CHAPTER 7
M yra pulled her long braids back and looked at herself in the mirror.
She didn’t usually check herself out before she went to a client’s house, but she was tonight.
Elisa was someone she wanted to be friends with, regardless if there was a chance at anything more, so she was only trying to make sure that she looked professional; that was all.
She shook her head at herself then, knowing that wasn’t true, and grabbed her tools, heading out the door and over to Elisa’s.
“Hey,” Elisa greeted. “Come on in.”
She moved out of the way and let Myra walk in.
“Hey. Is it still okay for me to work now?”
“Of course. The kids are gone anyway.”
“Out for dinner?” Myra asked.
Elisa closed the door behind her and started walking toward the kitchen.
“They’re gone for a few days. They went back to their dad’s again. More farewell parties and friend hangouts. Their dad also has a pool, so I’m sure that’s part of it.”
Myra set her toolbox down and took in Elisa, who was wearing a white dress with light-blue flowers on it. She was also barefoot, and her toes were painted with the same blue color.
“You look nice,” she said before she could stop herself.
“Oh. I had an interview. It was a last-minute thing. I just got home, actually.”
“Interview?”
“It’s a receptionist position downtown. I doubt I’ll get it, but I was out shopping with Archie, and on the way home, I got the call that they wanted to know if I could come in today.
I don’t really have interview clothes, so I’ll need to go shopping again, but I thought this dress was probably okay. Right?”
‘Okay’ wasn’t the word Myra would use to describe how Elisa looked right now. The pale color of the dress and her soft, caramel skin was a perfect combination.
“Yeah, you… It’s good.” She cleared her throat. “So, receptionist?”
“It was just something I saw online. It’s an hourly position for about twenty hours a week, so I thought it might be something to do more than anything.”
“Well, I hope it works out,” Myra replied. “I won’t get in your way if you need to cook or, I don’t know, just hang out. I have headphones and a podcast to keep me occupied if you need to do something else.”
“Oh,” Elisa let out as if she hadn’t thought about that. “Right. Yeah. I was going to make something for dinner.”
“No problem.”
“Um… The kids are gone, and it’s just me,” Elisa said, clasping her hands in front of her.
“I know I’ve asked before, and you said no, so it’s okay if you do that again, but I always make too much food anyway.
Do you maybe want to eat with me or take something home with you if you want?
It’ll be leftovers tomorrow or go to waste. ”
Myra smiled at her because Elisa was just adorable right now.
She didn’t want to tell her no for a third time because she really did want them to at least be neighborly without it being awkward between them, but dinner with this woman without flirting with her would be difficult, with Elisa wearing that dress.
“What are you making?” she asked.
“Pasta with chicken. Unless you’re a vegetarian,” Elisa added quickly.
“I can make it without chicken. I have a jar of Alfredo sauce, so it won’t be from scratch.
Oh, and I have cheesy garlic bread. Archie loves it, but he doesn’t know I bought it because he’s incapable of opening the refrigerator and actually seeing food there.
He usually just yells, ‘Mom, there’s nothing to eat! ’ and closes the door. ”
Myra laughed and began pulling out the tools she would need to get started.
“That sounds good, actually. And I’m not a vegetarian; I’m from New Orleans.”
“No one here is a vegetarian?”
“Have you seen a vegetarian restaurant in town?” Myra asked.
Elisa laughed a little and said, “No.”
“Then, there’s your answer. We don’t even make those for the tourists,” she joked.
“I’m sure there are at least vegetarian dishes on menus,” Elisa replied and walked behind the kitchen island, where she bent down.
This bending down thing gave Myra a great view of her ass, and Myra needed to check herself. Neighbor or not, Elisa was a client with whom she needed to try to remain somewhat professional, so she turned away and got to work.
“I’m sure there are, but I don’t eat them. Seafood and sausage is the New Orleans way. Give me a gumbo or jambalaya.”
“I don’t know how to make those,” Elisa replied.
“No?”
“No. I’m not from Louisiana originally.”
“How did you end up here, then?”
