Inner Secrets Read online

  “Yes. He’s by far the most difficult one to deal with in the house. He’s very…” she searched the drop ceiling above for the right word. “…regimented.”

  “So, is there like an interview process? Do you all line up and interrogate the prospect and then convene behind closed doors to share suspicions and reservations?”

  “We’re not that bad.” She giggled and flung her head backwards. Her soft brown waves rolled around her back like prairie grass in a soft summer breeze. “But, yes. We do interrogate.”

  I lingered on her friendly gaze, and just as quickly snapped away from it, seeing Ryan’s hate and disgust all over again. She had a boyfriend, I reminded myself again. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

  “Perfect,” she said in a sweet lullaby tone, then marched off with a skip in her step.

  As soon as she rounded the corner to her cubicle, I left PJ a message, asking if I could come over after work and discuss a favor.

  Chapter Two

  That night, when I arrived at PJ’s spouting buckets of tears, she scooted me into her foyer and instantly shared in my emotional outburst. The two of us hugged like a couple of inconsolable widows.

  “I’m a mess.”

  She didn’t argue.

  “Am I going through a mid-life crisis?” I flung off my shoes.

  PJ stretched out her arms. “Your boobs are still perky. Your teeth are all yours. Should I keep going?” Pity rested on her smile.

  I hid under the blatant truth that, yes, I did just squander any chance that I had to face a day without guilt. “I want to go back to the way things were before.”

  “Before you were gay?”

  “Yes.” I said this and bowed my head catching my one-word wish mid-fall. “Point taken.”

  “Let’s drink some wine. Seems we both need it. Rachel’s being difficult tonight.”

  “Rachel?” Rachel might’ve been a bit OCD, but never difficult.

  She twisted her gaze away. “I guess I should just tell you the truth.” She squared back to me.

  “You told her I cheated.”

  “No.” She shot me a look. “Ryan told her.” Her cropped layers sprang up like they wanted to run from her.

  “What, did he just barge in here and spill it out to you over a bottle of Chardonnay?”

  “He wanted answers. We didn’t have any.”

  “He hates me doesn’t he?”

  She squirmed, readjusted her silk scarf. “Just give him time.”

  “Rachel’s going to hate me.”

  She caressed my arm. “Hope, sweetie, Rachel’s not capable.”

  The bright foyer light tingled through my thick, black ponytail, searing what little of my dignity remained. “I should go.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Her fingers gripped my arm tighter. “She’s just confused where to place her loyalty right now. She’ll get over it once we all sit down and drink a glass of wine together.” She pulled me into her living room with ease. My sandal’s less than stellar grip on her ceramic tiled floor served as no match to her earnest attempt in easing me into what would most likely go down as the second worst evening of my life. “Rachel,” she said as we passed the hall. “Come drink a glass of wine with us.”

  In a snap, Rachel appeared with her strawberry blonde hair heaped on top of her head, wearing a fitted Orioles t-shirt and brown Capri pajama bottoms. She carried a smile dripping in southern hospitality reserved only for those moments in life when best behavior ruled over compulsions to unleash judgments. It didn’t matter how thick the sugar coating, disgust pushed through the fabricated crystals of nicety. I deserved to suffer the plight. She didn’t.

  Her long stretch down the hall mirrored what I knew would be the fate of my night – long and painful.

  For the next hour, we sat in the living room sipping sangria and ignoring any trace of the obvious. We carried on about “American Idol” and the rising price of gas, completely side-stepping any topic that would reel us in too close to uncovering the ugly details of my demise as a decent wife, a loyal person. Rachel deserved an Academy Award for her remarkable performance as a friend with no memory of my awful deeds.

  I wondered just how much she despised me. To talk about girls leveraged a certain level of acceptable bonding. To act on it, well, that undermined years of trust and respect. Did she think I was capable of much worse? First adultery with a stranger, next her girlfriend? Was that why she huddled up real close to PJ? I avoided eye contact with the two of them, staring instead at the fake flower arrangement of lilies on the coffee table.

