by Sionna Fox
Chapter Seventeen
I stared at my phone, stomach in knots, building up the will to make the call. I couldn’t do this by text or email, no matter how badly I wanted to. I shoved it between two cushions and started pacing holes in the carpet again. It was the first week of January and I was still at my parents’ house, working up the nerve to call Sarah and ask for help finding a job. She’d checked up on me a few times, and I knew she was going to be annoyed that I hadn’t responded, and it was probably deeply shitty of me to reappear asking for help. I’d already asked Izzy for so much, and burning out in another random admin job was the opposite of the direction I wanted to go. She’d said my room was ready for me whenever I wanted to come back, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes twice. I needed work, a place to go every day.
I dug around for my phone. My tongue felt too big for my mouth and I was starting to sweat, but it had to be done. I opened the last text Sarah had sent me.
ANSWER YOUR DAMN PHONE, JOLENE. Don’t make me come to Vermont.
Imagining Sarah, five-foot-ten, drop-dead gorgeous, in full, pin-up-girl domme mode, wandering the streets of my hometown to find me and drag me back to Boston gave me the strength to hit the call button.
“Holy shit, she lives.”
“Hi.”
“Oh, you think you can drop off the face of the Earth and open with ‘hi’? I’d ask how you are, but Matt’s been completely miserable and I’m guessing you’re about the same.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I snapped. I didn’t want to know. Calling his best friend for help probably wasn’t the smartest way to keep my distance, but Sarah was the only other person I knew well enough to ask. “I’m sorry. I needed…I needed some time.”
“Some time to realize that living in Podunkville isn’t for you anymore?” I could hear the arch in her eyebrow. Sarah had also fled the sticks for the city, so she had an idea what I’d gone home to.
“Something like that.” I took a long, deep inhale. “I want to come back, and I feel like kind of an asshole for asking, but I think I need some help.”
“What can we do?”
I closed my eyes and let out the rest of the breath. I didn’t deserve her. “I need a job. If you know anyone, or anything, that you can point me to, even if it’s short-term or sounds really boring. I’ve talked to the temp agency I was at, but it’s a slow time of year, and I know it probably is everywhere else too, but if you hear anything—”
“Jolene, stop.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. It’s okay.”
“Oh my god, stop. You’re not asking too much; it’s just that your timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”
“What?”
“My assistant quit today. She got offered a job in New York, and of course, she should take it, but they want her to start pretty much yesterday, and that leaves me in need of someone. You can work for me.”
“What?”
“The pay’s not great, I admit, but you’ll learn a lot. You can start Monday.”
“Sarah, I can’t—I don’t even know what being your assistant means. I’ve never done anything in publishing. I do data entry.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not asking you to be an editor or even read the slush pile. I mean, you can take manuscripts home unofficially if you want to, and I’ll listen to your opinion, but that’s not the job. I need someone to maintain our social media accounts and our newsletter, keep me caffeinated, on schedule, and send me home for dinner by seven or Evie gets…displeased. You also need to be able to answer emails and general inquiries, answer the phone, normal office stuff. Will you do it?”
“There are probably people way more qualified than I am who would kill for a job like that. I don’t know anything about marketing or any of that stuff.”
“Listen, you can learn all of that stuff as you go. I could read a hundred resumes and interview half a dozen candidates half a dozen times and I might not click with a single one of them. I don’t have the time and I don’t have an HR department or hiring manager to do it for me. I know you; I like you. You’re smart and capable, and you’re not going to be fazed by the content of our books or anything else you might see around here.”
“But—”
“But what? When can you get your cute ass into my office?”
“You can’t say shit like that to me if you’re going to be my boss. I’ll go to HR.”
“Girlie, I am HR.” The huge, wicked grin on her face was audible.
I took a deep breath. “You have to promise me something, Sarah.”
“What?”
“If I suck at being your assistant, you have to fire me. No hurt feelings. I don’t want to be a burden or a charity case.”
“Believe me, Jolene, I don’t have time for that either. If you’re a shitty assistant, I’ll let you know. I’ll give you time to improve, but if this doesn’t work out, I will fire you in a hot second. Promise.”
“Thank you. I guess I’ll see you on Monday, then?”
“Yes! I’ll send you the details.”
I would have been stupid to say no. Like when Izzy had called me and insisted I move to Boston with her, it was fate. I could do all the things Sarah said she needed me to do. I could send emails, fetch coffee, and make sure she got home for dinner or else. I could learn the marketing stuff. I liked Sarah. This was going to be okay. I could be okay with this. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve her help, but I finally knew better than to walk away from it out of misplaced pride.
Two days later, Izzy tackled me on the front steps of our building. Our building, again. Home. I’d needed the time away to figure out that the place I grew up couldn’t be home anymore. I’d transferred my affections like I’d switched states on my driver’s license. A tedious trip to the DMV, not irrevocable, but a pain in the ass to undo the change once it was complete.