Elisa filled a pot with water and said, “I went to school at LSU, where I met Archie Senior. I’m from Illinois originally, just outside of Chicago. Well, about an hour outside of Chicago, but that’s the closest big city people know, so I use it as a reference point.”
“Did you ever think about moving back?” Myra asked.
“I did, yes. Lots of times.” Elisa put the pot on the stove and turned it on.
“When I first got pregnant, in fact. I never really considered not having them or giving them up, but I did consider moving back home to have help from my family. My parents are still there, and so are my two sisters. They are a year and two years older than me, and they were in college, too, so I didn’t want to ask them for anything.
Both of my parents worked, and I didn’t really want to ask anything of them, either.
When Archie’s parents offered to help us as long as I quit school, I took them up on their offer, and we got married. ”
“They made you quit school?”
“They didn’t make me, per se. They just offered financial assistance and help, but his mom thought it would be best for me to be home with them for at least the first two years.
She was a stay-at-home mom herself. I’m glad I had that time with them, though.
You can’t ever get it back. They just keep growing and changing, and one day, you look at them, and you wonder how they got from growing inside you to being three years old. That never really stops, either.”
“I never really wanted kids myself. I like having children in my life, but I didn’t want to be responsible for them every day, honestly.”
“I wasn’t planning on having them for a while, if ever, back then,” Elisa shared.
“No?” Myra asked as she worked, trying to focus on the job to be done but also wanting to listen to Elisa.
“Not really, no. Don’t tell my kids, but the plan was premed and then medical school. I wanted to be a pediatrician. I thought that would be a good way to be around kids without having to have them myself.”
“You wanted to be a doctor?”
“That’s how my ex-husband and I met: we had a class together and started dating.” Elisa got a baking sheet out and began putting pieces of frozen garlic bread onto it. “Then, I got pregnant, and you know the rest.”
“Did you ever think about going back to school once the kids were older?”
“You know, Archie asked me that today.”
“Your ex-husband?”
“No, other Archie.” Elisa laughed. “AJ. Sorry. AJ asked me that today.”
“And?”
“I told him no, but yeah, I’ve thought about it.
I don’t know that I want to be a doctor anymore, though.
My existing credits wouldn’t really apply after all this time, so I’d have to just start over, doing four years plus medical school and then internships and everything else, and it’s just too much for me.
It’s twelve years, at least, and that would be if I went full-time.
I’d rather find something that pays the bills and where I can save money.
Have you always wanted to be a contractor and own your own company? ”
“Oh,” Myra said, stalling because she hadn’t expected the conversation to be diverted back to her.
“Yeah, I guess. I wasn’t sure about owning my own company back then – I liked the work and got an internship – but it just kept going from there.
Being my own boss became something I wanted, and it has its benefits and its drawbacks. ”
“I can imagine. The buck stops with you, right?”
“That, and it also means that I’m never really off work. It bothered my ex, I think. I didn’t know that until the end, but I guess she wasn’t a fan of me working all the time.”
“Is it something you love, though?” Elisa asked as she put the bread in the oven.
“Yeah, it is. I mean, there are some days when I wish I had the day off and other times when I think about taking a vacation where I actually leave New Orleans for a week or two and just relax, but I never do.”
“Why not?”
“No one to go with me,” she replied and turned toward Elisa, who was standing a few feet away, watching her work.
“No special someone?”
Myra laughed and said, “Not since my divorce.”
“What about a friend vacation?”
“I lost a lot of the ones I’ve known the longest in the divorce, but I’ve got new ones in the past year or so.”
“There you go. Ask one of them.”
“That might be odd. All of them are paired off now.”
“Oh,” Elisa said.
“Yeah… I’m the only single one in the bunch. It would be weird to ask one of them to go with me without their gi rlfriend or fiancée, and I don’t want to be a third wheel, either.”
“I can relate,” Elisa replied. “I lost my friends in the divorce, too.” Elisa’s phone, which was on the table, buzzed. “Sorry. I told the kids to message me when they got to their dad’s place.” She picked it up.
