Snow Jam (8 page)

I didn't get stopped, though. The rental was still where I'd left it, off the road but not in a snowbank. If it had been, I'd have called anyone but Rick for help.

Frost etched the front windshield, but it was loosening its grip. The back glass was already thawing. I let the motor run, scraped the windows, checked and rechecked my messenger bag, and decided it was late enough to text Sunny.

On way to Hanlin
, I wrote without any explanation of the night before.
Wish me luck?

Wondered where you were! Too early to text. Just in case.

Smiley face. Inappropriate use of emoticons.

I signaled, checked for traffic, pulled onto the interstate. Within ten miles I'd left the snow behind and was driving through the kind of chilly spring day in March I'd expected in the first place.

* * *

I got to Hanlin in plenty of time and stopped at a restaurant for food and better coffee than what I'd made at the cabin. No message from Rick, so either he was still sleeping or so done with me he didn't even care if I'd made my destination.

Must mean I wasn't his responsibility anymore.

After breakfast I studied the maps I'd printed before leaving home and made my way to the hotel. It wasn't hard. Hanlin, population 100,000, wasn't huge. That's one of the reasons it was looking to grow. It was also laid out on a grid, making finding your way easy. My confidence was returning by the time I hit the hotel. Time enough for a nap, a shower, and a review of the presentation.

I chose review, shower, review, worry, review. And then I left for my interview.

"Mya Powers? I'm Jared Flenderson."

"Nice to finally meet you."

We fumbled a handshake, Jared trying to shake the tips of my fingers the way some men do to us delicate flowers, me trying to shake hands like I meant it.

The conference room was stuffy. Coffee, tea, water and sodas stood on a sidebar. There were the inevitable pastries. A white board, A/V for my Power Point. Three men in business suits and Jared, who was the communications liaison between city and county in Hanlin. Fracking had come to Georgia, heading into the Northwest, and Hanlin was poised not to be drilled but to receive overflow oil company workers and support services from some of the shale sites more than one hundred miles north. Having seen what happened to North Dakota when the energy boom hit there, the economic development authorities were determined to stay ahead of the curve.

For the next ninety minutes I talked to Jared and the three suited men, to a suited woman who came and went, the executive assistant-slash-office manager for the authority. My presentation showed how I'd encourage local businesses to expand and entrepreneurs to start up because fracking was business and business was good but fracking wasn't. I didn't lose any of them with that, or with the target industries culled from state-level economic wish lists. I used the Power Point for them, not for me, and I didn't refer to notes.

Or think about my father and that dream, that I couldn't be trusted with fiduciary duties.

Or about Rick, who hadn't called or texted. He wasn't supposed to be part of the equation anyway. This just made everything easier.

I didn't expect to hear back for weeks. In Vegas it would certainly be that way. I'd been prepared to deal with the wait. There was a week with Sunny first, and during that I wasn't going to waste time brooding.

I didn't have to. They asked me to excuse them at the end of the presentation, after Q&A which had gone on forever, and they huddled in another small room off the conference room, where I could see but not hear them. Reminded me a little of bullies at school, the way they'd group together and discuss what antisocial thing they should do next.

This wasn't high school, though, and what they chose to do at the end of their conference was hire me.

"We were pretty sure," Jared said, walking me out. There'd been an offer of lunch but I wanted to get on to Roswell and see Sunny. "Part of the point of the visit is just whether you'd do it."

I blinked. We were walking through an atrium I hadn't even noticed on my way in. I'd been more nervous than I thought. "Were there candidates who
weren't
willing to come out?" I couldn't imagine.

"Oh, sure. One from South Carolina. Not like he had to come far. That was for a different job. For yours there was someone from California who chose not to travel unless guaranteed a job."

We were standing at the front entrance then, the sun blinding off the snow which here was thin and sparse, melting off dark and concrete surfaces and hiding in shadows. I tried and failed to imagine refusing to travel when it came to something I really wanted. That added up to refusing to go for what you wanted.

Fears and phobias or not, I couldn't imagine it.

I took my leave of Jared and drove to Sunny's house.

"You're here!"

Sunny burst out the front door before I got the passenger door open to grab my stuff. We threw our arms around each other right there on the sidewalk, already starting the fast, insane, nonstop chatter that would continue until I got back on the airplane in another four days. Tiny, honey blond, athletic, grinning, she led me into the house, dragging my carry-on.

I carried the messenger bag. It seemed like good luck now. I wasn't about to jinx anything.

"Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!" she demanded as we whirled into the kitchen so she could start slicing lemons for the iced tea. There was no snow in Sunny's town, and the spring day was moderate.

I couldn't wait. I put down the laptop bag and said, "I got the job!"

When I'm home in Vegas and Sunny is in Roswell, GA, we talk on the phone at least once a week. Because when Sunny got married and moved we were both insanely busy, and since that hasn't really stopped, we talk at midnight usually. That way her twins are in bed for the night and so, usually, is her husband. For me, it means my work day and workout are both behind me.

Even though the next morning sucks, there are nights we don't stop talking before three a.m. Mutual friends, my sister and Sun's husband, they've all at some point asked what we can possibly find to talk about for three hours. It's like they'd accept a smaller amount of time given over to Caffeinated Midnight, the two of us thousands of miles apart drinking our latest favorite beverage. Neither of us has really made a lot of attempt to explain. It's the same way we can spend four days together and not run out of things to talk about.

