CHAPTER 3

gray: decent human being stuff

“Yeah, it really was not what I needed,” I was saying to my assistant, Trey, as I drove through town toward the pharmacy, his voice blaring over the Bluetooth. “But, I mean, good Lord, I got the woman fired.”

I thought of Diana sitting on my front steps saying that her job was part of her identity. I knew how that felt, because my job was a huge part of mine. And he was trying to take it.

Diana had lines around her mouth, probably from years of smoking, but that was the only thing that betrayed that she was aging. Thick, wavy chestnut hair, bright green eyes, tanned skin that didn’t need a speck of makeup. Toned, shapely legs under her jean shorts. Her oversize T-shirt wasn’t doing her trim figure any favors, but she was a very attractive woman. I wondered how old she was. Probably in her late thirties, if I had to guess. Although, admittedly, I was bad at telling ages. I thought of Andrew and smiled.

“All I’m saying is that this is one of the biggest accounts of your career,” Trey said. “I need you to focus right now, not save the world.”

“Trying to get Bill to give Diana her job back when I got her fired isn’t necessarily an act of great love or anything. It’s more like decent human being stuff.”

He sighed. “Whatever. I know you insist on working from the beach in the summers, but I feel like we need to be face-to-face to tackle everything we have going on right now.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Okay. I’m not buying that, but come on down.”

“Yes!” he said. “I’ll be there. Also, Miraval just sent a case of rosé as a thank-you, so I’ll see if I can sneak that down too.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Trey could play me like no other. And he was working his magic now to get a free summer at the beach. But, truth be told, I would be happy to have him. He was the perfect antidote to Wagner’s being gone.

“Okay,” I said. “Type, please.”

“Typing!”

“Dear Heather, I understand that you believe your affiliate marketing needs are being met by ConsumerMart. But I have gathered four of our top influencers—all of whom sell more than five hundred thousand dollars per year of merchandise for their top five affiliates—to let you know why they use ClickMarket instead of a competitor. Because, you see, our increased functionality doesn’t just help you on the corporate end. It also helps influencers find you and sell your products more easily, and incentivizes them to sell your brand over all the others.”

“That’s perfect,” Trey said. “Now insert one of your signature emotional response pleas and this one is good to go.”

“What did I say to Eliza from HomeGoods last week?”

I turned left into the parking lot and felt the sun on my face. Part of me thought I must be crazy for trying to work from the beach for the summer—especially now that I wouldn’t be able to spend much of it with Wagner—but another part of me knew that if I didn’t get a break from the eighty-hour weeks and constant connectedness, I would totally burn out. Even though I was still working like a dog, I felt infinitely more centered with a daily dose of sun and sand.

Trey interrupted my introspection, rattling off: “ ‘At ClickMarket, we don’t just specialize in top-tier affiliate marketing. We specialize in relationships, in putting brands and influencers into partnerships that don’t just make sales. They change the story. Let us help you change the HomeGoods story.’ ”

Not bad. “Don’t forget to change HomeGoods to Glitter,” I said.

Trey sighed dramatically. “Is this my first day, Miss Priss? I think not.”

God, I loved him. Sometimes I had nightmares about his quitting, and without fail I’d wake up in a cold sweat.

“I just arrived at the pharmacy,” I said. “Got to go save a woman’s job. Kiss kiss.” This, unfortunately, wasn’t something Trey could handle for me.

“I’ll be there tonight!”

“Oh, yay,” I said with feigned sarcasm. We liked to give each other a hard time, but really, I couldn’t have been more relieved.

When I walked into Meds and More, an arctic blast of air-conditioning gave me goose bumps.

“Is Bill here?” I asked the girl behind the counter.

She nodded. “I’ll page him.”

A few minutes later, while I was absentmindedly reading yet another headline about Jennifer Aniston—couldn’t they leave the poor woman alone?—Bill appeared, and I wondered, as always, if he colored his hair that particular shade of brassy blond. I had known Bill and his wife, Sharon, for at least ten years. We made a point of going out to dinner together at least once a summer. They were a good bit older than Greg and me, but down here, everyone was friends with people of all ages. It made things so much more interesting.

As Bill’s face came into view, it almost took my breath away. I mean, literally. My chest constricted, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Our couples’ dinners with Bill and Sharon were over. My marriage was over. Oh my God. I was over. For nine years I had been Greg’s wife; we had been part of a pair. We had been a family. What would become of me now? It hit me so hard sometimes, in unexpected moments like these. Everything was normal; everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. I bit my lip and looked away as tears came to my eyes, mortified at the quiet scene I was making. I had been on the verge of tears all day over Wagner’s leaving, and this put me over the edge.

