CHAPTER 17
M yra had been on cloud nine all morning.
Well, really, she’d been on cloud nine since that first kiss with Elisa.
The woman could kiss, and they had shared a few more kisses before Myra had dropped her off at her door and given her a long goodnight kiss.
That one had been great, too, and when Elisa had invited her inside through heavy breathing, Myra had actually thought about saying yes and following her in.
She’d known what Elisa had meant. They wouldn’t have had another cup of coffee or even opened a bottle of wine.
There would have been no talking on the sofa or watching a movie.
Had Myra gone inside, they would have walked up the stairs, and she would’ve woken up in Elisa’s bed this morning.
“Hey, boss?”
“Hey!” she yelled over the sound of the saws working behind them.
“We’re almost done here. I can sign off on everything,” her foreman said. “I know you have those quotes to do back at the office.”
“Yeah? You sure you don’t need an extra set of hands?”
“No. And I didn’t the first time you asked, either.” He chuckled. “You just seemed to need something to do.”
Myra laughed, too, and said, “I like the work.”
Understatement. She needed a distraction from thinking about Elisa.
She’d woken alone even earlier than normal because she had been so turned on that she hadn’t been able to sleep anymore.
Myra wasn’t someone who masturbated all that regularly, maybe once or twice a month when her body needed it, but it was usually a fast process.
She had a vibrator in the drawer. It was an old, battery-operated one instead of a rechargeable one because she hadn’t gotten around to replacing it, but it still did the job.
She’d pulled it out that morning, and minutes later, she’d been coming and yelling Elisa’s name, hoping Elisa couldn’t hear it through the partially open window that faced her house.
It had been the best orgasm Myra had had in a long time, but it still hadn’t managed to help much.
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Elisa when she had gotten to the office early, and despite not being scheduled to be at a job site today, she had joined her team at one anyway and helped where she could.
Now, she was being told by the foreman that she wasn’t needed, which meant she’d be back at the office, working on those estimates and thinking about Elisa.
When using power tools, Myra was completely focused on the work.
It was the only way to ensure safety for herself and everyone at the site.
In her office, though, staring at her computer, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from getting distracted thinking about Elisa’s lips, which seemed to go so well with her own, and Elisa’s tongue, which had tentatively started to move inside Myra’s mouth during their last kiss of the night.
“Boss?” her foreman said again.
“Huh?”
He laughed and asked, “Are you all right today?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Sorry. I’ll get out of your hair,” she replied.
“Okay. Drive safe. Remember, the gas is on the right, and the brake is on the left.”
“Ha ha!” she said sarcastically.
Having arrived at the office, Myra sat down at her desk, opened her laptop, and checked the emails that came directly from the website where people could request an estimate or ask questions.
She typically responded to all of these herself because she liked to be in control of the schedule, and she had to approve all estimates anyway, so this was often easier.
She did have one comfort advisor, which was a fancy name for a salesperson in the home services industry.
About five years ago, she had gotten an intern for the first time, deciding that she wanted to give back because her internship had helped prepare her for where she was right now.
That intern had been twenty-two, just out of their own construction management program, and their goal then had been to become a foreman in the field and own their own company one day.
After their internship had been up, though, Myra had needed help with all the estimates and inspections, so she had offered them the job, and after a year, they had told her they wanted to do it full-time as their career.
It was a well-paying job that typically got someone home by dinner, and they’d done a good job at it so far, but Myra still had to review all the estimates to check for any errors and to make sure they weren’t under or overcharging.
“Myra?”
She heard her name, but the employee behind her was on the phone with a customer or a potential customer, at least, so it wasn’t her.
Myra looked up through the plexiglass that allowed her to see the warehouse outside of her office and saw Jill standing there as well as Rory and Enid. Then, she remembered.
“Oh, hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Jill replied, and the three of them walked around to the door of Myra’s office. “Is now still a good time?”
“Sure. Where’s Mel?”
