monthly conversation with Gina and Cynda in less than five minutes. And that call was scheduled for three p.m.
Gina and Cynda are not going to believe this.
Wait, can I even tell them about this?
I remember the rules he gave me last night.
No leaving.
No questioning.
You obey my every command.
One could quibble that he didn’t say, “no telling.” But I’m not sure I want to. I mean, what would I even say?
“Hey, y’all, I got blackmailed into sex by this famous Russian hockey player. And get this, I didn’t hate it. In fact, I didn’t hate it twice.”
No, I wouldn’t tell them, I decide as I type, “Still on for 3?”
But arghh, no reception. And I don’t have the WiFi pass.
Maybe I should wake up the Russian hockey player?
No, I’ll just go downstairs.
I mean, the elevator opens right into the apartment, so it’ll probably be no problem to get right back up here before he even wakes up.
I take the elevator all the way down to the lobby. And yay, the doorman is signing for a package. That means no awkward explanations about why I’m here in this luxury apartment building, wearing house slippers and Target pajamas.
I sneak past him and head toward the back door, which leads directly into an alley.
Double yay! Plenty of reception behind the building. Plus, I find a doorstop to prop open the back door.
But a simple message from Gina pops up before my text has time to go through. “Don’t hate me. Have to cancel. Something came up.”
I don’t hate her, but this is the third time something’s come up in the last three months of calls.
“I guess it’s just you and me again,” Cynda says when I call her. Judging from the background, she’s sitting in the porch swing that hangs in front of her two-story craftsman style home.
“You look exhausted,” I say.
“Yeah, girl, I just got back from Saturday rounds. Nobody had anything serious going on, but appointments took longer than they usually do because everybody’s worried about COVID.”
“Even in your small town?” I ask.
“It’s a pretty valid fear,” she answers with a tired sigh. “Most of our farmers aren’t Big Agro. They go to farmers’ markets, which can be super spreader events. I’m more worried about the people who aren’t worried if we’re being truthful. They keep on saying things like, ‘Oh, it’s just a flu. Nothing I can’t beat.’ And some of them are just sure it’s a Chinese conspiracy. There’s so much misinformation floating around out there.”
“No wonder you’re exhausted. You don’t even get two days off.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad for the extra pay I get for going on Saturday rounds. I have to save up all the money I can and sell the house to get these twins off to Carnegie Mellon. So I’m grinding like you these days,” she says with a chuckle.
I try to chuckle too, but it sounds fake. What would Cynda say if she knew her ever-grinding friend was currently whoring herself out to a hockey player?
Not whoring, I tell myself. Saving your damn foolish brother. But prettying it up did not make me feel any more like the noble, hard-working accountant my best friends thought I was.
“Should we be worried about Gina?” I ask, changing the subject.
Cynda frowns. “I know, right? Two months is one thing. But three? And she doesn’t even have a job? What’s going on? And why do I have the feeling the answer to that question is Tommy?”
Neither of us has ever met Gina’s boyfriend Tommy in person, but neither of us liked him. A sergeant with the Jonesboro, Georgia P.D., he’d met Gina at the strip club, then insisted she quit the strip club. Gina had acted like he was a total Prince Charming, but he’d came off as controlling to Cynda and me from the start.
And if you ask me, he didn’t save her. He told her she had to quit stripping or break up with him. So now she’d not only given up her job at Magic Peaches, but she’d also let him convince her to close down her Etsy store of cute crafts. And she’d stopped trying to get interior design jobs, even though that was why she’d stripped to put herself through college.
But all she seemed to be doing with that degree she’d earned was planning her wedding. She hadn’t updated any of her Pinterest boards in months, and she’d been talking less and less about herself during our monthly calls.
And now she wasn’t talking to