Jos kept pacing like Eden wasn’t even there. Leaning back against the wooden door for support, Eden gnawed at her lower lip to keep herself from blurting something silly. It didn’t work. She wasn’t able to keep her racing thoughts to herself.
“I think you might have been right about Alden.”
Jos spun around. She raked her hand through her hair almost angrily. Her nostrils actually flared she breathed in so hard. “You think? He’s doing it blatantly now. He wasn’t just threatening me. He was the one who got those photos. He probably paid someone to take them. God, it’s sickening.” She snorted. “Here I thought he actually wasn’t a bad guy. That he was decent and could even be nice. That he cared. The only thing he cares about is his job. I guess it’s his ass on the line. He clearly has orders to make me quit.”
“Why would he do that? You’re the whole reason this studio gets such good ratings. You pretty much built the show up from nothing. They can’t just find someone to replace you.”
Jos went deadly still. Even Eden realized how stupid that was as soon as she said it.
“Can’t they?” Jos asked. Her sudden and total calm was eerie. She didn’t just look like a storm about to touch down. She looked like she was right in the eye of it and that peace was going to blow wide open. “Don’t you think they already have? They got what they wanted. Now they want me out.”
“But the contract. Your contract. He was talking about you signing a three-year…” Oh fuck. No. No, no, no, no, no. Eden’s hands balled into fists at her sides. She needed to lean even harder
against the door. This is not happening. This is not freaking happening. “Jos, please tell me they didn’t make you bring me on, and your reward was a contract extension. Please freaking tell me that.”
Jos’ left eye twitched. Her lips thinned out. Eden’s pulse pretty much flatlined and then her heart was kickstarted with a painful jolt that left her breathless.
“Yes, that’s what they offered,” Jos said, voice devoid of emotion. “If I got you to work here, they agreed to extend it. If they fire me, they will have to pay me a huge amount of severance. It’s much easier for them if I pack up and leave myself.”
“Are you…? No, you can’t… You lied to me? I should have known that you weren’t there out of the goodness of your heart. Jesus, I don’t even know what’s true and what’s not anymore. Do you care about anything at all?”
Jos stood ramrod straight. She looked wrecked at having to admit the truth. It was more than just guilt. Now she was so quiet and still that it was actually kind of scary. Eden watched as Jos cleared every trace of emotion from her face. Before she straightened and pulled herself to her full height, it looked like she’d been sucker punched. Her eyes were the last to wall off, but Eden saw it.
The mirror sheen there that seemed to say, you have every right to hate me. Is it wrong that I want you not to?
That flash of emotion was quickly blinked away. Eden expected a quick surrender, but she obviously didn’t know the first thing about Jos. Instead of pelting her with her words, she seemed to have woken her up. Jos’ eyes blazed with a new light, and her face was nothing but steely determination.
“I do. I do care about some things. My job, for one. I loved it. It might not be saving the world, but I did it because I enjoyed it, not because it came with a good salary or because I wanted the public’s approval and attention and validation, but because I care. I do. Not everyone can be this hero and spend the rest of their days doing it. Some people never had a stable anything when they were younger and maybe they crave that. Maybe they crave normal. Maybe they want that mundane existence that you scorn with all your youthful vigor and accumulated twenty-six years of life experience. Maybe what you term as selling out actually means everything to them. Maybe those people are like me. I never wanted money or fame or the stupid house. Those things were just a bonus. I wanted somewhere I could belong. Somewhere safe. Normal. I haven’t lost myself. I haven’t lost myself at all.”
Eden was floored. Jos’ honesty punctured through her anger, leaving her wrung out and weighed down, but if she’d lit a fire under Jos, Jos had lit a fire under her, and she wasn’t going to let her make a grand speech and shift all the guilt onto her and walk away like that. She wasn’t going to let her honesty run her through. She couldn’t. Not for herself and not for Jos.
“I don’t think you were craving normal,” Eden said carefully. She pulled herself off the door and faced Jos down with every bit as much fire and steam and bravery. “You weren’t going for mediocre. You were trying to carve that out for yourself the whole time because you were missing something inside you, and you thought it would fix you. Did it? Are you happy? Or are you still just as empty now that you have it? Because I think the things you really want, real love, the kind that knocks you flat on your ass, has nothing to do with your job. You can’t go for mediocre all the time. I think you were scared. You were scared to let things matter. You settled in because it was easy. You married someone you didn’t love because it was easy. You were looking for that safe spot and you found that shelter and you’ve stood under it for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to take a chance on anything anymore.”
Jos stalked forward. “You don’t know the first thing about me!” she hissed.
They were still in the studio and the walls were only so thick. While Eden didn’t care who heard what she was saying, it was obvious Jos wanted to keep things private.
It was clear that Eden was salting all of Jos’ hidden wounds, but she couldn’t stop. She needed to keep pressing. She needed Jos to hear her and wake up.
“Sometimes you have to put yourself out there and carve yourself in half, open yourself up to the point where it hurts. You just have to trust. You can’t do that halfway, and it’s never going to be enough for someone like you. I’m sorry that you had a terrible past, I really am, but you never should have shot for ordinary. You were extraordinary, Josella Frank. You were my freaking hero.”
It was getting hard to talk past the thickening in her throat, but Eden swallowed back the tears stinging her eyes and kept going. “If you love what you’re doing now, then I’m truly sorry I said all that stuff. I just think you could have been so much more. It wasn’t time wasted, because there’s still so much more time. Just because you were awesome, then you took a break, doesn’t mean you can’t get back there. If you wanted to leave this place, I would come with you in a heartbeat. I would quit if that’s what you wanted me to do. I would. But you were never going to ask. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
Jos blinked like Eden hadn’t just gone on a massive whirlwind of a monologue. Like she hadn’t just reached deep inside herself to try to find the right words and give them to Jos. Like she hadn’t just served up her own heart and apologized as well, even though she was the one who had been lied to. Like she hadn’t just offered to follow someone who was kind of still a stranger anywhere she damn well chose to go.
Eden actually expected her to say something, even if it was cutting and mean, but Jos wouldn’t be Jos if she was predictable. What was predictable was that she shut herself off. She grabbed the jacket that matched the pencil skirt she had on and threw it on over her blouse. She grabbed her purse off the table in the corner and palmed her keys.
“You’re just going to leave? Just like that? Without saying anything to me at all?” Eden wanted to step in front of the door to block it, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t want to trap herself in with Jos at this moment. Not with the tension in the air so thick and choking. She was scared that Jos would shove her out of the way and walk past her.
It was humiliating to watch Jos leave, walk right past Eden, without responding or giving her an answer of any kind. She didn’t even look at her as she walked out the door.
Eden wanted to race into the hallway and fling something heated at Jos as her heels clicked down the hall. Something like, I’m freaking done chasing after you, and I’m done trying to help you, and I’m done with everything in general, and I freaking take that part about following you anywhere back.
Instead of being childish and doing the worst thing she could do, Eden swallowed back the words, her anger, her disappointment, and her tears.
She could be done and not cry, couldn’t she?
She could. At least until she got back to the privacy and quiet of her crappy little apartment.