Like a Boss - Annabelle Costa Page 0,71

locked unit with nurses in pristine white uniforms and orderlies with shaved heads. But to my surprise, it looks exactly like the regular inpatient unit where I visited my grandmother when she was sick. Although it is locked.

Jenna looks like she’s been through a war. She’s in a single room, and I find her in her bed, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. I’ve never seen Jenna wear sweatpants ever. I couldn’t even imagine her owning a pair of sweatpants. Her family must’ve purchased it just for this hospitalization.

“How are you doing?” I ask in my most gentle voice.

Jenna rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, Ellie, I don’t have brain damage. You don’t have to talk to me that way.”

I squeeze my hands together. “Sorry.”

The truth is, I have no idea how to treat her. There needs to be a set of guidelines for things you can and can’t say to your friend who has been hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

“So… how are you doing?” I say.

Jenna tugs at her messy ponytail. “I’ve been better. I want out of this place, but they say I’m not ready.” She snorts. “I mean, just so you know, that wasn’t a serious suicide attempt. I didn’t take that much. It was just one of those dramatic cry-for-help type deals.”

“Right.” I look at her face, not sure if I believe that. She seemed pretty out of it when I found her. There was no chance of getting her to the hospital without calling 911. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

She looks down at her nails, which are chewed down to the quick. “You know, Luke Thayer called me to offer me my job back.”

A lump rises in my throat. “He… he did?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “He was actually really nice. He practically begged me to come back.”

“Oh. Well, good!”

She lifts her eyes. “He also asked me if you had been by to visit. He talked quite a bit about you.”

I can’t look her in the eyes. She’ll see straight through me. “Did he?”

“Oh, quit lying, Ellie.” She laughs. “You and Luke were hooking up, weren’t you?”

I know my cheeks are bright red. “No…”

“Please!” She pulls at a loose thread on her T-shirt. “I saw the way the two of you looked at each other. I thought something was going on, but I didn’t know for sure until I talked to him on the phone.”

The way Jenna is looking at me, I know there’s no point in denying it. “Fine. We were dating for a little while. But after what he did to our company, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He’s a terrible person.”

“A terrible person? He’s like a business genius, isn’t he?”

“Genius? No way. It’s easy to do well if you treat everybody like they’re expendable.”

“Ellie,” Jenna says quietly, “I turned down the job.”

I stare at her. “You did? But… why?”

“Because he was right! I sucked at it!” She chews on her lip. “Every day I dreaded coming to work because I knew I was screwing everything up on this project you were working your butt off to make happen. You had to redo everything I did. I felt terrible about it. I wanted to be better at what I did, but I just… couldn’t.”

“Jenna, if you needed a little help…”

“Oh, I needed so much more than a little help.” Her eyes become glassy. “I was in way over my head, and Luke knew it. He could tell just from talking to me. So I told him no. I don’t want to go back to doing a job I suck at. It felt like the worst thing in the world when I got that conference call, but now I think he did me a favor.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Jenna had made a few comments to me in the last year about feeling like she didn’t know what she was doing. But I always believed I could walk her through the steps and everything would be okay. But the truth is, I was doing most of the steps for her.

“Also,” Jenna says, “I told Luke I would try to convince you to give him a call.”

I groan. “Jenna, I’m not going to do that. Luke and I are done.”

“Well, he doesn’t think so. He’s still head over heels for you. It’s so obvious.”

I look down at my hands. “I just can’t.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I understand.”

As we sit there for a moment in silence, I can’t