Bill winked at me and, as if reading my mind, said, “Don’t think you can get out of dinner just because you had the good sense to drop that deadweight.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to him sideways. “I promise you, Gray, you’re better off.”

People said this kind of stuff all the time, and sometimes I could even say it to myself. But it didn’t take away the shame. I had failed. Our marriage hadn’t been perfect. Hell, even I knew it wasn’t all Greg’s fault. Yeah, he had cheated and he had been jealous of my success, but I had been too wrapped up in work and Wagner. I had been overly stressed. I had let my marriage fail. It was a hard pill to swallow, and the realization furthered that deep, dark, scary thought that I didn’t deserve to be with anyone else. I didn’t deserve to be happy.

I nodded, a little teary from Bill’s kindness. “Thanks, Bill. I’ll look forward to it.”

The older man squeezed my shoulder. “What can I do for you, Ms. Gray?”

I was so glad he didn’t say, “Ms. Howard.” Because I wasn’t. Or maybe I was, but only in name. In my heart, Howard didn’t belong to me anymore.

I shook my head. “I feel horrible.”

“Why?”

“I got Diana Harrington fired.”

He chuckled. “Oh, honey, no way. She was terrible at her job, just terrible. She was always getting orders mixed up and pictures cropped wrong and jamming the machine. You were my scapegoat.”

I was relieved, but also a little miffed that I’d come out here to do the right thing only to find that Diana had the story all wrong. I would call and tell her that I tried to set things straight, but it wasn’t my fault she got fired after all. “You promise?”

“Oh yeah. She had a file as thick as my forearm of infractions and complaints. It’s a shame, though.” He looked down at the floor and shook his head.

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, we go way back with Diana. She cleaned our house for ten years before she went to work at the factory. Kept our kids. Hell, half raised them. Then when the factory shut down, I hired her to work for me. But she’s always been tough. She’ll figure it out.” He shrugged.

I nodded, feeling another tug of guilt. Whether it was my fault or not, here was a good, decent woman out of work. It put my ClickMarket woes in perspective. Whether I got to keep all my company or not, I wasn’t in danger of being hungry or out on the street. I thought of my parents, of how hard they had worked to make ends meet, of how many years they had lived paycheck to paycheck when my mom had been too depressed to go to work after my brother died, when the anxiety that, if she wasn’t the one taking care of Quinn and me, we would die too had kept her tethered to home and to us. I never wanted to live like that. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t. I had thought, very naïvely, that money could protect me. It had taken me until now to realize that it couldn’t.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down to find a text from Andrew. Can’t wait for next Friday. I promise, I’m taking you somewhere no hoity-toity blue-blooded woman in her right mind would go.

I smiled and looked back up at Bill. “Well, thanks. You’ve eased my mind. Glad I’m not responsible for putting some poor woman with a bunch of mouths to feed out of work.”

“No. And Diana doesn’t have any kids anyway, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

I nodded. “I guess I’ll see you around the club then.”

“See you around.”

I got back in my car and, determined not to let the memory of Greg ruin another day, penned a sassy reply to Andrew: Where? Your house?

Before I could even get out of the parking lot, he texted back: No way. All the ladies want to come to my house.

I laughed and raised my arm out of the top of my midlife-crisis convertible to feel the warm wind as it rushed by, the gems in my bangles sparkling as the sun hit them, my chest opening back up, my panic from only minutes earlier dissipating out the roof as my hair blew behind me. I had, like, five errands to run. Trey was right. I really did kind of need him down here. I thought about calling Diana, but when I thought about having to tell her that I wasn’t the reason she got fired I felt sick to my stomach. I could always call her tomorrow. Or have Trey call her.… No. This was something I had to take care of on my own.

diana: spilt milk and spoilt men

Life is all about patterns. I do the same thing over and over, which is why I keep getting to the same places. I don’t mean that in some figurative way. I mean, literally, the same places.

So I guess that’s the best explanation as to why I found myself steering the Impala back in the direction of that sorry excuse for a house I’d shared with Harry for eight years. Hell, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Plus it was getting to be suppertime, and I was starting to worry that neither of us would have anything to eat. Maybe it’s because I never had any kids, but I sure treated Harry like one. Lord knows, he needed taking care of. But maybe he could get a job for a little bit to tide us over, and I wouldn’t have to worry quite so much about finding my next one. That sounded nice.

