bounced twice more, then whirled to face Brooke. “Why aren’t you excited?”

  The idea took root. It tangled itself deep into Brooke’s neurons and set them all to firing. “I’m so excited that I’m holding back while I try to be shrewd and work through all the possible reasons it won’t fly as a business. I can’t come up with any. I think you’ve done it, Katrina. You’ve found the business you should fund with all your revenge money. It’ll be a karmically wonderful use of it.”

  “You don’t understand. It isn’t my business. It’d be our business.”

  Funny how often people with scads of money forgot that the rest of the world…well, didn’t have it. “It sounds blissful. It sounds right up my alley. But I can’t possibly come up with even a quarter of the funds needed for a start-up like this.”

  “Of course you can’t. Partnerships aren’t always about money. In this one, I’d bring the cash flow and marketing. You’d bring the experience.”

  The denial came out in a rush. “I don’t have any experience teaching adults.” Because what Katrina offered was so big, so overwhelming. So much of an opportunity. Brooke didn’t want her ever to regret it, ever to question it for a moment. And she knew her friend well enough to know that this business was like freshly poured concrete. It was becoming more substantial with every passing second. Once set, there’d be no turning back.

  “Are you kidding? Don’t get all modest. Who better to teach all these things than you? Getting away from teaching the pieces of Home Ec wasn’t why you quit. You just didn’t want to carry the responsibility of teen lives. To be crushed again. To carry blame that other, judgmental douche bags foist on you for zero appropriate reason.”

  Katrina had always had her back. She had been the one to pick Brooke up from the hospital morgue, where she’d stayed with Sarah’s body until the girl’s parents had arrived. And the first thing Katrina had said in that cold room was You couldn’t have saved her. Which she’d then repeated every day. There had been times when Brooke had wondered if Katrina’s seemingly flighty and endless search for a business to run had started as an attempt just to lift Brooke’s spirits with silliness. Who knew it would end here, with the genesis of an idea that could change both of their lives for the
better?

  “I do love helping people learn things that will make their lives better. Easier.”

  “If we teach adults, you get all the fun of doing that without any of the stress. These are people who already have their own lives. Who know where to go for advice, or for a shoulder to cry on. All you’d have to do is teach.”

  “Oh!” Summer jumped up, too, in a swirl of pastel-striped skirts. “You could cater to high-end clientele and bigger groups. Brooke could go to client homes for one-on-ones to teach them laundry and cooking. That would prevent any potential embarrassment at being thirty or forty and not wanting to admit to a group that you don’t know at what point to spray the starch.”

  Chloe took the idea baton and ran with it. “And then you could hold big classes in first aid and self-defense at your office. You could bring in a karate instructor on Tuesday nights.”

  “It has a ton of potential.”

  It did. It really did. Potential to help people. Potential to give Katrina a passion worth pouring her time and money into. Potential for Brooke to still make a difference in enriching lives.

  She couldn’t wait to go tell Logan.

  Chapter 22

  Brooke ran down the steps to the rectory’s basement so quickly that she almost slipped. Wouldn’t that just be a kick in the behind by Fate? So excited about her new project that she ended up in a cast for a month? Maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was Fate intervening, keeping her safe. Reminding her that anything in excess was dangerous. A measured life, a balanced life, kept away heartburn, heartache, and hangovers. Wouldn’t that be funny painted along the top of a wall in the new office?

  Funny to her, maybe. Geeky boringness to everyone else who came in. Yup, she was running on fumes of giddy delight. Definitely not the time to make any decorating decisions. Or even motto decisions, come to think of it. Or maybe it was the third mojito she’d downed, while slathered in an apricot mango mask, which had reminded her of the breakfast she’d enjoyed in Dominica. The first breakfast she’d truly enjoyed in so many months.

  She’d savored the sweet juiciness of every bite if the exotic fruit salad. And had vowed, right then and there, never to check out of life again. Good or bad, sweet or devastating, Brooke refused to let herself zone out emotionally no matter what happened to her. Life was for living. For immersing yourself in the moment.

  It was exactly why she’d let herself seize every day possible with Logan, even knowing that he’d walk away from her. Because it was a million times better to have a handful of truly great days than to have dozens of humdrum ones.

  Besides, there was always the chance Logan might stay. This wasn’t based on Brooke’s love of fairy tales. His father wanted him to stay. Had, in fact, offered Logan a challenging, interesting job. One that would keep him here. It wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility that he’d actually take it. Especially…maybe…possibly…if he loved Brooke, too.

  She was getting ahead of herself. Just like her feet had gotten ahead of themselves on the stairs. Tonight was simply about sharing the exciting news of her partnership with Katrina. And hopefully celebrating with some very hot and imaginative sex—Logan’s particular wheelhouse.

  “Jerry told me to come on down. Hope that’s okay,” Brooke hollered as she skidded into the basement. Well, the man cave. Game room. All of the above. It held an immense black leather sectional, stationed in front of a wide wooden table that could easily hold two pizzas and all the beer five grown men required at the same time while watching the enormous plasma TV on the wall.

  But Logan wasn’t there. She went farther back, past the wrought-iron gate that guarded a room lined with wine bottles and filled with club chairs. Past two pinball machines and a pool table. Then she skidded to a halt in the hallway as he backed out of a room. Backed out as he shut the door because he was squeezing a big blue duffel bag through the doorway. A duffel bag Brooke recognized.