So for the next four days after my snow jam and hiring at City of Hanlin Economic Development we talked about my moving to Georgia so we'd be neighbors again and about the move and logistics thereof. We talked about books, and favorite authors, and why, with all her time at home, Sunny wasn't trying to write a book yet.

That was supposed to be ironic, given the twins were two, and it made her sputter in protest the same as when I'd asked, "What, they're both two? At the same time? That wasn't good planning, Sun." We left the twins with their dad and went hiking and then we left them with their dad and went running and then we tried to leave them with their dad to go shopping but he refused on the grounds that we'd come back from outdoors adventures but we might never return from the mall.

But sitting in Sunny's big, gleamingly clean kitchen while outside the world woke to spring and inside the day broke to chaos fairly often, the thing we most talked about was Rick.

"So," Sunny said after the initial congratulatory jumping up and down and conversations about my moving to Georgia and her mother-in-law leaving it were out of the way. "So you hooked up." Her eyes gleamed avidly. Sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, she propped her chin on one fist. "Do tell."

I faltered. This was Sunny. There was nothing we hadn't been able to tell each other over the years. But the experience with Rick, which should have been a footnote in my personal history, was somehow raw. I danced around it in my own head. It wasn't like I wanted to do otherwise aloud. "I, um, he and I, we, um. We hooked up." There.

Sunny rolled her big brown eyes. "I know that, Powers. So spill. You said the guy looks like a young Robert Redford, which puts him in the category of a god. What else? What
happened
? Why are you holding out?"

I cradled my coffee mug in both hands. "I don't know, I mean, it's..." Pause to think, like this was a big word. "Complicated."

I could see the change in Sunny when she switched right then from flat out tease to concerned but still playing at being a tease. "I guess it would be. You're here and he isn't."

"He has a life," I grumbled.

"In Atlanta," she said, and I realized I didn't even know that. We'd only just gotten past my story and into his
–
unmarried, lived in Atlanta, apparently, worked in advertising
–
when the snow had taken down the mean neighbor's tree and everything had changed. "If you'd hooked up and things were still good, he'd be here. He'd have driven you here."

"No, he wouldn't," I protested. "I have a rental car. He had his own car. How would he have driven me? And why? I'm still capable of taking care of myself."

Sunny face palmed. "Oh, right, that again. Big, bad Mya can take care of herself. Powers, I
know
you can. It's just sometimes not having to? It's pretty wonderful."

Which was enough of an invitation, I thought. After all, Sunny's the one I'd wanted to run home to, even if I'd never lived in her city. We're best friends of that sort. "It's not quite that simple," I said hesitantly. The only thing that's ever come between me and Sunny is her marriage. Something about it makes me all the more determined to put up the
I can take care of myself
walls. Maybe because I don't like Kurt and I don't think he likes me (or anyone, possibly including Sunny). Maybe because she's got the marriage and the kids and the work from home freelance writer career thing all going. It just seems like I shouldn't be running to her with problems that still seem like they're from our college days. The
does he love me
variety, or the
savings took a hit, can't pay the rent, just need to vent
variety. Sunny growing up forced me, at least in my own mind, to grow up too. Growing up meant putting up even more walls because seriously, I'm like that old saying about perfect hostesses: serene like a duck on the surface of the water and paddling like hell underneath. That's me. Only given that Sunny stood by me during the worst of it, the Dad the Embezzler part of it, my paddling is especially frantic. I do not want to fail or even flail in plain sight.

Sunny, of course, doesn't know any of this. "Spit it out, Powers," she said, getting up to refill our cups.

"Fine," I said, and it all came tumbling out. The rescue by this guy who even when covered by a scarf was Greek Godian in nature.

"That's not a word. I'm a writer. I know these things."

"Shush," I said, and rushed on. About his letting me make my own way the first time I said it (her expression said, "Giving you what you asked for! Perish the thought!") and about leaving me to slip and slide and get my own bag. It didn't help that Sunny was laughing by now. About sliding about in the snow, and getting locked out, and about him calling me Princess, and about the dinner and conversation.

"Sounds like he's determined to treat you exactly the way you asked to be treated and you don't know what to do about it," Sunny said archly.

"Shut up," I replied with great wit. I sipped coffee. I stared around her kitchen. "Why is he calling me princess? I don't act like that, do I?"

Sunny put her mug down. "Now you're getting somewhere," she said. "You know how some guys claim to hate cats?"

Worried now. "Yes, but I don't see how that helps. Not a cat." Waving a hand down my own non-feline body.

She waved that away. "Men react to cats because cats are independent. They say what they want and when they want it. They don't
–
" she grinned
–
"Pussyfoot."

I made a face. "Bad."

"You didn't ask him to come get you, true. But you also didn't fall at his feet with gratitude."

"I was supposed to do both?" If I kicked off my shoes and planted my feet on her polished concrete kitchen floor I could enjoy the radiant heat.

"Yes. It's guy thing. Don't think about it too hard or you will go mad."

"Great. It's all I've
been
thinking about." To my own disgust. "OK, fine. I can see wanting the frail fem to be ever so thankful that she's been saved. But what about the rest of it?"

Sunny frowned. "Maybe like elementary school where the boys have to pull your hair to let you know they like you?"

I rolled my eyes again. "No. Try again."

She did, more seriously. "At the risk of defending him
–
and he did act pretty bad
–
it sounds like he's every bit as defensive as." She stopped talking suddenly, her eyes wide and innocent.