As I turned into the driveway, it was like all my insides were annoyed as the devil at me coming back to this place, but I was feeling kind of happy too about seeing Harry and him apologizing and giving me one of those big, warm hugs that you sink into on account of him being all squishy and soft like a water balloon. It would feel right nice after the day I’d had.

I opened the door and yelled, “Honey?”

I didn’t get far because, standing in my kitchen at six in the evening, wearing nothing but one of Harry’s shirts, pouring batter from a ready-made Bisquick container into a skillet, was a redheaded woman. She was a big girl, probably Harry’s size, and at least five years older than me, just standing there barefoot with crooked toenails and thick ankles, looking at me like I was catching her off guard.

Harry came out of the bedroom, whistling, wearing his boxers with that pale, hairy belly jiggling all over the place. He stopped short, looking shocked, and said, “Baby, you’re home! I thought you’d left for good this time.”

I didn’t know what to say. He was standing there, red and puffing, a fish flopped on the shore. It took my breath away how hard it hurt my heart to see Harry with another woman. I guess when you’ve been with somebody such a long time you start to take them for granted. You forget how much you love those big hugs and hearing how beautiful you are and that somebody, anybody on the planet, loves you so much that they want to be better for you. It had taken me until right then, seeing Harry with this creature, flipping pancakes in what used to be my kitchen like she owned the damn place, to realize how much I needed him, how much he looked after me in ways that, yeah, weren’t quite like the ways I looked after him, but that still meant something. He soothed those inside parts of me, the parts that were made hard with not ever marrying or having any babies. He made them soft again, like pork fat in the crowder peas.

Big Red, well, you could tell right off she wasn’t too bright. She said, “You want some pancakes? I can make more.”

I wanted to be mad, but, hell, it wasn’t her fault. Not really Harry’s fault either, I guess. I mean, I walked out and that was that. And looking around my dingy kitchen, it still seemed like walking out was for the best.

I finally got my wits back about me and said, “I thought I forgot some stuff, but I can come back later. It’s no big deal.”

I turned, but Harry grabbed my arm. “Babe, wait. Please don’t go.”

I started to pull away.

“I know this looks real bad, but I love you. You’re the only woman for me. Please come back. We can get married. I’ll get a job and quit drinking and quit gambling. Hell, I’ll even try to get us a baby if you want. Just stay. Please.”

His eyes were all teary and glossy, which I guess should’ve been sweet. But instead it made me see him as the sniveling little boy he’d always been. I’d loved him for eight years, but in that moment I knew it was time to move on for good. I needed a man.

Big Red piped up, “Oh yeah, I wasn’t trying to come between nothin’. It was just kinda hot this afternoon, and I didn’t have nothin’ better to do. But I got to get home now anyhow on account of my husband’ll be out here with his shotgun looking for me if I don’t get back soon. He gets all suspicious when I say I’m going to the store and don’t come back for a while.”

Harry looked startled, and I could tell he was realizing that his afternoon fling wasn’t a good idea. “Di, look, babe. Come on. You got to forgive me. Please. There ain’t no man on the planet who’s been as faithful and true to a woman as I have to you. This here was just me thinking you was gone for good and just trying to feel better, is all. It wasn’t nothing to do with me and you. You and me are perfect.”

That made me laugh. “Honey,” I said, patting Harry on his freckly shoulder, “you and me, we’re a lot of things. But perfect is not one of them.” I shook my head, wondering why I had come back here at all. “I was making sure that you had some dinner. That was all. And it looks like Big Red’s got you all taken care of.” I raised my eyebrows.

She padded over from the kitchen, chewing on a pancake, offering me the plate. “Name’s Ronda,” she said, “and I’m real sorry if I caused problems here. But I think there ain’t nothin’ can’t be solved with pancakes between friends.”

With that, I turned before Harry could grab me again and was out the door before I lost my nerve. And where a minute ago, seeing the man I thought I loved with another woman had made me feel jealous, angry, and pained, now it made me see how pathetic Harry was all over again. Still parked in the yard, I opened my wallet to evaluate my options. I had sixty bucks, and I needed gas. I shut off the air and rolled down the three windows that still worked.

I could always pay Charles a visit. Could I make it the seven hours to Asheville on sixty bucks’ worth of gas? Probably not.

