Jacqueline
I wait a few hours for Allison to come back and when she doesn't, I head back out to the beach by myself.
I text Dante to meet me there and he does, arriving half an hour later with his laptop and an umbrella in tow.
"Wow, look at us," I joke. "We're like a couple on vacation."
He smiles. "You don't know the half of it. I have a cooler with me. I left it up there at the end of the trail."
After getting it, we set up the rest of our stuff and the umbrella, creating a good amount of shade along with everything else.
I open a lounge chair and plop myself in it.
"Well, this is nice. A little bit more upscale than simply sitting on the towel," I say.
He grabs a bottle of suntan lotion and puts it on my back as I tell him what happened with Allison.
"You don't want to go to The Redemption, do you?" I ask, hesitating and holding my breath while he answers.
"No. I'd rather just be with you. But we can have a little party of our own tonight."
I smile. "I'd like that. See, she just doesn't understand. She thinks that I should just go with her and be there as her buddy, but people are going to approach us and have certain expectations. I don't know. I just don't think she's being fair." I go on a long rant, complaining about everything and anything, exasperated by her unwillingness to compromise. "I just thought that we were closer friends than this."
Dressed in the same swimsuit, he pulls his lounge chair a little bit closer to me, burying his feet in the sand. Grabbing his computer out of his bag, he opens it on his lap.
“I have some emails to answer, but I'm here. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, sure." I nod.
Actually, I don't mind. I like having this time with him, working, doing normal things. I've always wondered what it would be like if we were an actual couple.
What would our day be like? And if this is it, it’s pretty good.
"Are you sure she's not going to be mad if she were to come out here and see us on the beach?"
"I have no idea. I mean, probably, yes. But it feels like she's mad at me for everything."
"Well, you did kind of promise to hang out with her this weekend and now you're spending time with a guy."
I make a face in his general direction. "You know that's not true, okay? I don't want to be that kind of girl, but it's really not true. I would never do this if you were just some stranger, but you're not. For some reason, she just doesn't understand that."
Dante reaches over and squeezes my hand. "Just give her some time to cool off. I think things will be fine after that."
I nod, hoping that that's the case. Dante and I spend the afternoon together.
He works on his laptop, typing away feverishly, looking at spreadsheets. In between all that, we kiss and frolic in the water, and bake under the sun.
When it gets too overbearing, we hide under the umbrella. He opens his laptop again and I pull out a book on my phone, and we repeat the process again.
We stay for hours, until the drinks and the snacks are all gone and the day is as perfect as it can possibly be.
While my skin feels a little hot, I hope that I didn't get sunburned, and I carefully examine Dante to make sure that he's not red anywhere either. The consistent application of sunscreen seemed to have taken care of that.
Finally, as the sun slowly moves away toward the horizon, and only hinting at the fact that twilight might be coming in a few hours, I tell him about my job rejection.
It has been weighing on my mind and I haven't been able to put it all out. I try to push it away. I try not to think about it. But still, I can't help but wonder what I'm going to do for work.
"So they just sent you a form letter?" he asks. "No personal email?"
I shake my head no. "At least they wrote back. Most don't even bother with that."
"That's pretty shitty," he agrees.
I shrug. "I guess it's the way the world is right now. Too many applicants, not enough positions, especially something like that where lots of people are willing to work for free for six months, a year, whatever it takes to get in with an organization."
"What about you?" he asks.
"Internship is really out of the question. I need money coming in. I've moved in with Allison and I'm working part time at this bar/restaurant as a waitress just to pay the rent. It's where I used to work before ..." I let my words trail off.
He knows what I mean, before my brother's death.
"I thought that you were a secretary," he says.
"Administrative assistant," I correct him. "But yeah. But that was thirty hours a week, and I needed a little more. Plus, they were flexible at the restaurant so I could, you know, take different shifts when I needed them."
"So what happened to both jobs?"
"I couldn't deal with it. It was just ... When Michael was alive, I managed to juggle everything. Full-time school plus practically full-time work, sometimes more than that. I just sort of was like this Energizer bunny, just kept on going. But after his death, I tried and it's like whatever momentum and energy I had was just completely zapped out of me. First, I quit the restaurant job. Then I couldn't even make it to the administrative assistant position in any decent way. Luckily, I didn't get fired. I just told them that I was going through something and I couldn't keep working. I thought that that would allow me to finish school, at least somehow, but the semester was gone. I couldn't focus. I had to drop out just so that I wouldn't get all Fs."
"Well, having this degree should be a lot of help," Dante says. I nod. "You don't seem so convinced."
"I don't know. I don't mean to put a damper on today. I'm really having a lot of fun. I just kind of have all this shit going on and it's worrying, you know?"
"Yeah, totally. I understand."
I want to tell him that he may hear me, but he surely doesn't understand. From the looks of it, and from how easily he paid my mom's loan off, it seems like whatever work he does is purely voluntary, if that. He doesn't actually work for money, and he doesn't know what it's like to have to take jobs that you don't want to take just because you have no other options.
"Can I run something by you?" Dante says, closing his laptop. I nod. "I need some help and you don't have a job, so I have an idea."
I sit back in my chair and wait for him to explain.
"I told you about my client, Vasko, and the fact that Apex Capital invested five million into his company?"
"The microprocessors?" I ask.
"Exactly. Well, it's been a while and everything seems on the up and up, but I have a feeling that it may not be the case."
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, I've had my suspicions about him for a while, and he's very good at hiding paperwork, that sort of thing. You have done some investigative journalism, and you're currently sort of flexible with your work."
"What are you getting at?" I ask.
"They have an opening for an administrative assistant in his office. What if you applied? No relation to me, of course, otherwise he'd never hire you. But what if you just applied? You know, you're more than qualified, you have a few years of experience. Tell him that ..."