rumor mill faster than when Cindy Edgar slept with those twin professional football players.”
“How is Cindy?” Jenna asked.
Delilah shrugged. “Good, I guess. She’s married now to some insurance agent in town and has two kids. She came in recently and bought a dress for their anniversary.”
“Good for Cindy.”
“So, the kid?”
Jenna took a sip of her wine. “Asher’s a good kid. Sweet. Really cute. He dropped his phone in the toilet the other day, and you should have seen his face when I told him to shove it in rice. It worked, though. Phone is functional now.”
Delilah was staring at her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Delilah kept her expression blank, but Jenna wasn’t buying it. “Go on. Tell me more about him,” Delilah prodded.
“Um, he’s gay and has a crush on Gabe’s little brother. Do you know Gabe? Works at the garage?”
Delilah nodded and twirled her wine glass.
“Okay, so Asher came home with a hickey, and there was a whole thing with Cal losing his mind over it, but it’s all right now. I talked to Asher, and Cal apologized, so that’s that.”
Delilah sat silently.
“Oh, come on, Delilah. What?”
Her friend shrugged. “I just think it’s hilarious that you said Cal wants to avoid the whole relationship and family thing, yet he’s doing exactly that with you and his brother without getting the benefit of you in his bed.”
Jenna opened her mouth, then closed it, and then opened it again. “But this is temporary. It’s not the same thing.”
Delilah cocked her head. “I guess it’s not, but if the idea of a family makes him break out in hives, then he sure has a funny way of showing it. Since he’s pretty much shacking up with you.”
“We’re not shacking up. I don’t sleep there.”
“Which is my point. If he’d quit acting like a brick wall, he’d at least get laid out of it.”
Jenna narrowed her eyes. “Look, it’s not that simple. I don’t know if I’m willing to do this either, you know. I thought maybe . . . but there’s so much history there. That breakup nearly broke me. You know that. So thinking of doing all that again . . . ”
Jenna knew her friend understood. Delilah had been on the receiving end of Jenna’s phone calls during freshman year in the college. The year Jenna didn’t eat. She didn’t socialize. She almost dropped out of school and came home because the ache of missing Cal was a constant hunger in her gut.
The only reason she pulled through was because she didn’t want to go home with her tail between her legs.
Even though she was ten years older now and much more secure in who she was, it scared the hell out of her to think what Cal could do to her heart again. She took a sip of her wine and shook her head, unwilling to talk about this further.
Delilah, like the good friend she was, sensed that Jenna wanted a change in subject. “So how’s work?”
Now that was something Jenna did want to talk about. “Oh, I’m glad you asked. I’m getting a company party set up—kind of an employee appreciation thing—and we’re going to have a raffle for prizes for charity. I wanted to know if you’d donate a gift card or something from your store.”
“Of course! I can put a little gift basket together, maybe with some accessories, along with a gift card.”
“That would be perfect.”
Delilah leaned back in her seat with her drink. “Other than that, how are things?”
Jenna had an odd pang in her right shoulder, probably from sitting hunched over her keyboard and holding her phone in the crook of her neck. “Good but exhausting. It’s a lot of work to plan an event and set things in motion for publicity. It’s a difficult job because a lot of what I do doesn’t yield immediate results, you know? I can’t point to a specific line item and say, ‘I brought in X amount of money.’ So, it’s hard, because people don’t always think we actually do anything. Which is the point, really. If everyone could easily pinpoint all the little things I did to improve the reputation of the company, I probably wouldn’t be doing my job.” By the time Jenna finished speaking, her back was aching, and now her head hurt.
Delilah’s eyes were wide over the rim of her cup. “You need a vacation.”
“I’ve only been there a week and a half,” Jenna said with a laugh.
“Then you need a nice bath and some wine and