You didn’t really fit in.
But that didn’t mean you couldn’t exist. And thrive.
“I understand,” was the best Darla could say and remain honest. In some tangential way she did understand. If she had been searching for what Darla had with Trevor and Joe, she’d have thought it impossible to find. And would never even try. Because why torture yourself with dreams of something that was so inconceivable that all you did was abuse your heart with so much wishing?
A smile played on Darla’s lips as she explained how the company worked to Callie.
Making dreams work was her job.
It sure beat working at the gas station back home in Ohio.
After a few minutes of explaining how the registration process worked to Callie, Darla got off the phone and sighed, taking a handful of moments to process what she had just done.
Talk to a woman about her desire to find two men as life partners for a permanent threesome? Check.
Gently persuade the woman to sign up for a trial of their service? Check.
Explain that the company was so new they didn’t have many matches and it could take months (ahem…a year at the current trajectory) to begin to make matches? Um…
Yep. Unfortunately. And so Darla felt like a big old fraud.
Then again, lately she felt that way all the time.
The phone rang again. Pushing her own emotions aside, she geared up for another call. Josie and Laura never saddled her with quotas, but she knew they weren’t twiddling their thumbs running this bizarre business either. She had to earn her keep, and it was a good enough keep that it helped pay for a lot of her mama’s issues back home.
Picking up the phone, she realized caller ID labeled this call from:
“Laura! How are you?” An instant sheen of sweat broke out all over Darla’s body like liquid heat, except this wasn’t that nice, blazing feeling you get when you catch an unexpected picture of Joe Manganiello appearing on Facebook.
This was pure nerves. When the owner of your company calls out of the blue, you freak out, right? Because they only call like this for one reason.
Because you did something wrong.
“Hi, Darla. How’s business?” Laura had a breathy voice that was pleasant to listen to but had an undercurrent of iron to it. Darla admired the flat accent, which was like a linear line without a single deviation. Darla’s own voice sounded like Silly String coming out of a can.
“I signed up a new client!” Darla crowed, thrilled that fate threw Callie her way today. That was the first client in four days, and of all the days and moments to report back a success, well…
“You did! Male or female?” They needed more men. Lots more men. Well, double more men than women, at least. And a few extras, because sometimes women asked for three men, which made Darla feel exhausted. Two were enough for her.
“A woman. Very nice. Nervous,” Darla said with a giggle.
“Aren’t they all?”
She could feel Laura’s kind, calm smile through the phone. But there was something more in her voice. A hesitation. The kind of sound you definitely don’t want to hear in your boss’s voice.
The sound of trouble. Darla’s mind raced through the past three weeks, since her last sit-down with Laura. She hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? A mental inventory of all of Darla’s responsibility left her with nothing. Nada. Zippo. Running the register at the convenience store and gas station back home had been a job that she’d mastered and could do in her sleep, but being the operations assistant with Good Things Come in Threes required skills. Attention to detail.
A major bullshit detector.
And, ideally, someone in a permanent threesome.
Which meant Darla was perfect for the job. Calm down, she told herself. You’re not getting fired. You’re not.
“Darla, I’m wondering if we could get together for lunch some time.”
Darla’s heart leapt into her throat and began drowning in the puddle of tears that filled her larynx.
“Talk?” she choked out. Talk? Laura wanted to talk? Talking meant concerned looks and deep discussions about failed metrics and unfilled goals and a bunch of corporate-speak that was so full of fail it made Darla cringe. Joe talked that way when he discussed business law, and it always made her laugh.
Then again, most of what came out of her mouth made Joe laugh, too, so they were even.
“Yes. Talk.” Laura sounded so restrained. Embarrassed, even. This was getting weirder and weirder, and Darla knew weird. Lived weird.
Invented weird.
“Josie suggested—”
Ah. The source of the weirdness.
“—that I reach out and invite you to lunch because you and I have so much in common.”
In common? Laura was a well-educated former financial analyst for a massive corporation that wouldn’t employ Darla to change the urinal cakes in their executive bathrooms. Laura was blond and curvy and sweet and feminine. Darla was a wild, untamed mare with a mane about as tangled and unkempt as a ‘70s p**n star bush.
In common?
The only thing they had in common was—
“Ohhhhhhhh.” The sound came out of her mouth before she could think and use impulse control (hah! What was that?) to stop it.
Laura let out a long sigh, like a balloon being slowly emptied of air. “Yeah. That.”
Darla blinked about a thousand times, then said, “Huh. Josie’s right. I don’t know nobody else who has two boyfriends.” Wait—that sounded so stupid, because Mike and Dylan weren’t just Laura’s boyfriends!
“Er, two baby daddies, I mean. Not that I don’t know plenty of people back home with two baby daddies. Hell, one of my friends from high school is my age and has four of ’em, each baby with a different man, and…” Her mouth just detached itself from her head, running off like it was at the start line of the Boston Marathon, blah blah blah blah blah, spewing toxic waste along the way.
“Darla! Darla!” Laura’s insistent voice cut through the floating sense of horror Darla had about her mouth.
“Yes?” She shut herself up by slamming a fist in between her teeth.
“You okay?”
“It’s just—”
Darla paused, trying to figure out how to behave here. As usual, she had no idea, so she blundered through it. Truth was an absolute defense against stupidity, right? Wasn’t that part of law school Joe and Trevor talked about?
“Are you going to fire me? Because you never call and ask to—”
“No! No!” Laura exclaimed, laughing. “God, no. You’re fabulous. Josie and I don’t know what we’d do without you!”