Cathy Yardley - L.a. Woman

“Four at the absolute outside,” he said, not helping at all. “Man. I envy you.”

“Really?” Sarah smiled. “Why?”

“By the time I get down there, you’ll practically be a native. You’ll know all the places to go, you’ll already have a job, you’ll be genuinely…”

“Wait a second,” she interrupted. “I don’t know that I’ll find the job I want in three months, Benjamin, so you might not have a leg up on me there.”

He laughed—it was that selling laugh again. “I know you wanted to take some time to figure out what you’re really interested in doing, but that’s hardly realistic now, is it?”

She paced a little more quickly. “But that was part of the agreement. I’d move down to L.A. and get your house ready for you, and then you’d cover the bills for a few months while I figured out my, er, direction.”

“After three jobs in four years, honey, does it really matter now if you get a job you don’t like?” His voice was smoothly persuasive. “You can always quit it later, when I finally move down.”

Sarah felt like banging her head against the wall. “The point is, Benjamin, I don’t want to keep quitting jobs. I feel so…planktonic!”

“Planktonic?” This time, the laugh sounded more natural. “Is that a word?”

“I just want to stop floating around,” she said. “I want some stability.”

He sighed, more irritably this time. “That’s not exactly something I’m supposed to provide for you, Sarah. Is it?”

“You’re missing the point.” She frowned at the phone. “I’m usually so unhappy at work. I mean, there’s got to be something out there I actually enjoy.”

“Nobody really enjoys their job,” he dismissed out of hand. “Okay, maybe me. Still, it’s not like you’re going to be able to pay rent without a job, right? So now’s hardly the time to be picky. And bills…they’ll be coming up soon, too.”

“How much will you be able to help out?”

Another one of those long pauses. She was beginning to really hate those.

“Sarah,” he said slowly, “I’m not living there, remember?”

She blinked. “But you said…”

“Things have changed.” His tone was just this side of curt. “You wouldn’t honestly expect me to pay for the rent when I’m not moving down there.”

“Yet,” she said, bristling. “You’re not moving down here yet.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t think that,” he continued stubbornly.

“You’re right, Benjamin.” Her voice was cold. “I would have moved down here with what little savings I have, on a whim, all ready to pay rent even though you said you’d cover it, not knowing you wouldn’t move down here until I’m already unpacked and signed to a year lease. Of course! What was I thinking?”

“I paid the deposit and the first month, so please don’t give me that ‘I’m stranded here!’ bullshit,” Benjamin answered. “You’re the one who was saying, ‘Oh, L.A. will be so much fun’! You were the one who told me you’d love to move down there!”

That’s because you wanted to, you idiot!

She’d already let her temper get too far ahead of her. She didn’t want to fight…especially not with eight hundred miles and a telephone connection being her only hold on him. “I’m sorry. I…it was unexpected. I wasn’t expecting you to pay for everything.”

“Yeah, well, imagine how I felt.”

She was trying to. Very, very hard.

Three months—and getting a job. In a city where she didn’t know anybody except Judith.

Sarah closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She wasn’t going to cry. He hated her crying and could sense it in a few seconds. “So are you going to visit me?”

“I’m in the middle of a killer quota, and we’re not even to threshold, much less target this year…”

Meaning no.

“Sarah, I can tell you’re getting upset about all of this. Believe me, you’ll be so busy, you won’t even think about me.”

Considering every decision she’d made up to this point was for the sole purpose of getting him to move in with her—to get him that much closer to the altar—that seemed highly unlikely. “I miss you already,” she said.

He sighed. “You know, I think this will probably be really good for us,” he said instead.

“How do you figure?”

“I mean, you were spending all of this time with me. We were together all the time.”

“Not all the time,” she protested. “Not with you working as much as you do.”

“But every time I came home, there you were. Now, you’ll have a chance to do outside stuff.”

“You want me to use this as, what, some kind of survival training?” She tried to make it sound like a joke, but her voice had other ideas.

“Well, it’ll show me how long you’ll last without me there.”

She gasped a little at this. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing…nothing. It’s just that, sometimes you can be a handful, Sarah. I feel like I’m taking care of you. Now you hit me up with the ‘how much can you help with rent’ and ‘when are you flying down to visit me?’ stuff, and I just wonder—how can you expect to survive L.A. without me at this rate?”

“I didn’t realize I was going to have to,” she snapped back.

“See? That’s exactly what I mean!”

She sighed. “Benjamin…”

“I’ve got to go. These sales figures aren’t typing themselves into the spreadsheet.” She guessed he was trying to make a joke, too. Like hers, it came out wrong.

“I’ll get a job,” she said hurriedly. “And I’ll make it just fine.”

“I really have to go.”

“Jam,” she said, relapsing into her old nickname for him, “you know I love you.”

“I know, Sarah,” he said. “Talk to you next week.”

He hung up.

She stared at the phone, until it made that annoying beep-beep-beep and she hit the off button.

Lying naked on her back, feeling the soft strokes of his fingertips on her skin, Martika felt truly, utterly bored.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, his blue eyes huge and curious.

She glanced at him. “That’s a woman’s question.”

“You’re so mysterious,” he said, and she supposed he was complimenting her. It might help if he’d stop mooning over her like some Regency poet. “I always wonder what you’re thinking.”

I’m thinking, why the hell am I still here?

She’d been staying with…Andre. His name was Andre, she reminded herself, watching the way his blond hair hung slightly in his eyes. It used to charm her. Now it just made her fingers itch for scissors. Anyway, she’d been staying with the man for the past five months. He’d been starting to pressure about things like “where are we going with this?” and hinting around “permanent relationships.” She thought he was about two years younger than she was chronologically—about five years younger emotionally, and about fifty years older when it came to things like marriage. She tried not to roll her eyes.

“So what are you thinking?” he pressed.

She winced. “I’m thinking that I’d like to go clubbing. Maybe hit Sunset.”

He frowned. “You’ve been out three nights this week. I thought we could spend tonight at home.” He grinned, his dimples pitting his cheeks. “In bed.”

She was getting bored there, too…and bored in bed meant a hasty exit, stage right. “I really felt like going out.”

His frown turned into a scowl. “Fine.”

She huffed impatiently. “You don’t have to pout.”

“Sometimes, you can be such a bitch, Martika.”

She pulled on a loose black silk robe. “No ‘sometimes’ about it,” she agreed, grabbing her cigarettes and heading for the balcony. She was two steps toward it when she heard the high-pitched trill of her cell phone. She swiped it up on her way, shutting the glass door behind her as she hit the green answer button. “This is me. And you are?”