I hugged Izzy on the sidewalk until the heavy bag on my shoulder slipped, threatening to hit the icy rime of slush and salt on the pavement and take us both down with it. We unpacked my car in record time. She sat on my bed chattering at me while I emptied the bags and boxes I’d packed up only a few weeks before.
“I knew you wouldn’t stay in Vermont.” She beamed at me, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the mattress.
“I didn’t.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Aside from my mother evicting me from the couch? I went up to campus on New Year’s Day and ran into Ted.”
“Oh, I love Ted. How is he?”
“Same as ever, fuzzy earmuffs and all.”
I told her about my old job getting converted to work study, the crushing realization that finding a job there would be even harder, if not nearly impossible at this time of year, the guilt of burdening my parents with the presence of their twenty-eight-year-old daughter living at home again. My dad’s encouragement that it was okay to ask for help and to accept it where it was honestly offered. How I’d worked up the nerve to call Sarah, how her offer was like a sign that this was where I needed to be, and how I made her promise to fire me if I sucked at this.
“You’re going to be great, Mouse.”
“Can I ask you for something?”
“Of course, you know that.”
“Can we retire that nickname? I know you mean it affectionately, but it—” I struggled to find the right words to tell her that she’d been kind of unintentionally patronizing to me all this time. I knew she didn’t mean to be, but I hated the name now. “It reminds me of things about myself that I’m less than fond of, and that I’m trying to change. I don’t want to be Country Mouse anymore. I don’t think I am. Or City Mouse.”
The only person who still had the right to call me mouse, who meant it in ways that had nothing to do with my being timid and naive, wouldn’t call me anything anymore.
“If it bothered you, you should have told me.” Her face was scrunched in confusion, her voice defensive.
“I didn�
�t think much of it until recently. I promise. But I’d like to be something else now. If it has to be an animal, can it be one that’s cautiously optimistic and knows how to rely on its friends when it needs them?”
“A hedgehog? Friendly and cuddly when you get past the quills?”
I flopped on the bed and elbowed her. “Jerk.”
“I could call you Hedgey! Or Hog. No, that would sound mean.” Izzy babbled, naming animals and weighing their fitness as nicknames for me.
“Or you could just call me Jo, if two syllables are too much for you.”
“That is less fun. But if it’s what you want.”
“I think it is.”
“Okay, Jo.”
We lay side by side on the mattress in a heavy silence, feeling the change in our relationship take shape. I wasn’t going to be her sidekick anymore; our double act was over.
My stomach rumbled. “We need food. Do you even have anything in the fridge or are we going out?”
“You know I don’t cook.” She grinned. “Oh god, I missed having you around. I’ve been living on takeout and cereal without you.”
“At least I can offer something in return, right?”
“You know I wouldn’t care. It’s not an exchange. I’d want you to live here even if you were a terrible cook.”
I hugged her in the doorway to my bedroom. “Thank you, Izzy.” We held on for a few more seconds than strictly necessary. “Let’s go get pizza.”
Arm in arm we walked around the corner for a couple of perfectly greasy slices. It was good to be home.
Monday morning, I walked into Sarah’s bright, cluttered office. Books lined floor-to-ceiling shelves, stacked two deep and sideways in some places. Papers littered the floor around the desk in precarious piles, and Sarah sat at the center of it. Computer open, a giant mug of coffee to her left, she looked like she had already been in the office for hours.
I cleared my throat. “Was I supposed to be here earlier?”
Sarah barely lifted her eyes from the screen. “Nope. Insomnia. You’re right on time. Drop your stuff and snoop around for a minute—I know you want to—I need to finish this one thing…” She trailed off and refocused on whatever she had been doing when I came in.
I scanned her shelves, seeing a few titles I recognized and many more that I didn’t. Style manuals and grammar tomes mingled with paperback copies of the books she published. Mostly anthologies and a few single titles.
Sarah piped up, “Help yourself to anything you want.”
I took a few off the shelf and kept skimming. I was surprised to find a large, dog-eared English dictionary. “I would have thought you’d use a built-in one or go online.”
Sarah glanced up from her computer. “I do. We have subscriptions for the dictionary and style guide for editing purposes. But I’m a sucker for a real, paper dictionary, the bigger and thicker, the better. On paper, you get the definition of the word you’re looking for, but you also see all the words that are near it, interesting usage notes, go down a rabbit hole looking at the illustrations. You might find something even more accurate or appropriate. Either way, you learn something. Come sit.”
I cleared a space for myself in the armchair across from her desk. “Should I be taking notes or something?”
“Not yet. We’re going to talk for a minute first.” Gone was the cozy teaching moment of a moment ago. My stomach clenched like a fist. “We’re going to talk about this once, then we’ll carry on with a professional relationship, and I hope, a friendship, regardless.” Shit. “Your position here is not because of, or dependent on, anyone but you. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said to my shoes.
Sarah chuckled under her breath. “No wonder he’s such a mess.”