  As PJ droned on about a girl in their book club and how she dragged her three kids to every meeting, I planned my delivery of how to beg these two unsuspecting women to let me shack up in their guest room. How could I color over the pretense that I might invade any sense of privacy they’d grown accustomed to enjoy over the course of their life together?

  I cranked open my mouth, ready to launch a ball neither would want to catch. When PJ stopped talking, we shared a moment of reprieve where the three of us volleyed the break in silence back and forth like an egg, each careful not to fumble and crack open contents too raw to confront.

  When I could stand the game no more, I sat forward, alerting them to get ready for my important pitch. “I need a place to live. Can I stay in your guest room for a few months?”

  They snapped their heads in unison towards each other. The space between them served as the interstate to their silent, but serious, plight. Their eyes flicked and blinked and told stories that could fill five-hundred-page novels. PJ’s eyes flashed a warning, whereas Rachel’s fought a strong rebuttal.

  I shot up from the couch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like this.” I collected my pocketbook from the coffee table. “I’ll just go.”

  Rachel teetered forward. “Don’t go.”

  PJ rubbed her fingers together, fighting off the stress I just plopped on them.

  “I should. I’ve got other options. Lucy offered me a place to stay.”

  “Lucy from work, Lucy?” PJ asked.

  I dropped my pocketbook back down. “Yes. That Lucy.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” PJ said. “You’re too vulnerable to start living with someone like her right away.” She pointed her eyes to Rachel now who popped her eyes back in response and threw her hands up in the air, obviously not agreeing with whatever covert message PJ shot her way.

  She wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Oh for goodness sakes,” I finally snapped. “Why don’t you just tell me how you really feel about me and get it out in the open where we can discuss it? I cheated on Ryan. I didn’t murder him.”

  PJ blocked us with outstretched arms like a lame referee. “Take it easy.”

  I continued, “I made a mistake, I get that.”

  Rachel backed away, as if I’d just slapped her clear across the face. “I’m not judging you.” Her eyes glossed over in a fresh cover of tears.

  “Damn it,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you upset, too. I did a terrible thing. Ryan hates me. He has every right to. I can’t have you girls hating me now, too.”

  PJ closed in on Rachel, clasping her hand in hers. “We don’t hate you and we’re not judging you.”

  Rachel settled her eyes on mine. “I don’t hate you,” she said in the sweetest Rachel voice.

  I cautioned my words. “I could really use your help until I can wrap my brain around what I’ve done and figure out a way to move forward.”

  PJ squeezed her hand tighter.

  Rachel cleared her throat. “We’ll make it work. We’ll set up some ground rules and it’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “Of course,” I said, grateful for even her forced understanding. “You set them. I’ll follow them. You won’t even know I’m here. I promise.”

  And so, commenced our first night together as future roommates.

  LUCY

  I have always been nosy. I’ve always wanted to know every
thing that was going on. If you asked Adam, he’d tell you that I suffered neck aches not because I slept wrong, but because I craned a little too far out of the comfort zone just to hear what another person was saying at the table next to me. He was right. I didn’t know what it was about gossip that intrigued me so much. I supposed it was primarily that gauge it offered to highlight that others existed with similar concerns to mine. I was glad to know I wasn’t the only crazy lunatic out there worried about what her parents thought or about if the world was going to end for me sooner than later or whether I was the only person in the world who had a sister as perfect as mine let on to be. I fit in better knowing others were out there like me.

  Now, this rumor about Hope being a lesbian and breaking off her two year marriage over it, this was the most intrigued I’ve ever been. Even above the time my sister, Julie, landed in jail for shoplifting. Yes, as heart-thumping as eavesdropping on that was, this one had piqued my interest to a whole new height. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t gay. I’d never tingled at the sight of a woman. I supposed I was just curious about it. I didn’t have any gay friends. If I was being honest, the part that intrigued me the most was that I thought she liked me. I enjoyed the idea of playing with this tidbit, and testing out whether she really did find me attractive or not.

