“Well, you knew I already had a fangirl crush on Trevor, so the problem is that now that I’ve spent most of the past twenty-four hours with him, I don’t want to let him go.”
Aha. An opening. “So don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t let him get away. Come to Boston. Live with me here in Cambridge.”
“You know I can’t do that.” I know that’s bullshit, Josie thought. Deep breath, and then—
“Your mama’s fine,” she said, soothingly. “You can come out here. You can go on, Darla. You can move on.”
“I don’t wanna talk about that.”
“Well, I do,” Josie insisted. “And now you have a place to live, you have a guy—”
“Two guys.” Darla’s words hung in the air like a giant water balloon about to crash into Josie’s face, Matrix-style.
“Two guys? You f**ked them both?” Was this some trend Josie was missing out on? First Laura, and now Darla? Had Cosmo come out with an issue on threesomes?
“No… no,” Darla said, stumbling. “Look, it’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated,” Josie shot back. If she heard that phrase one more time…and now it was pouring out of her own mouth.
“No, actually, it’s not. My life’s pretty f**kin’ simple, Josie. I go to my gas station job, I help Mama with her sugars and I try to find somebody to spend time with who doesn’t think that Killer Karaoke is the height of American culture. Other than that, I don’t have a complicated life and now, suddenly, in twenty-four hours it’s become more twisted and more confusing than anything else in my entire life probably since I was four.”
Zing! An arrow between the eyes couldn’t have hurt—or halted her—more. Forcing a deep breath, she inhaled until her belly filled, distending beyond her waistband, and then deflating, a forced relaxation that she felt in her bones. Good.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounds like whatever you’re going through, it’s pretty big.”
“Yup…uh, yes, ma’am.”
“How can I help?”
“Tell me what to do.” Darla laughed, the sound wild and boisterous. “I don’t want Trevor to leave—Joe’s about to take him away. Uncle Mike’s gonna fix his car.”
“Joe’s car is broken?”
“Yeah, he got here and then came into my little purple passion place—”
“Your purple what?” Was that code for drugs? Or some hotel nearby that rented by the hour? Or had something on her body gone purple with disease? Josie wished she could have been there more for Darla these past years. This call was clearly a cry for help.
“Oh, never mind.” A long sigh told Josie Darla was as frustrated as she was. Whatever words were flying between the two of them didn’t connect easily to what was going on beneath the surface.
“If you’ve got a place on your body that’s turning purple from passion, Darla, then there are medications for that.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Ookaaayyy.” Even the cat ran off this time, spooked by Josie’s tone, her non-phone hand gesturing as if possessed. Josie’s smart mouth was running dangerously close to ripping Darla a new one.
“I don’t want Trevor to leave and Joe’s an ass**le but he’s a really, really, really attractive ass**le and I just…” A long sigh. “I guess it’s all on me, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “It’s all on you. I can’t really help you. I’m here to listen, I’m here to give you whatever advice I can, and I’m here to caution you to please, please use condoms.” Please.
Darla laughed, a belly sound that made Josie’s shoulders drop instantly. “We did. No worries.”
“Okay, good, because the last thing you need is to add a baby to this mix.”
“I know. I know, Josie, I’m watching Jane go through it. Trust me, I do not wanna add a baby to anything right now.”
“Good girl. I’m going to start clearing out my guest room just in case you wanted to, you know, visit. Or uproot your entire life and move in.” A dawning sense of joy filled her at the thought. Rescuing Darla had been her mission years ago; leaving had been wretched. But now…
“Fat chance.”
“Oh, I think the chance is better than you think, Darla,” she said.
Shuffling sounds, and then: “I gotta go, Josie,” Darla said. “Things are about to get even more complicated.”
More complicated? What could be more complicated than two guys at once? Josie struggled to say the exact right thing, the one statement that would ricochet in Darla’s mind and help her to make the perfect decision—which was, of course, to move to Boston.
“Just remember one thing, Darla,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Whatever you do, it’s your life—not anybody else’s. You get to pick what happens next.” Click. Darla was gone.
She knocked softly on the door. She wasn’t nervous—a sense of determination drove her forward, knowing that this was the first of many, many arguments that she would be picking on this subject.
“Yes.” Gian looked up. He was balding on top and wore glasses like something out of the 1950s, army-issue thick black rims. His shirt had what looked like a tomato sauce stain on it and it occurred to her for a moment that he could have been Dylan’s incredibly ugly older brother.
“Hey, Gian, I have a question.”
“What’s up?”
“I want to talk about the trial.”
“Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that what we’re here for?”
“I think it’s time to break it.”
“What?” He looked at her in shock and pulled his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose, his brown eyes, one bloodshot from rubbing, the other quite white and normal looked back at her a bit bugged out. “Why would we break it?”
“I think for ethical reasons we need to. The trends I told you about are deepening.” Barely holding it together, she found her brain taking over. Quit quit quit quit quit, it said, racing through what she’d already lost from the trial (Alex) and what she was being offered by Laura (freedom).
“Deepening,” he said.
“And I’m documenting trends. It’s becoming increasingly evident which patients are on the drug and which are on placebo.”