friend was, she just couldn’t imagine that Courteney’s brother could be much of an issue when Courteney herself was so wonderful.
My best friend was born wearing an invisible pair of rose colored glasses through which she viewed the world. It was one of the things I admired and loved about Danica the most. Her optimism. Her warmth. Her willingness to live and let live, forgive and forget, and all that good stuff.
I’d learned a lot from Danica Vola over the years about being a good human.
Her sunny point of view had helped me through a lot of dark shit in my life. But I wasn’t so sure that it was helping me with this.
Anyway, it wasn’t that Cary Clarke was an issue. It was that he had issues.
I felt totally split down the middle, between what Courteney and Danica wanted me to do—take the job—and my misgivings about my prospective employer’s mental health.
And of course, just to complicate matters, there was the whole he’s very, very attractive thing. Which I hadn’t brought up with either Courteney or Danica.
I checked my email, just to see if my dream job had happened to float into my inbox in the last few hours on the wings of a fairytale, but alas, no such luck. I wasn’t even sure what my dream job was. But it definitely wasn’t there in the slew of daily alerts for crappy, underpaying job postings that were utterly deletable.
There was a nice, personal email from one of the recruiters at the temp agency, though. One of my crazy bosses of yesteryear needed a new assistant and—wasn’t this just flattering as all hell—he’d thought of me. He reached out personally to ask if you’re available, the email said.
I didn’t reply. It was too late in the evening for that. I’d reply tomorrow and politely but firmly let them know that there was no way in hell I’d ever be available for that man again.
Fuck that noise.
Also, the waxed butt lady had texted me. Again.
Damn. Did I forget to reply to her?
My latest crazy boss had been eccentric-crazy, not mean-crazy, so at least that was an improvement. The woman had four purse dogs, but that wasn’t the crazy part. The dogs had their own walk-in closet in the penthouse apartment where she was staying downtown; a walk-in closet that was the size of my entire studio apartment, and that’s where the weirdness really began for me. It was part of my job to dress the dogs every day, in their doggy-chic designer outfits, which undoubtedly cost way the fuck more than mine did.
Of course, I also had other duties. I never dreamed I’d scoop so much tiny dog poop in my life. But we couldn’t exactly have them pooping in the designer purses, now could we?
Good thing I loved dogs.
For the last two months, while my temporary employer was here in Vancouver with her husband on business, he worked, she enjoyed a life of leisure, and I was basically a glorified dog-sitter. I was pretty sure half the reason she hired me was the animal shelter volunteer work she saw on my resume. And it wouldn’t have been all bad, if I wasn’t also required to do every other odd and totally-beyond-the-bounds-of-my-job-description task that came up in this woman’s life—like rip wax strips off her butthole because the aesthetician of her choice was unavailable and she had a hot date with her husband.
It was their anniversary, and apparently her gift to him was “derrière stuff.”
Never. Again.
I really needed to start sucking at my job or something. Become incompetent. Get myself fired a little more often so maybe I was forced to rethink my entire career choice. Because the waxed butt lady had been messaging me all day. Apparently, I’d done too good a job on the waxing. Her anniversary date had gone “very well.”
The result? She said she wanted me to work for her some more. She was flying back home to Austin and wanted me to come along. If I really wanted to, I could scoop doggy poop and wax her butt in Texas for a while.
I almost shuddered just thinking about it.
I closed the conversation without replying and found another new text—from my ex, Dominic.
It had been half a year since I caught him with another woman—in my bed, because the man was a giver like that. Every once in a while, he still messaged me or called, usually when he was drunk. Like he was just putting out