“She’s holding down the fort since we’re all here. I like to call it her quarterly day to give tours. Now that she’s the big boss of everything, she rarely gets to do tours all day, so she took the busiest ones. We have a part-timer doing the rest and another watching the office while we’re here.”
“I could have watched the office, but I didn’t want to,” Enid offered.
Jill rolled her eyes at her and then looked around.
“So, this is your place?” she asked Myra.
“Yeah, this is it. It’s not much. Mostly, it’s just the office, a break room, and a warehouse for supplies and the trucks to park. Not exciting. ”
“It’s exciting to us,” Rory said. “It’s really cool that you own all this.”
“Well, I lease the building, so I don’t exactly own everything,” she replied.
“Take the compliment,” Jill told her, rolling her eyes at her this time.
Myra laughed and said, “I kind of forgot that you were coming until you all showed up, so I don’t have food or anything. I have bad coffee in the pot in the break room, though. Interested?”
“Not for me. We just had lunch,” Rory said. “Brought you a Po-Boy from your uncle. We told him we were headed here, so he made your favorite.”
“Oh, thank you. I’m starving,” Myra replied, taking the wrapped sandwich from Rory’s outstretched hand.
“So, this is where we could be, right?” Enid asked and pointed to the middle of the open warehouse.
“Yes. The trucks usually park there, but I can have them park outside or even let the guys take them home while you’re working in here. There aren’t any partitions, though, so they’d be walking around and grabbing supplies and tools all around it. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine,” Jill said. “Can we walk around?”
“Yeah, I’ll show you,” Myra replied before she left the sandwich on the desk, stood, and they all walked out of the office and onto the warehouse floor.
“So, those shelves are mostly supplies. The guys will be in and out each morning, but they’re not really grabbing things throughout the day.
The lumber, tile, and carpet shelves are on the other side and a little out of the way of where you’ll be, so that should be fine. ”
“You sell carpet here, too?” Rory asked.
“No, it’s just the stuff we buy for jobs.
We store it in the back before we need it when it comes in early, but it usually doesn’t.
Typically, it’s late, but we also have some extra stuff back there that clients didn’t want or need, so we buy it back and use it on other jobs.
Most of the time, no one will be back there, and I can have them pull their trucks up to the garage door that’s between the shelves.
” Myra pointed to a closed industrial garage door.
“I would only request that you clean up your mess every day. We have people coming in and out all day. I don’t want them slipping or falling on anything in the way. ”
“No problem. It’ll only be for a week anyway, but we’ll make sure to clean up every time we leave,” Jill said.
“How many people?” Myra asked.
“About ten,” Jill replied. “The three of us, Mel, probably Kyle, and likely, Willa, because she said it will be fun. I might bring Juni, but she’s only ten, so if she shouldn’t be here, I won’t bring her. Enid?”
“Care wants to help, yeah.”
“And Logan and Candace,” Rory added. “Keith might help, too, if we need him,” she said of Candace’s fiancé.
“Plus, we have a couple of part-timers who might want to help, too,” Jill said. “Is that too many people?”
“No, I just want to make sure that one of you will be here with them at all times. Preferably, you or Mel, Jill, since you’re the manager and she’s the owner of NOLA Guides. For insurance reasons.”
“That’s fine,” Jill said, nodding. “So, it’s really cool that we use your place?”
“I can schedule it now, yeah. I get my logo on the side of the float, right?”
“Yes,” Jill replied. “We’ve got the float design already in mind. It’ll be the first time NOLA Guides has participated in anything like this. It was Enid’s marketing idea.”
“It’s only St. Patrick’s Day, so not Mardi Gras, but we were able to get a float slot up front, and it’s cheaper.
I have the flatbed truck we will be using reserved already since we have to do that crazy early around here, or we risk paying way more or not getting a truck at all.
So, that’s taken care of. We were thinking of putting your logo in a few places since the float itself will have a NOLA Guides tour theme.
