Just Like Her

Chapter 34

Emma

"I just don't get it," Trisha battered on.

"That's because you hate your job," I grunted as I pried open one of the cardboard boxes now populating my childhood room. It sat atop a stack of other boxes precariously piled one on top of the other. When the masking tape finally gave way to my clawing, the entire thing shifted and then swayed. I instantly dropped into a squat and hugged the tower to stop its moving.

"You weren't over the moon about yours either," her voice lectured through my cell phone's speaker. "You said it was killing your love of reading, remember?"

"Only-sometimes-" I panted, suddenly unsure how to extricate myself from my current position without being crushed by boxes of books and clothing. I could just see the news headline now: Prince's Girlfriend Killed by Own Hosiery and Other Mundane Belongings.

I could feel Trisha's eye roll from 300 kilometers away. "But I loved working in general," I managed to grunt as I shifted my shoulders to readjust the looming weight. "And I liked the hustle of my job. Besides, I've always worked, and I've got no intention of not working."

She snorted. "And yet you're unemployed!"

"Hey!" I exclaimed defensively as I looked around the room for something that could help me. "That's only temporary!"

"Till you get a position at the local library? Or worse teaching literature at the local school?"

"What's so wrong with either of those?" I asked, experimentally lifting one finger from the strained cardboard, then another.

"Nothing's wrong with them," she huffed. "They're just not you!"

"They could be," I grimaced as I lifted a whole palm away.

"They couldn't be," Trisha declared rather passionately for someone who had never before this expressed any sort of passion for teaching or librarianship.

"And why not?"

"Because you'd be bloody miserable!"

I jumped at her sudden shouting and-seeing the middle box give to the right-scrambled up onto my bed just as the tower toppled onto the worn wood floor. On impact, several hardcover books spilled out, their pages splaying and their spines colliding with one another.

I sighed heavily as I flopped down on my bed, my back sinking into the old mattress. It had been three days since I'd taken the train home from London with my bags and boxes in tow.

Trisha had offered to make the trip with me and help me transport my things, but I'd quietly told her 'no.' I felt pathetic enough moving back in with my mum-I was a grown ass woman after all. I didn't want any witnesses to amplify my feelings of shame and embarrassment. And I think Trisha understood that because she didn't push me on it.

What she apparently couldn't understand was why I had left in the first place. We'd been going back and forth for ages, and still, she couldn't seem to wrap her head around it.

"Organizing the bookshelves and 'Mummy & Me' reading circles?" Her voice cried incredulously. "Lecturing horny adolescents about classic literature, knowing none of them has bothered to read any of your assignments? It'd be soul-sucking!"

I drew a deep breath and held it.

Mum at least had been delighted to see me on the platform, and I did my best to try to muster a grin to match hers. We went straight home, and she immediately set about preparing dinner while I began to schlep the boxes into my room.