“What?” I’d told her I didn’t want to talk about Matthew.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but you have to know he misses you. What you do, or do not do, with that information concerns me only insofar as he’s been a dear friend for a long time and I care for his happiness. However, if you decide you want to pursue a new relationship or involvement in the scene, he hopes, as do I, that you’ll come to me, as a friend and as someone who’s been at this for a long time. This is the only time I’m going to act as messenger, and only because it matters to me too that newcomers are safe and not taken advantage of. Okay?”
“Okay.” I met her soft gaze. She hurt for her friend, but she would still help me find someone new, because it mattered more to both of them that I was safe and cared for. Not that I was prepared to even contemplate the idea of finding someone else. I had barely peeled myself off my mom’s couch; I needed so much more getting my shit together to happen before I could go there. “Thank you, Sarah.” I took a deep breath, preparing myself to get overly personal with someone I ultimately didn’t know that well who was also now my boss. But I’d been telling myself she was also my best bet for the recommendation I needed. “Can I ask you something? Not as my boss?”
“Of course.”
“I think… I’m looking for a psychiatrist. Probably a therapist too. Ones who won’t freak out when I have to tell them about, you know, this stuff.”
She didn’t say anything as she pulled open a drawer in her desk and started rummaging around. She handed me two cards. “Tell them I sent you and they’ll know what’s up. They’re both known in our circles for being good at what they do and very aware of the fact that kinkiness is not in the DSM.”
“Thank you.” I pocketed the cards with a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I needed to do this. I knew that. Store-bought neurotransmitters were just as good as homemade, I believed that, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow my pride and ask for help. Again.
“You okay, kid?”
“I’m okay.” I gave her a watery smile. I really didn’t deserve Sarah’s den mothering.
“Good. Let’s get to work.”
Sarah guided me patiently through my first day and the days that followed. I started getting the hang of what she called “mostly babysitting me through the day and making sure Evie doesn’t kick my ass for being late for dinner.” The days were sometimes boring, or even frustrating—like when I watched hours’ worth of webinars about building ad campaigns for various social platforms and found out the next day that the algorithms were changing and most of what I’d learned was about to be functionally useless—but they were blessedly full. And when my eyeballs were going to roll out of my head after sending the thousandth Thank you for your interest but for the love of god read the submission requirements and run spell check before you hit send email in response to an open call, Sarah didn’t mind if I took a break with one of our books and a cup of coffee or walked around the block. It was a while before the novelty of that kind of freedom started to wear off.
Sarah didn’t mention Matthew again. After a few weeks she started asking me if I wanted to come with her to community events or out for “kinky girls’ nights.” I wasn’t ready. My second chance at a new life was going better than my first, but the hurts were still too fresh. I couldn’t go there yet.
When I took home books from work, my mind still supplied Matthew’s image, Matthew’s body for all the heroes, no matter how they were described. I missed him. I missed the sex and the dominance and the stillness and satisfaction he gave me. I knew I would want that with someone else eventually, that I would need it, but it didn’t seem fair or honest to begin any kind of new relationship while I was still pining for someone else.
My failure with Matthew had proved once and for all that I couldn’t compartmentalize sex from my feelings, especially not sex that required an exchange of power and trust. I kept saying no to Sarah, and I said no to Izzy when she dropped hints about setting me up with guys from her program. I especially said no to those guys. I’d had my fill of preening art school boys in college.
It took months, longer than I’d been with Matthew in the first place, before I finally gave in to one of Sarah’s i
nvitations. I was slowly getting better, climbing out of the hole I’d made for myself, and the new meds felt like they were finally starting to kick in, but I’d still been putting her off. I wasn’t ready to run into Matthew, and I definitely wasn’t ready to consider dating anyone else. But friends, socializing, was starting to feel like something I might be able to manage without running away to the bathroom to hyperventilate.
The calendar insisted it was officially spring, but we were still blanketed in snow and slush. It had been cold, damp, and gray for ages, and everyone was going a bit stir crazy. We were slogging through submissions for a short story anthology late one evening when Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose, looked up, pronounced we needed drinks, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“Your roommate and I can’t be your only friends. You’re coming out.”
“I have friends.” Okay, yes, I mostly had Izzy and Sarah. But I had Will, too. He’d forgiven me for throwing myself at him on New Year’s Eve and was still my oldest friend and primary source of gossip from home.
“I’m sure you do.” She cocked her head like she was about to ask me if said friends were imaginary and made of cotton candy and dreams. “It’s drinks. No pressure, no one is trying to set you up with someone, just a night out, promise.”
“Okay. Fine. You win.” I grumbled and grimaced at her, expelling a sigh for my martyrdom. I let Sarah drag me out of my chair and to a bar.
We walked up to a chain Tex-Mex place and I had a moment of panic. My steps slowed and I fell behind Sarah, wondering if it was cowardly to turn around and make a run for the nearest T station. Stop it, Jolene. You’re being ridiculous.
“Jolene? What’s wrong?”