But Charles would help. I knew he would. So I called him, feeling grateful that I’d just paid my phone bill the day before. That meant they wouldn’t turn it off for at least a month and a half. I had become a master at juggling bills. Paying the electric enough to keep it on the day before it was turned off; learning that quite often they’d keep the cable on even if you canceled it; paying a dollar a month on medical bills. I wasn’t proud of it. But I was proud that I’d figured out how to survive.

“Hey, Di,” he answered the phone, real friendly. Charles said that after what he’d seen growing up in foster care, he felt real happy to just be alive. And it showed. He always sounded like he didn’t have a care in the world, even though I knew he did.

I needed to tell him what was going on, that I needed help. But the words wouldn’t come out. “I had that dream again,” I said instead, groaning.

“Oh no,” he said. “The one where the social workers are there to pick us up?”

“Yeah, and Phillip’s rocking in the corner.”

“Oh no.”

He got quiet, and I felt bad for even bringing it up. I wished I hadn’t said anything, so I changed the subject. “How’s Lanna doing?”

“Oh, she’s real good,” he said. “She just got promoted from assistant manager to manager of Kohl’s, and she’s real excited about it. And the boys had good grades this quarter, and Rusty’s enrolling in community college in the fall.”

It made me happy how proud Charles was of his kids. When they were coming up, I got to play with them a lot because Charles and Lanna were still living down here at the beach. It took away some of that sting of not being able to have any kids of my own.

“I’m real proud of him,” I said. “And, hey, I wanted to tell you I’ll have a new address soon.”

111 My Car in Some Parking Lot.

“Oh no,” he said. “No Harry?”

“No Harry.”

“Well,” he said, “he’s a nice guy but, you know, kind of a train wreck.”

“Yeah. So, when you coming up here for a visit? I miss you.”

“Soon,” he said. “Hey, Di?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got a better question for you.”

I laughed. “What’s that?”

“When are you going to open up Carolina Di’s Boils?”

I smiled. Opening a tiny restaurant had been my dream since I was a little girl. I knew I wanted to cook Carolina Boils. Some people called them Steamer Pots. As you can imagine, there are any number of slightly disgusting sounding names a big brother can figure out to call a restaurant incorporating either “boil” or “steamer.”

I’d always loved to cook, and taking care of people was what made me happiest. I had visions of this stand on the beach where people would wait in line for baskets of my simple fresh seafood. Phillip would be in a chef’s hat lining the red-and-white-checked cardboard baskets with paper and dishing my boils into them, filling up cups with ice. He wouldn’t like serving the customers, but I could do that part. He would have a job and a paycheck all his own. I thought he’d like that.

Charles believed in me, even when the chips were down. And I knew then that I couldn’t tell him. I just couldn’t. I’d never asked him for anything, and I didn’t want to start now. I’d had to borrow $1,000 from Elizabeth a few years back to keep from starving and being on the street, and I still felt ashamed about it every day. She didn’t give me a hard time about it or anything, but still. Sometimes pride is all a girl’s got left. “Damn, Charles. Why’d you have to move all the way to Asheville? Why not just Raleigh or something?” I asked, changing the subject. It broke my heart how far away that dream of my own place seemed.

He chuckled. “You know as well as I do that if it ain’t the beach or the mountains, it ain’t worth living in.”

I laughed in agreement, though I would’ve been happy to have anywhere to live right now.

I couldn’t face the idea of going to the shelter, so for tonight I settled on setting up camp in the Impala, which had a big enough backseat. I could get some fast food for dinner, take a walk on the beach, and then, when it got good and dark, park at the beach access down the street from Gray’s house where I’d been earlier and take me a little snooze. And I’d do the same thing I’d always done: I’d worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

I wiped away the tears staining my cheeks. No use crying over spilt milk or spoilt men or the rest of this mess. I knew as good as my own backside in the mirror that tomorrow the sun was going to come out just like always. And a new day can change everything.

---

I checked my phone again, just to make sure Gray Howard hadn’t called about the job. I didn’t expect her to work miracles or anything, but I figured if anyone could pull strings down at Meds and More, it was someone like her. The silence made me think that maybe she hadn’t gone and talked to Bill after all. I drove slowly down the street, past Mr. Marcus’s house, past the water, down to Gray’s house. I was planning to pull all the way to the end of the street, where there weren’t any houses, and scope out whether I could park and sleep there. Cops didn’t patrol the nice areas a whole lot because nothing much happened in them anyway. But when I turned my head, I did a double take.

