A Ring for Rosie

by Maggie Wells

  The phone on her desk rang, breaking into her reverie. Out of habit, she clicked the save icon before reaching for the receiver, even though she hadn’t made a single change to the spreadsheet on her screen since Mike walked into James’s office and shut the door.

  “Trident Security, how may we help you?”

  “I have a bag of dicks. You wanna come over and eat ’em?”

  Rosie blinked. If the voice hadn’t been female and familiar, she might have hung up in a panic. But she knew this obscene phone caller and was grateful for the distraction. Smiling, she cradled the phone against her shoulder. “No, thanks. I’ve already eaten so many dicks I can barely keep my pants zipped.”

  “Whoa. Whoa,” a masculine voice boomed behind her. “Wow. Okay. Going back in my office.”

  Her caller dissolved into fits of unrestrained laughter and Rosie couldn’t help but join in. “No! Wait,” she called to Colm Cleary, the third partner in the firm. “It’s Monica.”

  At the mention of his girlfriend’s name, Colm visibly sagged with relief. “I might have known.”

  “I heard you,” Monica snapped.

  “She heard you,” Rosie relayed.

  Colm pointed to his office. “I’ll take it in here.”

  “Tell him I’m not calling for him. Mr. Smarty-pants.” When Rosie hesitated, Monica pressed on. “Tell him I called him Mr. Smarty-pants, though.”

  Covering the receiver, she turned to find Colm standing at his desk, his hand on the phone. “She says she isn’t calling for you…Mr. Smarty-pants.”

  A puzzled frown bisected his dark brows, but the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “She made you say the last part, didn’t she?”

  “I am my own woman.” Rosie tossed her hair back. “No one makes me do anything.”

  “Tell him, Rosie,” Monica cheered. “Call him some more names. Dirty ones, if you want. He likes when women abuse him.”

  Rosie smothered a laugh, then adopted her most sober tone. “This conversation is not appropriate for the workplace.”

  “Which is why I’m calling to invite you over to eat a bag of dicks with me and Georgie,” Monica answered without missing a beat. “There will be wine. Possibly pizza.”

  Glancing over at Colm’s office again, she asked, “You’re inviting me over to your house?”

  “Girls’ night in. Georgie has a pin the peenie on the weenie game we can play, I have Cards Against Humanity. Come over and we’ll laugh until the adult diapers run out.”

  Longing and pride warred inside her. She wanted to have a girls’ night more than anything. Now her sisters were all busy with their own families, she ached for female companionship. Sure, they tried, but it’s hard to get really into a girls’ night when one or two were unable to drink due to pregnancy or breastfeeding, or they spent the whole evening fielding texts from increasingly panicked spouses. Having watched Mike, Colm, and even James master the complexities of single parenthood, Rosie found she had no patience for the manipulative incompetence her brothers-in-law employed on a regular basis.

  “Okay, fine, you can get up and use the powder room if you’re going to be all persnickety.” Monica made the pronouncement with exaggerated magnanimity.

  Though she’d spent time with Monica at parties and get-togethers involving the children, she hadn’t sought the other woman out socially. Still, she found herself whispering a weak, “I’d like that,” into the phone. When Monica laughed, she quickly joined in. “The girls’ night, I mean. If everyone else is up for peeing their pants, I don’t want to be the party pooper.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Colm muttered loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, then swiped at his office door.

  The walls shook with the slam, but Rosie didn’t pay any mind. Five years in the same office had taught her teenaged girls had nothing on grown men when it came to dramatic door slamming.

  Rosie took a minute to jot down Monica’s address and phone number, smiling as she listened to the other woman prattle on about snack foods and movie selections. Colm must have been watching the lights on his phone, because the second she disconnected, he opened his office door again. “You’re going to Monica’s?”

  Not one to be left out of the conversation, Mike opened his door as well. “Georgie texted, said she wouldn’t be coming over tonight because she got a better offer. Something about pinot, pizza, and penis. Should I be worried?”

  Rosie fixed him with her mother’s patented you-foolish-child look and said, “Most likely.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

  “They’re going to Monica’s to talk over ways to fricassee Jimbo’s manhood,” Colm informed him.

