Oh my god, am I seriously daydreaming again? Right now?
“We’re sorry,” I say as we sit down across from her at her desk. “If there’s a policy and we violated it.”
“What policy?” Maggie asks.
“My dad said …” Jordi lets herself trail off and shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“Girls …” Maggie looks back and forth between us. “I’m going to let you tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s not unprofessional,” I say, even though I may not have enough business knowhow to qualify if that’s true or not. “At work, we’re just … working.”
“I take this internship really seriously,” Jordi says.
“She does,” I say. “She would never, like, smell my hair here. I mean, I take it seriously, too. We both do.”
“Smell your hair?” Maggie takes a huge sip of coffee. “I called you both back here because we’re going to have a table at a local designers’ show this coming weekend and I think I can get you both included if you’re free to help. So I have, literally, no idea what’s going on.”
“Didn’t you see us on Saturday?” I ask.
“No … ?” I’ve never seen Maggie look so confused. Maggie’s cluttered piles of random paperwork might make her seem like a disaster, but she does have a firm handle on everything. Usually.
“At the cemetery,” Jordi says.
“Oh! Were you guys there? Did you have fun? I could live without sitting on the hard ground for four hours at my age, but some of my friends love going.” She takes another sip of coffee. “You’re allowed to socialize outside of here, you know.”
“We, ummm …” I start, but even with my big mouth, it’s hard to keep going.
“We’ve been doing more than socializing,” Jordi says in her very professional tone and, I can’t help it, I laugh.
Thank god, so does Maggie.
“Abby’s the girlfriend!” she says. “I had no idea. Is this new?”
“New-ish,” Jordi says. “Yeah.”
“The bag!” Maggie says. “Clearly that bag was for Jordi, wasn’t it? Oh no—shit. Did I spoil the surprise?”
“No, I gave it to her this weekend,” I say.
“Girls, between us,” Maggie chuckles. “I was pretty drunk on Saturday night. It was one of my first nights out with my friends since Cory and I split up. We could have had an entire conversation and I might not have remembered the next day.”
“You guys did have a lot of empty bottles of wine,” I say, though immediately I wish I hadn’t. Luckily Maggie’s still laughing.
“This has been …” Maggie shrugs. “Not my favorite summer. It’s been easy for me to tunnel vision and proclaim that love and hope are dead. So knowing that you two … well, it’s nice.”
“So we’re not in trouble?” I ask.
“No one’s in trouble. Let’s talk about this show on Sunday, because I’d love to have help if you’re free.” Maggie laughs some more. “I hope you two are never in serious trouble for, uh, anything, because you’d both crumble under investigation immediately. It was sort of incredible to witness.”
“No lives of crime for us,” Jordi says.
“Definitely not.” She fishes around in her purse and takes out a ten-dollar bill. “Go down the street, get yourselves Frappuccinos or whatever, and take a moment to recover from … all of this. We’ll chat about the show then. Sound good?”
We agree and take off as quickly as we can get out the front door.
“I can’t believe you actually said smell my hair,” Jordi says.
“I can’t believe you actually said we’ve been doing more than socializing!”
We both laugh, and I feel the heaviness that’s been upon me since Saturday night finally lift.
“I really like Maggie,” I say.
“Me too.”
And then we’re quiet because I think we’re both wishing that we’ll be the one to win the job. At least, that’s what I’m doing.
It would have sucked to have the internship cut short if it turned out that relationships were against the rules. But this small part of me, I realize, wishes at least a little that it had happened.
Because at least then we both would have been out of the opportunity together.
I go over to Jordi’s on Tuesday because she’s responsible for Christian and therefore can’t take off anywhere without him. I bring my laptop with me to work on +style if there ends up being a lot of brother/sister bonding and I need to keep myself amused.
“I have a date,” Jordi greets me when I arrive.
“What? With who? Not me? What—”
“I meant, a date for my show at Pehrspace,” she says. “It’s officially August 11. It’ll keep running for about a couple weeks—depending on what else comes in—but that’s the date everything goes up.”
“It’s soon,” I say. “Like a month. Less than a month.”
“Less than a month,” she repeats. “I have so much to do.”
“Can I help?” I ask as Christian runs into the room.
“Hi, Abby,” he says. “What are you helping with?”
“No one’s helping with anything,” Jordi says. “I just want to spend some time today sorting through all my photos.”
“I can sort through photos,” he says.
“Just me,” she says. “Are you guys cool with that?”
We are cool with that, so Christian plays a video game and I get out my laptop. My recent post about summer accessories has had a lot more interaction than usual—maybe since it wasn’t plus size specific, so a few other blogs than usual linked to it—so I spend some time thanking people and answering questions before starting today’s post about summer party looks. I finish it quickly, and when I peek in on Jordi in her room, she doesn’t look up. I’d love to say I go right back to my laptop, but instead I watch her for just a bit. Her eyes are scanning her screen while she’s scribbling notes in a Moleskine notebook, and I feel so proud watching her work.
She grins without looking up. “What?”
“You’re cute when you’re serious,” I say.
“Oh my god.” She shakes her head but she’s still grinning. “Hey, is