There in Gray’s driveway was a man lying on the ground, on his stomach, a huge box beside him. There’s something that happens to a body when it seems like somebody else is in trouble. And that’s what happened to me. I threw the car in park, jumped out, and ran to him. “Should I call nine-one-one?” I screamed.

He scrambled to his feet. He was a nice-looking boy, probably around his early twenties, in jeans and a sports coat, with this big, goofy smile.

“Oh, sorry,” he said in an accent that meant he wasn’t from around here. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He held up his arm. “One of my cuff links fell under the car and I was just looking for it.”

I put my hand up to my heart trying to slow its beating.

“I’m Trey,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake mine. “Gray’s assistant.”

I nodded. “I’m Diana.” I smirked. “The woman she got fired.”

I didn’t expect him to know what I was talking about, so I was taken aback when he said, “Ohhhh. She felt awful about that. I was on the phone with her when she was going to the store to try to get your job back.”

So, she had gone down to the drugstore. And she hadn’t called me. That couldn’t mean good news.

He picked up the box with some effort and, handing me a key, said, “Hey, do you think you could open the back door for me?”

There was something unsettling about that. “Oh, um… I don’t think it would be right.”

He smiled, his eyes gleaming. “What wouldn’t be right is for me to drop an entire case of decadent rosé.”

I looked around to see if anyone was watching, then followed him to the back door, put the key in, and turned the knob. I didn’t walk inside, but I could see towels strewn about on the pair of matching sofas on either end of the fireplace. There were cups on the side table, dishes on the coffee table.

“Good Lord,” I said.

Trey nodded. “Oh, I know. Gray is brilliant, but she’s a total slob.”

I’ve always been real picky about having everything in its place and all that, and it killed me to see this house I used to clean in such a state of disarray. I couldn’t stop myself from walking into the kitchen, where it just kept getting worse. There were dishes all stacked up in the sink, mail scattered around, some kind of fake milk still on the counter from the morning—surely spoilt now.

She was a grown woman, but she wasn’t living like it. I didn’t owe her anything. Hell, she owed me. But I can’t stand a mess. Just like my sister, Elizabeth, when I see it, I clean it. I planned just to get a handle on the dishes in the sink, but I couldn’t leave the counters like that. And then those damp towels on those white linen sofas… And Trey was coming in and out, in and out, carrying groceries and papers and saying things like, “Gray never has any food in the house,” and, “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks to clean this place so I don’t have to.”

And I needed the money, and it was kind of like when I saw Trey lying in the driveway. My body just took over, and here we were. Before I knew it, I was vacuuming and humming, totally lost in my own world. Well, lost until I looked up and saw Gray standing there with her jaw hanging open like a fish on a hook.

My face got hot. I turned the vacuum off and could hear the Van Morrison Trey had playing. He walked in, saying, “Diana, I’m trying to do the guac like you told me, but—” And then he saw Gray and stopped in his tracks too, and we were all standing there, staring like trapped animals. Almost like me, Harry, and Big Red a few hours earlier.

“I’m having a hard time deciding where to start,” Gray said. She turned to Trey. “But I guess, first, how the hell are you here so quickly?”

He smiled disarmingly at her. “I was in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot across the street when you were dictating that e-mail.”

Gray sighed and rolled her eyes. “Good Lord.”

Now she turned to me. “I have no words.”

All I had done was clean the woman’s house. But, then again, I was a near-total stranger who’d showed up unannounced on her front steps that morning and appeared uninvited a few hours later in her living room.

I looked at Trey. “I’ll take my hundred bucks and then I’m out of here.” Then I did what I do best when I’m on the defensive: I turned it around on her. I gave Gray a good once-over and prepared to deliver a zinger. “No wonder your husband left you. Making a mess, no groceries in the house.” Note to self: When you have money again, get Nicorette.

But instead of getting upset, she laughed. “Well, Maria did most of the shopping and cleaning and cooking.”

“So what did you do?”

Gray looked up toward the ceiling. “Well, I grew an affiliate-marketing empire out of a little blog I started in college and made sure I was at every school party and baseball game and bought the house and paid the bills and planned the vacations and the nights out and the playdates.” She smiled pointedly. “That’s what I did.”

“So where’s this Maria?”

“Greg got her in the divorce. He got Maria and Brooke and half of Wagner and the vast majority of my self-worth. I got my world turned upside down and our fine china.”

“Yikes,” Trey said. “Bitter divorcée at the party. We need to back that up, sister.”