  I caught her looking over my way a lot. She could’ve just been checking out the pictures hanging on the wall. My eyesight was so bad when I wasn’t wearing contacts that I couldn’t tell where her eyes were pointing. I liked to think they were pointing at me.

  Of course, this rumor could’ve been completely misguided. Amy, one of the designers, supposedly saw Hope out several weeks ago at a gay club. So, I was just going on her speculations. Because Amy was gay, she claimed to have gaydar, and said she had a hunch all along that Hope was really a closeted lesbian. Whatever! I seriously doubted that Hope would’ve ever tossed Amy a flirty vibe, so where Amy was coming from with her gaydar claim was beyond me. If you asked me, Amy was just an overbearing woman who wore clothes that were too tight for her squishy figure and who thought every woman not attached to a man had the hots for her. Well, thankfully I was attached to a hunk of a man because that was one woman I wouldn’t have wanted flirting with me.

  All kidding aside about me wanting to test this Hope-is-gay theory thing out, I liked Hope. She was real, not like these other people I had to work with all day. I saw us becoming friends, especially after the other day’s meltdown. I thought I successfully nursed her back to the perky Hope we all loved.

  After talking with Hope, I told the gang that I had a potential roommate. They all balked like I told them they’d have to start sleeping on the floor without a blanket and pillow. One day they were excited to interview a potential, the next they thought it was sabotage to their current paradise. I was the first to admit that living with other people could be difficult. Adam couldn’t stand it. It tormented him. I didn’t mind so much. I kind of enjoyed the company, seeing as Adam was usually hunched over his laptop tucked away sight unseen in our bedroom. To go home at the end of a long day of training these bozos, minus Hope Steele of course, and then having no one to chat with while chopping an onion for my salad, would depress me. I enjoyed roommates. I doubted that Ralph or Hana enjoyed it as much, though. Reina on the other hand, she was all about chopping onions and chatting about life.

  I told Adam that he was building character by sharing his living space. He said it was turning him into a bitter twenty-nine-year-old man. Hey, what did I know? I was just the girl who wanted everyone to get along. I realized it was hard for Adam to live with someone like Ralph who was so precise and anal about everything. His wife left him and he behaved like the only way to keep the world spinning, was to rein everyone and everything in under his control. He put up this air of command, prancing around the house in his gym shorts and muscle shirts like he was Mr. Olympia, but really he was just a scared little boy in a man’s overbuilt body. He didn’t know how to prepare tuna salad or boil eggs, much less chop an onion without spilling a lake full of tears in the process.

  Adam complained, but yet, he stayed. He stayed because it was affordable. He stayed because deep down he was a softy and he knew I enjoyed being surrounded by all these fun people. When I shared time with the others, he could write. Win-win.

  We have planned our future like two entrepreneurial geniuses. Once his student loan bills were paid off, we’d get married and move out on our own. Well, after, of course, he published his first novel and earned a nice advance. I didn’t lose sleep over the potential disaster in this idealistic plan because, and this will sound awful, I doubted he’d succeed in the literary maze. I was concerned for his mental welfare once he unleashed his work to the world. I didn’t see thousands of fans grazing over his words. I’ve tried on many occasions to sit for five minutes and read a chapter. He watched me with wide eyes, waiting, ready to pounce on my reaction. I offered them. And they were lies. I didn’t particularly care for run-on sentences, grandiose adjectives, and constant belittling of my intellect with repetitive phrases. He hadn’t mastered the whole writing thing, yet. He needed training. He needed to stop pounding the keyboard and start reading bestsellers to see how it really should’ve been done. He refused, citing he didn’t have time to stop the creative flow.

  What Adam should’ve done was get into modeling. He inherited natural highlights, golden skin and a chiseled smile that would sell millions of magazines. When we hung out on a bench at the mall, he didn’t see all the girls, and guys, checking him out. I pointed them out and he told me I was crazy, nudged my arm and blushed.

