Shopping for a Billionaire 3(28)
Author: Julia Kent

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” she adds. It’s been a year, yes. But Monica never liked me. Ever. Not one bit. Her fakery should be lauded, because she put on a surface act about me. Doing the bare minimum was her form of liking me. A familiar, low-grade shaking begins inside my body, as if my bones were starting to rattle from the first signs of an earthquake.

She looks like a shrunken version of Steve, with the same slightly negative set to her jaw, as if the world has to prove that any shred of positivity is possible. Her default is suspicion and pessimism. 

I used to think that was a sign of intelligence, as if being pessimistic meant you just had figured out The Truth long before everyone else did. Now I think it’s just a nice cover for being a bit of an ass**le and not knowing how to find your way out.

She looks like Steve, except she’s a bird. All that’s missing are wings. Her waist is thicker than her breast, her legs are scrawny, her feet splay out, and her resemblance to a bird wouldn’t be so sharply distinctive if she didn’t henpeck everyone.

She also has eyebrows that lift perpetually, making me think she’s questioning everything I say.

“Amelia!” she exclaims as she turns to Amanda, who leaps up and practically curtseys. Monica does that to some people. She has the air of a queen and the snootiness of a social climber. Steve and I dated for how many years and the woman doesn’t remember my best friend’s name?

Amanda doesn’t correct her. It would be like trying to correct King Joffrey. You’d be beheaded in seconds.

“What are you two doing here?” she asks.

“Hello, Monica,” Jim says, standing and coming around the desk. He looks like he’s part wolf, predator eyes devouring her. Monica’s wearing something stylish from one of the boutiques near Neiman Marcus in the Natick Mall—oh, excuse me, the Natick Collection. Can’t call it a mall. Every other town calls their enclosed shopping center a mall, but Natick’s developers appear to wish they were designing Rodeo Drive.

And Monica acts like she lives on it, even though she’s really a suburban mom.

“Why, Jim!” she exclaims, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. I half expect to hear fiddle-dee-dee come out of her mouth and for South Boston to burst into flames. Have the Red Sox lose in the seventh game of the World Series and that might actually happen.

“Amanda and Shannon are here to apply for a mortgage,” Jim explains.

Amanda and I share a look of horror and professionalism, tenuously balanced at the half-and-half point.

“A mortgage? You’re buying property?” Monica’s eyes light up. “How ambitious of you, Shannon. I thought you’d stay in that dead-end job forever and never show any chutzpah. Steve taught you some good skills, didn’t he? I’m sure you appreciate everything he did for you all those years.”

Screech. Stop the merry-go-round, because someone needs to get knocked off her high horse.

I can’t let Jim know that I used to date Steve. Not, at least, until Amanda and I finish this evaluation from hell. I know I’m in hell because Monica is the queen here. She could marry Hades and have him whipped in no time.

Amanda’s all too aware of the predicament, but can also see smoke coming out of my ears, so she steps between me and Monica, opening her mouth, just as Jim says:

“The newlyweds are here to buy their first house together. Isn’t that something?”

You date a guy for a few years and you get to know his mother fairly well, even if she has a stick up her butt so long she could pick oranges with it. Monica won’t leave now because she’s a bulldog with her teeth in my calf, and the charade has to be held up. Blowing our cover means alienating Consolidated Evalu-shop’s other major client. Greg has held on to this long-standing contract for years, and while we all joke about how boring evaluations for banks, credit unions, lending companies, and insurance can be, it pays the bills and keeps the marketing company where I work afloat.

When a steady contract is at stake, I’m willing to leverage my (not so big) sense of dignity to keep the client happy.

Unfortunately, I took the same approach with Monica all those years, letting her digs and condescension chip away at me for the sake of Steve.

“You’ve gotten married?” she gasps, craning her neck around the credit union, looking for an obvious suspect. “Where is he?”

Amanda reaches for my hand and pulls me close, her shoulder banging against mine as she bends down and kisses my cheek. “He is she. Me. We’re the newlyweds.”

Monica’s social mask doesn’t just crack. It shatters. “You’re, you’re…” Her mouth twists like she’s accidentally eaten a live gecko. “Lesbians?” The word emerges like that goopy, growling head from John Hurt’s stomach in Alien.

Amanda looks at her watch and doesn’t answer the question while I do my best imitation of a twelve-pound sea bass being pulled onto a ship with a hook in its eye and mouth opening and closing, unaware of its pending slow, painful death.

“We both have an appointment in thirty minutes, so could we move on?” Amanda says to Jim in a don’t you dare say no voice. Powerful and commanding, she’s also casual in an enviable way. I almost want to date her. Wait. I’m married to her. I can’t date her.

Jim rallies. “Of course, of course! Monica, so good to see you,” he says as he reaches to shake her hand. She snatches it away, and instead those demon eyes glare like twin rubies, pointed at me.

“You’re a lesbian? A married lesbian?” Her tone is that of a preschool teacher explaining that there are seven continents to a group of three-year-olds, as if I don’t know what I am saying and she’s correcting me. She sounds unhinged.

“Yes,” I say in an out-breath, the word floating off on the air like a fart. She flinches.

Then her entire face morphs. Jim goes back to his desk and mutters something about getting the paperwork in place. One claw-like hand reaches for my upper arm and pulls me a few feet away from him, and now her words come out in a hurried hiss.

Amanda follows us, still holding my hand and grinning like a Disney character. If Monica is Maleficent, then Amanda has somehow turned into Dopey in seconds.

“You like women.”

“I love women!” I chirp.

Her frown deepens, eyes flickering left and right as if retrieving memories to process. My hand starts to sweat and Amanda lets go of it, wiping it on her skirt. She shoots me a pleading look, as if to say there’s nothing we can do about this.