  “A good use of time,” Mike concurred. “Though, between us, I suspect he doesn’t use his as much as he wants us to think he does.”

  “Believe it or not, some women are capable of holding entire conversations without once mentioning the men in their lives,” Rosie said with prim authority. “I doubt your names even come up. And there’s no reason for anyone’s manhood to feel threatened. No one has done anything wrong.”

  “Right, but sometimes we do things that are plain stupid.” Mike shot Colm a knowing look.

  “True.” Colm shrugged. “Or thoughtless.”

  Mike nodded a shade too enthusiastically. “Oh yeah. Thoughtless is a big one. I’d say thoughtless accounts for ninety percent of most male stupidity.”

  Well-meaning as they were, Rosie couldn’t take one more minute of male bashing for her benefit. “Stop,” she ordered, holding up one hand. “Stop, okay?” Both men snapped their jaws shut like marionettes. But she could read the worry in their eyes. Her cheeks burned as she remembered what Georgie said about everyone knowing about her feelings for James. “I’m fine. James will be fine. We will all be fine.”

  Rosie could almost see them repeating her words in their heads. Like she was the damn Dalai Lama of Delano Street and she’d given them some kind of mantra to hang onto. Sighing, she let her shoulders slump as she turned her attention back to her computer. “Go back to work.”

  She could feel them standing there. Hovering. Uncertain. At last, Colm muttered a good natured, “Yes, boss,” and retreated to his lair.

  Mike wasn’t as easily put-off. Rather than returning to his desk, he circled hers until he stood directly in her line of vision. “Rosie.”

  He spoke her name with almost killing gentleness. Tears seared her throat and scalded her eyes. “Mike, please.”

  “I only…” He looked away, as if he needed to gather strength to go on. When their eyes met again, she saw the naked torment in his. “He’s stuck. The kids want Megan there.” He paused for a moment but didn’t break her gaze as he swallowed hard. “They don’t know any better…”

  He trailed off, and she nodded her sympathy. And she did feel bad. For him and for James. She was scared, too. Not just for James and her feelings for him, but for the twins. She loved those boys. Like their father, she’d loved them from the first time she saw them. Cared for them every chance she got. And not because she wanted their father, but because they were sweet boys. Good boys, despite their rambunctious natures. And if Megan hurt them…

  But she couldn’t say all this to Mike because he was standing on the other side of this whole unholy mess. Megan was his sister. His only sibling. No matter what they did to one another, siblings almost always found their way back to each other. Rosie had watched her sisters and cousins play a lifelong round robin of “I’m not speaking to her” and “He’s dead to me,” only to end up laughing and cutting up at the next family function. But Mike was caught between the sister he’d protected his whole life and one of his best friends.

  “I know.” She let him off the hook. And by proxy, James, too. But she wasn’t saying so aloud. “I know.”

  “Rosie, you know we love you. We need you. B
ut if you need time…well...”

  When she looked up, she met his gaze directly. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “God, no,” he answered with gratifying speed. “I was thinking a vacation.”

  “Then shut up and go back to work.”

  Mike drummed out a riff on the counter in front of her computer. “Yes, boss.”

  He turned and walked back to his office, his shoulders still hunched up around his ears, and Rosie felt a spurt of hate so vile, so vicious she was surprised the acid alone didn’t incinerate her internal organs. Megan did this. Hurt Mike. And James. She’d hurt those boys. Those delightfully mischievous boys who picked dandelions for her to put in a cup on her desk, then gleefully emptied the confetti from the three-hole-punch all over the carpet.

  “Rosie?” She turned to find him framed in his doorway. “Thanks.” He closed the door behind him silently.

  Pursing her lips, she turned back to her computer, placed her left hand on the keyboard and her right on her mouse, and stared hard at the blinking cursor, her jaw set with determination. “You are welcome.” She began to type. Without pausing, she shot a glance at James’s office door. “Others, not as much.”

