“You don’t know her!” Morgun flung herself down on her living room couch. She’d bought it second hand and she forgot about the rogue spring that liked to stab her in the butt every time she sat on the left side. As it was, it jabbed her straight in the back and she rolled away instinctively, reaching for the spot with one hand, combatting tears, and holding her phone with the other.
Ugh. Even the thought of Laney could be dangerous. Maybe this is karma. A sign that I shouldn’t be doing this.
“No, but I know you. Just think about your future self. Future Morgun will thank present Morgun.”
“Present Morgun does thank me.”
“Yeah, well, present Morgun should suck it up.”
“Why did you ever send that message?” Morgun groaned. Her back still pulsed with fire and she wished right now that she could hang up on Chelsea and call some waste disposal company to come get the cursed couch. She bought it because it was antique. Rusty orange. MCM. All that good stuff. It turned out to be scratchy and springy and mean. Not at all what she’d anticipated.
One day, couch, it’s just going to be you and me and a match. You won’t be so tough then.
“I was thinking about you. About your career. Plus, I knew you’d respond if she messaged you back. You obviously did. That makes you guilty or game or both.”
“I really don’t want to do this. And please don’t say game. I’m not game. And I’m not guilty either.”
She felt horribly guilty for even stopping to peruse Laney’s stupid profile. Chelsea never would have known about any of this if she had just scrolled on past.
“I know, but in life we have to do things we don’t want to do.”
“Gee,” Morgun grumbled. “I haven’t heard that a thousand times before from every annoying person on the planet.”
“Should I go with suck it up, pupple dup?”
Morgun’s lips twitched despite herself. Morgun’s dad was famous for going with the old, terrible, suck it up, buttercup, but Chelsea had changed it in mockery and now it was their own private joke. Morgun even said it in a deep voice, just like Chelsea’s dad used when he brought out the good old buttercup lecture.
“No, that would be much worse! Thank you for not saying that for real.”
“You’re welcome. But, Morgun?”
“Yeah?”
“Suck it up, pupple dup.”
The line went dead.
Chapter 6
Laney
Jason’s wedding was in two days and Laney knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was absolutely, unequivocally fucked.
Two other women basically told her to go eff herself when she suggested going to the wedding with her as a fake date of sorts for payment. They both, oddly enough, shared the same sentiment that Unicornspooprainbowsandsprinkles498 had. In essence, no one liked it.
So now, she was sitting on her computer, out of options. It was too late to go out to a club or a bar or anywhere else to try to find a date. It was too late to get on another site. It was too late to meet up with anyone else.
Laney wasn’t sure why she was checking her inbox on the dating site one last time. She would have made fun of herself if she was hearing this story from someone else. She would have called herself ultra-pathetic. Did her mom know that she wouldn’t be able to get a date? Was she laying down a challenge that Laney couldn’t help but pick up and fail at? Was she so clairvoyant that she knew Laney was going to have zero fight left in her by the time of the wedding and that talk of families and dating and babies would be allowed to continue because she’d lost a bet of sorts?
No. Her mom wouldn’t do that to her. Her mom wasn’t mean like that. Her mom loved her, even if she was a little misguided with that love. She just couldn’t imagine anyone having a career outside the home that they willingly chose over having love and raising children.
Her mom really was the best mom. She’d been a stay at home mom since she got pregnant with Jason and she’d loved every minute of it. That was how their family worked. Her mom ran the household. Her dad worked outside of it. They both contributed, and her mom was right. Often, she had the harder job of the two. Staying up with sick, barfy kids, changing poopy diapers, listening to the fighting between siblings, cleaning up scrapes and cuts, teaching them both how to read before they ever went off to school, helping tirelessly with homework, baking for bake sales, doing school projects, crafting on weekends, decorating the house, cleaning, cooking, making lunches, supervising on field trips…
It was all so overwhelming to Laney when she thought about it all like that. She knew that all of it was spaced out over eighteen years, but she just couldn’t imagine it. She wasn’t even good with kids. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever held one of her friends’ babies when they offered.
She knew what she was good at. Photography. She’d been interested in it since she took it in high school. Both as a photography class and in physics, when they’d made their own pin hole box cameras and developed the photos in the dark room. All her work was digital, of course, but she’d been hooked ever since she picked up a camera and was challenged to see the world in a different way.
Why wasn’t it okay to just be good at that? To want that? To be successful?