We don’t need our logo in those spots. I’m thinking both sides and the back, if that’s cool with you, and a ‘sponsored by’ sign on the front of the truck, too, with your company name on it, NOLA Guides, and a couple of other places we got to chip in, but you’ll be the main sponsor. ”
“And all I have to do is loan you my warehouse space to build the thing?” Myra asked.
“That’s it. We’ll take care of the rest,” Enid said.
“Okay. Well, let me show you the tools. Those are off-limits unless I’m here or one of my guys, but I’m happy to let you use them for the float if you’re not the ones to actually use them because–”
“Insurance reasons,” Jill finished for her.
“Exactly. Plus, they’re expensive, so I don’t want them damaged or lost.”
“No problem,” Jill replied. “I don’t particularly want to use power tools anyway. I can handle a hammer, though.”
“Barely. You nailed your thumb the other day when you were hanging up that new picture in the office,” Enid noted, laughing at Jill.
“Shut up,” Jill replied as she playfully shoved at Enid’s shoulder.
A few weeks ago, Melinda had brought up the idea to Myra about NOLA Guides making a parade float for either St.Patrick’s Day or the Mardi Gras festivities.
It was a whole industry in New Orleans, and it took months and sometimes years of planning.
Melinda had gotten a late start, it seemed, but with her community connections, most likely, she’d been able to pull off getting them a float in next year’s St.Patrick’s Day parade, which was a big deal, too, just not as popular or well-known with tourists as Mardi Gras.
Melinda had asked her if she thought she had space in her warehouse to build the float and if she could loan them the space if they gave her sponsorship for free.
Myra had said yes to that and had promptly forgotten about it.
Now, she was walking Jill, Enid, and Rory around the warehouse, telling them what was off-limits and measuring the space they would have to work with to make sure that the truck Enid had rented would fit and still give them room to build the thing .
It would be an inconvenience to have a giant truck in the warehouse and people milling about, working on building the float, but it would only be for a week or so.
This wasn’t one of those massive floats that took a year to build.
It was more one of the floats that weren’t as commercially made and came out in the front of the parade before the giant floats that would follow.
Myra knew there would be float supplies lying around in advance, so she also showed them a storage closet that she could clean out for them, which would allow them to keep their stuff off the floor and out of the way.
Then, they went back to her office, where she saw the sandwich she’d totally forgotten about and promptly opened the wrapper, bitting into it while the three women talked more details.
“So, we heard you went on a date last night. Care to fill us in?” Jill asked after they’d wrapped up their shop talk.
Myra almost choked on her sandwich, so she coughed a little and asked, “What?”
“Mel can’t keep a secret. Well, she can, but you have to tell her that it’s a secret first,” Jill suggested.
Myra had texted Melinda after dropping Elisa off the previous night. She should’ve told her that it was off the record.
“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess,” she said, playing it cool.
“That’s it?” Enid asked. “That’s all we get?”
“What else do you want?”
“Neighbor, right?” Rory asked.
“Yes. Her name is Elisa.”
“Pretty name,” Rory noted with a smile.
“So is Aurora, but someone I know hates it,” Enid said.
“Shut up,” Rory replied, shoving Enid on the shoulder lightly.
“Your real name is Aurora?” Myra asked Rory.
“Technically. But I hate it.”
“So, I call her Aurora for fun sometimes. Fun for me, not her.” Enid laughed at her own joke.
“How’d the date go?” Jill asked.
“Fine,” she said, not wanting to reveal much since she hadn’t talked to Elisa about what they would tell people.
“Just fine? Bummer,” Jill said.
“No, fine in a good way,” Myra replied. “It was a great date.”
Well, the second part of their evening was the great part, but she didn’t feel the need to describe the first part.
As Jill continued to pester her, Myra withheld most of the details.
Then, she was able to get Jill to switch topics by asking about Willa’s new job and Juni’s new school.
It gave Myra a chance to finish her sandwich, and she tried to focus on what Jill was saying, but she was back to thinking about Elisa’s lips, wishing they would have scheduled their second date before she had said goodnight.