  Chapter 4

  Rosie did her best not to gawk as she followed Monica into the stainless steel and granite kitchen. She must have failed because Georgie looked up from the fruit she was slicing and laughed out loud. “I know, right? A kitchen like this, and she doesn’t cook. What we have here is a granite mausoleum. Beautiful to look at, but no one lives there.”

  “Piss off.” Monica opened one door on the massive Sub-Zero fridge, and Rosie caught a glimpse of shelf after shelf filled with plastic water bottles. “Betty Crocker here decided we needed to have sangria, so I ordered a ton of stuff from this awesome tapas place.” She withdrew one of the bottles and offered it to Rosie. “There’s been a slight change in menu.”

  Without thinking, Rosie took the water. “Thank you. I appreciate the invitation.”

  Monica retrieved two more bottles, then plunked them on the counter. Looking Rosie up and down, she frowned ferociously. “Okay, first of all, if you don’t stop the polite guest chitchat, I’m going to start stuffing day-old dicks in your mouth right now—”

  “Hey! Those dicks aren’t day-olds,” Georgie cried, affronted. “I baked them fresh this morning.”

  “—and I’m a moron for not letting you go home and change first,” Monica continued without missing a beat. “Come on. Let’s go get you out of those clothes.”

  The next thing Rosie knew, Monica had a grip on her wrist and started pulling her from the room. “Really, I’m okay as I am,” she started to protest.

  “You know, with all the dick-eating talk and orders to strip, poor Rosie might be getting the wrong idea about tonight,” Georgie called after them.

  Monica rolled her eyes. “Pipe down and make the booze, Chef Boyardee. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “She’s gonna think you’re a perv,” Georgie shouted after them.

  “Like I’m the one who spends her days slathering vulvas with frosting,” Monica shot back. “I’m a problem solver. You’re a problem solver, too.” She hit the stairs without breaking stride, and Rosie hustled to keep up. “Those creative types get all bogged down in the details. You and me, we make things happen, right?”

  Rosie blushed, overwhelmed and flattered. “Right.”

  Monica was some kind of financial high-flyer. A business genius with underlings and an annual income with more than one comma. Rosie had two years of community college and a bachelor of arts in business management from University of Illinois-Chicago. Took her six years of night classes to finish her degree. Colm once told her Monica had breezed through her undergrad and graduate programs in five years. Total. But Rosie had finished. With honors. She was going to skip the ceremony, embarrassed to be collecting her parchment a half-decade later than most of the other students, but the guys were adamant. When she walked across the stage to shake hands with the dean, Colm, Mike, James, and the kids had been sitting right next to her family. They’d even hosted a huge party for her afterwards at her favorite Greektown restaurant. Her mother still gushed about the dinner each time she mentioned one of their names.

  Those are nice men. Good men, Rosalina. You should find yourself a man like one of those men. Then she’d pause for a second before adding the inevitable, Without the extra baggage, of course. You’ll want children of your own one day.

  Shaking her head, she forced her thoughts back to the kindness being done at present. “It really is nice of you to invite me—”

  “Bullshit.” Monica pulled her into a master suite as big as Rosie’s entire apartment. “I’m not nice. I’m nosy.” At last, she released Rosie’s wrist and strode across the room to a set of double doors. “Ignore the mess,” she ordered sternly, then threw them open wide.

  Rosie gasped when she saw the interior of the walk-in. Not because of the piles of clothing and shoes tossed haphazardly on the floor, but because the closet, with its myriad shelves, slots, hooks, and hidey-holes, was an organizational orgasm.

  “Loungewear is over here,” Monica announced, gesturing to a small area compared to what appeared to be the Black Power Suit section.

  Rosie gave the other woman a pointed onceover. Monica couldn’t be more than a size four on her worst PMS days. Suddenly, Rosie found herself wishing they were lounging at Georgie’s house. She had a better chance of fitting her size fourteen backside into something the curvy baker owned, than the stick-thin giantess beside her. “You’re kidding, right? There’s no way I can fit into your clothes.”