  It was the same oversized one he’d carried in Dominica.

  He was leaving.

  For all that she’d known, and braced for it, the thought hit Brooke with the force of one of D.C.’s ubiquitous three-story duplexes landing on her.

  Not that she could let Logan see that.

  It would violate the unwritten code, the unspoken rules she’d agreed to when jumping with both feet into their guaranteed-to-end relationship.

  “Hey.” Logan dropped a wonderful-in-its-casualness kiss along her temple as he kept walking back to the sofa.

  “Sorry for barging in. Jerry said I should come straight down. He was in the kitchen making ice cream.”

  “Yeah. He always does when I come back. He claims that he spends all the time I’m gone coming up with new flavors. Tonight’s are cinnamon graham cracker and Mexican chocolate with chilies.”

  Brooke crinkled her nose. Tried really hard to come across as casual and normal to her boyfriend-for-now. “I don’t think I want chilies in my chocolate.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it. I’ve had chocolate-covered crickets. And grasshoppers. Melt enough of that cacao bean and you can hide the flavor of pretty much anything that’s underneath it.” Logan sat down, but instead of leaning back, he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on the heels of his hands and stared at the television.

  “Well.” Brooke balanced on the edge of the sofa. Totally deflated now, she knew she still had to tell him why she’d popped by unannounced. “I, uh, wanted to share some good news with you. I found a new job.”

  “Way to go. How’d you find one when you didn’t know what you were looking for?”

  “Sometimes what you’re looking for is right under your nose. You just ignore the obvious until somebody points it out to you.”

  “Good.” His gaze stayed riveted on the television.

  Brooke glanced up, expecting a soccer game, but saw only dense vegetation. Was he ignoring her to watch a nature documentary? “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  “Of course.” He shifted diagonally so his knees touched hers. With an obvious effort, he slapped a look of interest on his unshaven face. “What’s your new dream job?”

  “Katrina and I are going into business together. Life Hacks. Or maybe…do you think…that’s too trendy and millennial a name? Life 101. It doesn’t matter right this second. We’ll come up with a good name. I’m going to teach adults everything I used to teach my students.” As she spoke, Brooke’s excitement crescendoed again. Because it was such a darned good idea. It’d be fun. Useful. Practical. Terrific.

  With her best friend right by her side, it was bound to succeed.

  “You’re going to teach adults how to do a hurty gurty?”

  “No, Logan. Not the cheerleading moves. Everything I taught in the classroom.”

  “That makes more sense. You’ll be a natural at it. Won’t have to go on unemployment, either. Total win.” After patting her thigh, he turned back to the television.

  “Logan.” His name was barked out, more harshly than Brooke intended. It had nothing to do with the realization that he was leaving. It had everything to do with the fact that the man she loved, the man who’d listened to her better than anyone, had tuned her out. Almost entirely. Not. Okay.

  “What?”

  “You seem distracted.”

  “Did you see this? A seven-point-nine earthquake in Colombia. Only one person dead so far, but plenty unaccounted for, and I’m sure just as many trapped. They only show footage of it at the top of the half hour. Thirty-second snippets of people reeling from having their lives literally crumble beneath their feet. You’d think a twenty-four-hour news station could devote more time to life and death news and less time to boob implants on the latest reality star.”

  “To be fair, they spend as much time on the sports I know you love as they do on Hollywood.”

  “Hell. Then I guess I’m lucky they managed to squeeze in a full thirty seconds on earthquake devastation. How silly of me.”

  “You’re in a mood.
Don’t worry, I get why.” Brooke stood. “Now is clearly not the right time to celebrate finding my new life direction.”

  He picked up the laptop from the corner of the sectional. “I’m supposed to uncork the champagne while I’m searching for flights for a team I’m not even joining?”

  Hope surged in her chest. “You’re not going down there?”

  “I’m itching to go. But I promised my dad I’d be here for the Marsh Foundation board meeting on Friday. I’ll send the rest of the team off first thing tomorrow. Then I’ll head down on Saturday, after filling this bad boy.” Logan hauled the duffel up onto the couch.

  And hope sucked back out faster than low tide. “I need to break this down into manageable pieces. You’re going to the Board meeting. Does that mean you’re taking the promotion?”

  “Yeah. It does.” The corner of his mouth curled downward into an honest-to-goodness snarl. “I get to be bored and miserable and useless for the rest of my life. The only good part is that I have a year to keep making a difference out in the real world before I actually take over.”

  Nope. Brooke wouldn’t be able to keep her feelings buttoned up after all.

  She could be sympathetic and understanding and even supportive of his heroic traipsing off around the world. But the least he could do was acknowledge that her being in his life while he was in D.C. was worthwhile. He owed her that. No, he owed himself that much.

  She looked behind him at the console table filled with framed photographs of the ACSs. Even though Knox was engaged and Griffin practically lived with Chloe already, there weren’t any women among the crowded pictures. Maybe there just wasn’t room to squeeze women all the way into this tight group, after all.

  “The only good part? You can’t think of any other good parts to your promotion aside from being able to roam the world for another year?”

  “If the doctors are right, my taking over the Foundation will give the old man at least a full decade before his health takes a serious turn for the no-return zone. It’s why I decided to do it. Hell if I’ll condemn myself to that life a minute before I have to, though.”