Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Sadly, I have no one close enough I would ever feel comfortable doing that with. I’ve got about a million and one casual acquaintances, people at work I meet out at happy hour or some girls in my yoga class that I’ve gotten coffee with on occasion. A former college roommate I see occasionally to go dancing with.
But none of those people are good options to say, “Hey…I’m pregnant and I’m scared. What the hell do I do?”
I’ve never let anyone in close enough to me that I could tell something so personal to.
After my mom’s greeting plays, I leave a message. “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to check in and see how things are going. I know you’re in Greece and our time zones are way off, so no need to call me back.”
I hang up without asking my mom to call me back so I can tell her that she’s going to be a grandmother.
I’m not even sure why I called, because I knew before I ever even picked up the phone that I wouldn’t tell her what was going on in my life. We don’t have that type of relationship at all, but if we did, and if I told her, I know I would spend the majority of the conversation trying to reassure her that becoming a grandmother didn’t mean she was getting older.
With a sigh, I turn back to my email. I’ll often come in and work on the weekends to do administrative stuff, but this weekend I just didn’t have it in me what with finding out I was pregnant and needing to have an awkward conversation with the daddy. So this morning is all about trying to catch up on some neglected emails.
Saturday was wholly unpleasant because I spent most of the day psyching myself up to break the news to Lucas. The actual telling him I was pregnant Saturday night in a bar parking lot was awful, and even though I know he was justified in asking for it, I wasn’t prepared for him to question paternity. That told me he thought I was pretty loose, which is and isn’t true. I’m a liberated woman who thinks sex is pretty damn awesome. I don’t shy away from one-night stands, and in fact prefer them. But I don’t do hookups often. I don’t go looking for them. If a situation presents itself and I’m interested, I’ll act. But if I go months without, I’m okay with that too, because I’ve got a fucking awesome vibrator.
Sunday I pretty much lay on my couch and binged on Netflix, not feeling motivated to do anything at all. I’m pretty sure any therapist worth a damn would diagnose me with some situational depression. I’m just glad it’s now Monday and the work week has started, because that is something I can’t avoid. Work will force me to occupy my mind with other thoughts.
A tapping on my door causes my head to snap up and I call out, “Come in.”
Philip Wagoner steps into my office, and that causes me to sit up straighter in my chair. He’s the director of the museum and my boss. He’s the one who decided to promote me to interim director of acquisitions from my assistant curatorial duties.
Note the key word being interim.
This is not a career opportunity, as I don’t have the education or the experience to hold the position long term. The last director of acquisitions had a PhD, and I have a lowly master’s in geology. I’ve only been here at the museum for two years, and before that, my geology degree lay wasted while I worked in retail. There was no way I was going to be considered for anything more than an interim position.
Mr. Wagoner gives me a smile as he steps just inside my door. “Just stopping in to see how things are going with you.”
I blink in surprise. “Um…things are going well. I’ve got a bead on a partial Claosaurus specimen. There were suspected gastroliths found with the skeleton.”
“Good, good,” he says quickly, and I notice quite distractedly. I don’t even think he heard what I just said because that would be a huge acquisition for the museum if I can get it.
Bobbing his head up and down on his bulky frame, he puts his hands together and starts to wring them. A classic sign of nervousness, which causes my nerves—which are already quite frayed—to fire up.
“So listen,” Mr. Wagoner says to me. “We are going through final interviews for the director of acquisitions position. We should have a choice made within a few weeks.”
“That’s wonderful,” I say with genuine smile.
While things are going well for me at this point, it’s only because the man I replaced had some very good leads for me to follow up on. But I don’t have the contacts he did in this industry and I know there’s going to come a time when I run dry. I just don’t have the necessary experience and this was only ever meant to be temporary.