“It’s okay. I need to focus here anyway. I’m going to be hammering and cutting things, so I need to watch my hands,” she said, holding them up.
Was she crazy, or was Elisa staring at her fingers?
She wiggled them a bit, and Elisa’s eyes followed the movement.
Myra hadn’t ever liked her own hands. They were a little bigger than she would have liked and were also rough from her work.
Her ex had requested that she put on lotion twice a day to help smooth them out, and Myra had done so for years, but she hadn’t bothered in a while since she no longer had anyone to make them smooth for.
She wondered if Elisa liked rough hands.
She doubted it. Her ex-husband was a doctor, after all, with probably perfect baby-soft hands. That was likely what Elisa preferred.
“I should change anyway. I’ll be right back,” Elisa told her.
“Okay,” she replied.
When Elisa left the kitchen, Myra took a deep breath.
She had hardly done anything since arriving, and if she didn’t at least make some progress, Elisa would probably fire her, and she would lose this chance to get to know her.
She turned around and finally got to work, but seconds later, she heard something and turned back around to find the water in the pot on the stove boiling over.
Elisa had put the pasta in there without her noticing, and now, the bubbles were rolling over the pot.
Myra wasn’t sure what to do, but she didn’t think she should just let it keep making a mess, so she put her stuff down and walked over to turn the stove down and look for a cup.
Finding one in the drying rack, she filled it with cold water and dumped just a little into the pot to calm the water down.
“Oh, shit,” Elisa said.
Myra turned to see her moving toward her, wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a white T-shirt that said, ‘St. Peter’s Preparatory School.’
“I left it on high. Is it ruined?”
“No. It just started boiling over, so I turned it down.”
“I can’t even make pasta right.” Elisa shook her head.
“There’s nothing wrong with the pasta, Elisa,” she said and smiled over at her. “It’s pretty hard to mess it up.”
“I married an Italian, so I constantly heard how I messed up the pasta in the house. I didn’t salt the water. I didn’t cook it long enough. I cooked it too long.”
“Well, I’m not Italian, so I don’t know the difference anyway.”
“Right. Gumbo and jambalaya, huh?” Elisa smiled over at her.
“I can show you how to make it one night, if you want.”
“Which one?” Elisa asked as she moved behind Myra, and her hand moved over Myra’s lower back as she did.
“Both, if you want,” she said and swallowed. “They take time if you make them right.”
“Time, huh? You told me you work twenty-four-seven. When will you teach me?”
“I can add you to my calendar,” she replied.
Elisa moved back to the stove with another pan and a jar of Alfredo sauce and said, “That’s very kind of you.”
The response came with a smirk on her face that Myra wanted to kiss off.
“Your sweats are cute,” Myra said, going with this possible flirting they were doing right now. “What’s St. Peter’s?”
“Oh,” Elisa said and looked down. “Thank you.” She smiled at Myra. “It’s the school the kids went to.”
“Prep school?”
“Yeah. It’s Archie’s alma mater, so he wanted the kids to go there, too. It’s small; only about five hundred kids.”
“Private?”
“Yes. And great academics. It was a good environment for both of them, but they did get spoiled there with small class sizes and a lot of attention from teachers, so we’ll have to see how they do at college, where there are lectures with two hundred kids, and the professors don’t even know their names. ”
“I’m sure they’ll do fine,” Myra said. “I should get back to work.”
“Oh,” Elisa let out, shaking her head. “Yeah. I’ll finish up here. Can you take a break to eat?”
Myra nodded at her and went back to work.
She tried to focus; she really did… But Elisa hummed while she cooked.
Myra wasn’t even sure that she knew she was doing it, but it was sweet and soft, and it made Myra want to walk over to her, pull her back against her, and kiss her neck.
She wanted to hold Elisa while she hummed and cooked and then turn her around in her own arms to kiss her lips.
Myra hadn’t felt anything like that in a long time; not with any of the women she had dated – or, rather, attempted to date – since her ex had blindsided her.
No one she had gone out with since had stirred anything in her, but she had nearly screwed her own hand into the wall when Elisa started humming, so that had to mean something.