  Monica rolled her eyes. “Puh-leeze. Melody leaves stuff here all the time.” Melody was Monica’s much shorter and recently pregnant sister. Rosie had met her at Aiden’s birthday party. “I have pajamas, yoga pants, and workout gear that has never been worked. And if you don’t want any of these things, I happen to own an oddly expansive selection of robes.”

  She gestured to the opposite side of the closet and Rosie blinked in surprise. There was a veritable rainbow of robes of varying length, fabric, and color arranged on padded hangers.

  “Whoa. Why?”

  Monica shrugged. “Apparently, I’m hard to shop for.” Monica scoffed at the thought, then walked over to the robes and moved a couple aside. “I don’t even wear robes, but look at this one.” She pulled out a long silk kimono-style robe in a vibrant blue. Rosie was torn between gawking and looking away from its beauty. “Do you want to wear this while we get drunk and trash-talk Megan?”

  She asked the question with such an utter lack of guile Rosie felt compelled to tell the absolute truth. “Yes.”

  “Here you go.” Monica thrust the buttery-soft fabric into her hands, then pointed to the door on the opposite side of the bedroom. “Bathroom is there. You have to ignore the mess in there, too. The service comes tomorrow, and I’m a bit of a slob.”

  “I doubt you are.”

  The doorbell rang, and Monica beamed. “The food delivery is here. I’m going to run downstairs. Come down whenever you’re ready,” Monica called over her shoulder.

  “Be right there. Thank you.” Straightening her shoulders, Rosie stepped into the marble-swathed bathroom and started on the buttons on her blouse before the door was fully closed.

  “Stop thanking me,” Monica admonished.

  “Go to hell, then,” Rosie shot back, then slapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say anything of the sort, but Monica was entirely too much like her eldest sister. The taunt was a knee-jerk reaction to bossiness.

  Before she could retract it, Monica crowed, “That’s the spirit!”

  Rosie poked her head out in time to see Monica dart from the room, her laughter fading as she rumbled down the stairs.

  Closing the door, Rosie vowed to let her nervousness go and do what she could to make herself comfor
table. After all, she was an invited guest, not a party crasher. And the robe… She stroked the sumptuous fabric with the tips of her fingers. Her weakness for beauty and quality won out over any qualms she had over borrowing the robe.

  She stepped out of her shoes and stripped off her blouse and skirt. Muttering and grumbling, she worked the ultra-control-top pantyhose down over her butt and hips and wriggled her way out of them with a grateful sigh. Wearing only her bra and panties, she slid her arms into the sleeves of the robe and moaned aloud.

  Her eyes slid shut as she secured the sash. Hugging the slippery, sleek fabric to her, she let her head fall back and rolled her neck from side to side.

  Ignore the mess, Monica had said.

  Opening her eyes, Rosie turned in a slow circle as she tried to find the mess. Sure, there was a towel hanging halfway out of a wicker hamper, and all the detritus spread out on the vanity, but Rosie’s tiny closet of a bathroom had the same stuff scattered about. In truth, Rosie’s bathroom boasted a number of amenities Monica’s lacked. Like a drippy faucet. And grout, so old, tiny octagonal tiles sometimes stuck to the bottom of her feet. With her fine-veined Italian marble and weekly cleaning service, Monica would never know the triumph of beating back a foe as insidious as the weird red mold in Rosie’s tub/shower combo. And now she had Colm. One of the best, most handsome, most loyal men Rosie had ever known.

  Lucky Monica.

  Rosie slid her hands up to the collar of the robe and pulled the lapels close to her throat as she swallowed a hot lump of self-pity.

  Envy is a sin, Rosalina, Maria Herrera whispered in her ear.

  “I know, Mama,” she replied aloud.

  Blinking back the threat of tears, she gulped air and held the breath for a count of three, before releasing with a huff. Staring at her reflection in a mirror edged with frosted glass, she held her own gaze as unflinchingly as her mother would have if she’d been there.

  “Monica has been nothing but kind to you,” she lectured herself with quiet conviction. “A good man like Colm loves her, so she must be a good person as well. She has invited you into her home, her robe,” she added with a pointed glare. “Green doesn’t suit you.”