I waved my hand. “Oh, honey, it’ll pass. It’s just one of them stages. When my girl Robin got divorced the first time, we thought we were going to have to have an intervention for her. All she could do was bash her husband. I mean, you’d say, ‘Oh, damn. I’m out of bananas.’ And then she’d be like, ‘Cal never remembered to get bananas.’ But she got over it. Well, I mean, they got married again.…” I paused, realizing maybe this story wasn’t as relevant as I had hoped.

She just looked at me like she was still confused, and that’s when I remembered that I had not been invited, and here I was holding her vacuum cleaner.

“I promise I’m not stalking you. I was in the neighborhood, and I thought Trey was hurt in the driveway.…”

Gray looked skeptical. She turned to Trey. “You were hurt in the driveway?”

He held up his arm. “My cuff link was hurt. I was on the ground, so I guess it looked that way.”

“And then he needed help carrying this stuff in, and then there was all this mess and I just…” I continued, feeling the need to defend myself.

Gray looked around, as if she had just noticed her surroundings. “It’s really clean in here,” she said.

“Well, I cleaned it up,” I said. I couldn’t tell if she was happy it was clean or mad it was clean. “I don’t know what came over me—”

Gray nodded knowingly. “Ohhhhh. Now I see. You’ve been Treyed.”

He smiled victoriously, and I was confused. “I’m sorry. I’ve been what?”

“Treyed,” she said. “It’s when you plan on doing one thing and then you’re doing a million others, and you don’t even know how that happened.”

I snapped my fingers. “Yup! That’s it.” I wagged my finger at him. “You’re sneaky.”

Then another girl came walking in the back door. And now she looked confused too.

“Marcy, meet Trey,” Gray said. She paused. “And Diana, I guess. And, Trey, meet Marcy.”

Marcy squealed. “Oh my God! It’s you! It’s the famous Trey. I have heard so much about you, and I am just the most excited person in the world.” She took his hands and started jumping up and down, and there was his goofy grin again.

“I have heard so much about you too,” he said calmly.

This Marcy lady stopped her jumping and looked at Gray, frowning. “He isn’t gay,” she said accusatorily.

“Um, yeah. I know.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t gay?”

I didn’t know who these rich people were, but they didn’t seem like the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Gray crossed her arms. “I mean, I don’t know, Marce. Did it ever come up?”

Marcy studied Trey. “I just assumed that an assistant who worked at ClickMarket and called you Miss Priss was gay.”

Again, none of my business, but I couldn’t help but jump in. “She has a point. You wear cuff links on weekdays. And say things like ‘decadent rosé.’ ”

Trey shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Marcy raised her eyebrows at Gray. “This is even better.”

She gasped. “It is not better. It absolutely is not.” She pointed her finger at Marcy. “You stay away from my assistant. He is the single most important person in my life.”

“More important than me?” Marcy protested.

They all laughed, and I was tempted to sneak out the door before Marcy started asking questions about me too. But Trey owed me money, and Gray might have information I needed, so I said, “Um, sorry to disrupt the party, but, Gray, did you have a chance to talk to Mr. Marcus?”

Gray bit her lip. “Let’s just say, it didn’t go well.”

I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrows at her, and she shrugged.

“So do you have any suggestions of what I should do now?” I asked. I put my hand up to my swollen jaw for effect.

“Oh, oh!” Trey chirped. “I know. She should be your housekeeper. Lord knows you need one.”

Marcy looked at me. “She can’t cook either.”

That’s what piqued my interest. Because I could clean, yeah. But I could really cook.

“That is untrue,” Gray interjected. “It’s not that I can’t cook. It’s that I don’t have time. Those are different things.”

This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I guess I thought that she’d get me some new job with all her connections. I mean, working the picture counter at Meds and More wasn’t a glamorous job or nothing, but it beat some others out there.

I’d sworn up and down and around that I wasn’t ever going back to being anybody’s maid. I mean, it’s not a pie job, to say the least. Washing up underwear and cleaning up dishes. But ever since I was little, cleaning has been something that calms me down. And Lord knew I could use a little therapy, not to mention a little cash.

Gray hadn’t asked me herself, so I didn’t know if the offer was real. Hell, I didn’t know if I’d even accept.

She just shrugged. “I think it’s a little weird that you showed up here twice today, but I got you fired, and this feels like a way to make it right. You can balance my karma.” She paused. “What do you think?”

I let out a pained sigh even though I was probably more relieved than I had ever been. “I think we’ve both been Treyed.”

Gray smiled and shook my hand. “Welcome to the crew, Diana.”