Page 46 of Landing Her Eagle
“Don’t worry. That won’t happen to you guys. Logan is crazy for you. He’s one of the good guys.”
That reminds me. “Did you want to grab lunch together today? We haven’t done that in a while, and there’s stuff I want to talk about. But not in the office.”
It must intrigue her because her brows quirk up, and she smirks.
“Sure. Francisco’s?”
She names the local pizza place down the road. They have excellent salads, so I can try to undo all the cheese I ate yesterday.
I nod. With lunch settled, we both log in to our computers and start working through our tasks for the morning. It’s the end of the month, so I’m inundated with payoff requests for people selling their condos and preparing those forms for the title companies. Yay. I didn’t need my degree in accounting to do this. I’m grateful for this job. I’m paid well. The benefits are great, and it isn’t difficult. It’s just boring. That was what I wanted at the time—stability and predictability. I didn’t want to be challenged.
But now I’m feeling differently and wanting more than safety and a small life. Now I need to figure out how I’m going to get it.
“My car or yours?” Mallory asks as we grab our purses and exit the office. She drives a cute green Mini Cooper.
“Yours,” I decide.
We ride the couple of miles to Francisco’s. After ordering at the counter, each having decided on a chicken Caesar salad, we choose a booth along the far wall.
Mallory takes a sip of her Sprite and asks, “So, what’s up? You had something you wanted to talk about?”
Our server, Lindsey, drops off a basket of warm Italian bread, and I busy myself buttering a slice before answering.
“Yeah, I do.” It’s silly I’m nervous, but I am. “I’m going to ask to cut my hours to part-time in the new year, and I want to take vacation time the week of Thanksgiving.”
Lindsey delivers our salads, and we smile our thanks up at her.
“I didn’t know if you were hoping to take any time off for the holidays. If you were, I wanted to coordinate it, so we both get the time we want.”
Unwrapping her silverware, Mallory replies, “I’m flying to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, but I plan to leave on Wednesday afternoon. You being gone won’t impact that.”
She uses her fork to stir the salad and distribute the dressing.
“I’m going to cash out most of my vacation time. You know you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to clear things with me.”
I nod, chewing my first bite of salad. I wish it was a cheeseburger.
She loads her fork with chicken and lettuce. “I think it’s great you’re taking time off. I hope you’re planning on traveling with Logan.”
I shrug. “I know I don’t need your permission to adjust my hours, but it could affect you, so I wanted to give you a heads-up. I don’t know if more work would fall in your lap, or if they’d just close the department. I sometimes think they have things as they are so there’s a spot for me to work. I know they hired me because of my connection to Logan. I was essentially a pity hire. I appreciate it, it’s what I needed at the time, but it’s not right for me. I didn’t want to blindside you.” I take a sip of my iced tea. “I still need to work out how much I’m comfortable traveling with Logan. I need the health insurance and other benefits, so I need to work enough hours to keep my benefit status.”
Swallowing her bite of salad, Mallory wipes her mouth. “Daphne, you’re very sweet, but seriously, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine whatever happens. I can get another job pretty easily. I have law firms reach out to recruit me all the time.” She takes a sip of her soda. “If they closed our department, they’d most likely offer us positions in another department. They would welcome you in payroll or accounting if you wanted. They hired me to work in leasing. I’m in collections only because George and Martha were retiring, and it was easy to slot me in there. I don’t think they’d lay either of us off. We’re outstanding employees.” She grins. “I stay because it’s a reasonably easy, well-paying job, and I have the best coworker.”
I smile back at her. “I definitely lucked out having you for my dungeon mate this past year, Mallory. Thanks for not freaking out.” I decide to press my luck. “Do you have plans for Saturday afternoon?” I caught her mid-bite.
She holds up a finger in the universal sign forwait a minute,and then she replies. “No. Saturday I was planning on hanging at home doing laundry and bingeing Netflix. Sunday morning, I’m meeting my girls for breakfast. You’re welcome to join us. Why?”
“So I want to try filming a tour out at the wildlife refuge. Wear a head-mounted camera so the viewers see things from my point of view and hear me talk about what I’m seeing. I spent hours last night watching different tours on YouTube, and it’s so cool. I’ve always wanted to be a tour guide, and this is a new twenty-first-century way of doing it. There are portals you can sign up with to be hired to give live virtual tours to people who reserve them. You can upload pre-recorded tours and have them available to rent. Or you can stream them on YouTube, maybe get monetized if you have enough viewers, get tipped via pay apps, set up a merchandise shop with T-shirts and mugs. There are tons of things you could do with it. I can handle the filming and editing, my friend Shelby has equipment to loan me and has given me some tips, but I’ll feel awkward walking through the woods alone, talking to myself. If you’re there, I can talk to you and not feel like a goober.”
“Oh, my goodness, that sounds so cool! I haven’t been out to the refuge in forever. Count me in!”
With our plans made for Saturday, I shimmy in my seat and do a little clap of happiness. Anyone looking at me would think I was a dork. I don’t care. This is the first step toward my future.
The rest of the workday passes quietly. I stop for groceries and enter my house. I was going to cook myself dinner, but I only have an hour before I connect with Logan, and there are a few things I want to do, so I picked up a spicy turkey club sandwich from Wawa on my way home. I sit at the breakfast bar with my laptop and take a bite of my sandwich while my computer wakes up. My passport sits on the counter in front of me. When I retrieved it from the fireproof box I keep my important papers in, I saw my parents’ passports lying there, too. They had renewed them right before the accident, and they arrived a week after their funeral. They were looking forward to filling them up with stamps once I left for college, and they were going to visit me on whatever semester abroad program I chose. Their old passports only had a stamp from the trip to Jamaica they took when I was seven. It was their long-awaited honeymoon. They had gotten pregnant with me when they were in college, so had a small wedding and a weekend getaway honeymoon. Big weddings and grand honeymoons weren’t options when you needed to pay your tuition for senior year and start saving for Pampers.
Once Foster Accounting was on solid ground and I was in school, they left me with Gran and Pops and took a week away. Seeing their new unstamped passports makes me sadder than looking at my own expired, unstamped passport. I only had one trip planned. I was going to go to Spain with my high school’s Spanish club the summer between junior and senior years. That didn’t happen. Just like all the trips Mom and Dad planned never happened. I lock away the sadness with the passports in the safe and pop open my computer, my ghost mom’s reminder to live life to the fullest ringing in my mind.
“Okay, what do I need to do to renew my passport?” I google and fill out what I need to, splurging to get it renewed in an expedited manner and kicking myself for letting it expire. I should have started the renewal process months ago since it was due to expire in August, but I didn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. There was no rush. I hate it when past me was an idiot.