  So, we lived waiting for his big break in the writing world. We lived amongst roommates who drove him batty, and me happy. The haul would be a long one for him. So, I waited his slow ascent up the novelist’s ladder ever so happily in this big, beautiful mansion.

  As long as I was in it for a while, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone like Hope sharing my world, chopping onions alongside of me for salads too pretty to eat and perhaps the occasional sipping of wine to ease the tension of me wanting to test an advance in the form of a lingering gaze.

  ~

  “Have you seen my wallet?” Adam barged into the bedroom carrying his laptop in the crook of his arm like he was carrying his first-born.

  “Yeah, it’s right where you left it this morning.” I motioned to his nightstand. “In the top drawer.”

  He moved in on the nightstand. “I forgot to pay Ralph our rent.”

  “Oh, I already did. I told you this morning.” He must have been too busy typing. “I also let him borrow a few dollars. He told me about how his ex refuses to buy new cleats for Johnny when the boy’s feet have clearly outgrown the ones from last year.”

  He slouched into a tired hump. “He’s going to take that off our rent payment then, right?”

  “Adam, the guy needs a helping hand.”

  “We’re not loaded, hon. I’m a civil engineer earning a recent college grad’s salary, not some Wall Street wiz. He should see if the kid’s team can hold a fundraiser for new equipment.”

  I bit my lip and just readjusted on my laptop screen combing Facebook for drama worth reading. I swallowed back a stream of worried words piling up the back of my throat. They tasted salty, bitter, and too familiar. I nodded, short and punctuated, the way I always did when I just wanted the conversation to end. I would not win it. I never did. How do you argue with a man who views every day without a published book as a waste of time and resources?

  Adam wasn’t selfish so much as scared; scared his youth was quickly ebbing and being replaced by a future with piles of bills and no other way to pay them except for sacrificing his writing career for a job he hated. If only he understood that this fear would trap him.

  He didn’t get that. Adam always worried about money.

  The ironic part about all of this was that Adam was the king of career and life advice. Everyone, including me, ran to him when life struck us with a blow. Like the time Ralph
neared a nervous breakdown when the fence fell down and he learned it would cost him ten thousand dollars to replace. Adam swooped in and calmed him down first, then gathered a bunch of his coworkers and built him a new fence in two days. It only cost him a mere two thousand dollars in material and another four hundred to feed the hungry men some good sirloin steak and beer.

  Adam comforted anyone with a cause or a seemingly impossible issue as long as it didn’t affect his plan.

  He came over to me and kissed the top of my head. “One day, we’ll be able to give lots of it away. You watch.”

  I punctuated the scene with another nod and a smile.

  “I’ll be working out in the basement if you need me.”

  Once he shut the door, I reread a posting from my niece, Angie, who had decided at her thirteen years of maturity that maybe she should quit school. The deeper I read into her posts and responses from her friends, the more I learned that she believed she inherited the stupid gene, but definitely not from her mother’s side of the family because her Auntie Lucy was no dummy. I smiled at this despite its sad birth in a Facebook post about being stupid. That little girl needed a lot of attention, and unfortunately her mother did not offer a patient side when faced with any form of mediocrity.

  The next thing on my agenda, aside from tending to my worry-wart boyfriend’s financial diatribes, was to write my letter of resignation to the firm. They would not be happy with me, and not just because they’d spent a great deal of resources on training me, but, I liked to think, more so because I rocked at training. In fact, I was probably one of the only ones who didn’t have sweaty palms before launching out a full scale presentation on what to do with the firm’s newest software interface.

  God help the staff because now they only had Chuck, Dorothy, Sam, and Leonard to teach them the ins and outs of a program clearly not so user friendly to anyone not intimately versed in coding.

  Oh well. I charged ahead to bigger things in life. At least I hoped. Time would tell. Nothing would spell success like a Ph.D. in organizational development, and a teacher’s assistantship, right?