It was Drew's idea, actually, that he might help out. He knows so many people, surely there must be someone he can hook her up with. He's a trust-fund baby, he's a professional socialite, meeting and greeting is what he
.
"Don't bother," she says as he scans through names and phone numbers in the paper. "I called them all already."
She's had absolutely no luck on the roommate search so far. She's way too picky - they have to be clean, tolerable, smart, responsible, not too old, not too young, not male, no dogs, no fish - fish are disgusting creatures! Not too sweet, not boring, not too pretty-pretty. Ugly is okay. They can be ugly if they want. It only makes her feel cuter.
"No problem," he says, with that smile. She never liked a smile on a man before she saw it on him, all toothy and nice. Sitting next to him, she can smell his cologne, which is pleasant, but not too strong. It's so different from most of the men she runs into, doctors and surgeons, who smell sterile, like surgical soap and clean linens.
But Drew smiles at everyone like that, and no, that's not just in her head. It's true. He's just that
nice. She can't remember a man ever being this nice to her, who continued to be nice to her, and (unfortunately, she thinks in this case) not even because he wanted to get into her pants.
"I'm sure I know someone," he says.
So he gets on his cell phone, breezing through numbers, and he calls one. Then another, and another, all girls since that was what she asked for. All girls who must have unbelievable crushes on him, like she does.
One of those girls is Amelia, of course, who has her own unbelievable crush on him. Jodie knows just the second they connect, because he goes all starry-eyed. "Come on over," he says into the phone, and then he turns to Jodie. "You don't mind if Melie comes."
It wasn't exactly a question, in any form, but she answers anyway. "Of course not, I don't mind, why would I mind?"
Lunch for three.
Jodie is a doctor. She's very busy, she doesn't even have time to find her own roommate much less make a fancy lunch. But she whips up some grilled cheese sandwiches while they discuss these very precise women he lined up for her, all grown, between the ages of 25 and 40, childless and petless, employed and not too pretty.
Amelia doesn't talk the whole time they're eating, as Jodie rambles off the faults of one girl, after another, after another. Amelia's hand just lingers there, almost touching her sandwich, but not.
When they've discussed each of the prospective roommates, Drew strokes Amelia's hand and asks, "You wanna ride back to the city together?"
"I've got something to pick up at the mall," she says. "I'll catch up with you later."
"Okay," he says.
He bends down to kiss her goodbye. It's not even a very long kiss, and certainly not pornographic, but Jodie can't bear to watch it. A simple kiss goodbye, impossibly
deep without even the hint of open lips or tongues. She doesn't even know what part she's jealous of, she just knows she lacks.
Jodie is still stunned from this kiss, and the door has barely even closed behind Drew as he leaves, when Amelia erupts into a panic. "You hang out with Drew? When did you start hanging out with Drew? What, are you guys are friends or something? I didn't know you were friends. When did you guys become friends?"
Jodie tries to laugh it off, but Amelia isn't laughing. "Sure," she says. "We were friends back when you guys were still friends, you know, before you had sex with each other?"
"Oh," Amelia says.
Jodie dismisses the minor meltdown, and begins to scan the list of faceless women in her head. "So Emmy seems decent," she says. "But Drew said she was pretty though. I don't know about that... But Jessie, no way, she's a DJ - that's not going to work. I can't live with a DJ."
"Do you guys talk about me?" Amelia asks.
"Ummm, not usually," Jodie says. "And this one, Holly, she's a scholar, divorced, but she has a kid. Lives with the dad though, but what if she wants to visit?"
Amelia isn't listening.
"You don't talk about me? What does that mean? What do you talk about then?"
"Stuff, Amelia! We talk about stuff!"
Amelia stops.
"So I have my brother's wedding," Jodie says.
"Hmmm," Amelia says, tapping her fingertips on the table.
"She's not that pretty, you know, Lynn."
"Hmmm," Amelia says.
She doesn't care about that anymore, Jason, the break-up. She's long over it, and worrying about newer cataclysmic information.
Jodie stops talking, since Amelia is about as reciprocal as talking to a wall right now.
She isn't sure if it was even real, but she remembers this moment, just a sliver of a moment, when she thought Drew might have actually been interested.
She wouldn't even think that out loud - it sounds just ridiculous even in her thoughts. In her? No, probably not, it's probably all in her mind. That sliver of a fraction of a moment when Amelia was still an impossibility to him. One single night, in a bar, with smoke on their clothes and neon lights in their eyes. One single fraction of a moment when he might have considered her an option.
And then there was this future that might have existed, spawned off of that fraction of a moment. A man like him, sensitive and tender, he would want a wedding probably, as much as he likes them, maybe even a family - children, in the plural. Her brain went there, spawned off that moment (she scowled at it), but for a moment, she allowed that possibility to enter into existence.
But enough of this awkwardness, so Jodie makes a joke. "So, you mind if I borrow him for this wedding? You know how he likes them."
Amelia isn't amused. She looks either drugged or ready to cry, and Jodie can't be sure which. She says, "Why don't you take Berjes?"
"Can you ask a divorced person to a wedding? Isn't that bad luck or something?"
Amelia doesn't answer, but just stares, her eyes are probing and intrusive. Jodie isn't sure she's buried her secrets deeply enough.
***
It worked. Berjes was available after all. He was, in fact, very eager to hear from her, as uneager as he then seemed in person. He said he had something he wanted to discuss with her, though he didn't mention much of anything at all on the three-hour drive to Abandia City.
He's become a bitter person in these months since his divorce. She refuses to take any responsibility for that, for the record. His marriage was a disaster before she ever came into the picture.
She leaves Berjes at the door while she greets her brother.
"Are you seeing someone?" he asks, his voice entirely too optimistic.
"No," she says. "No, absolutely not. He's just a coworker."
Jason introduces himself, since Jodie wasn't sure yet if she was going to.
They have an afternoon to kill before the wedding.
"I've never been here before," Berjes says, scanning the hotel restaurant. He means the town, not the hotel specifically.
"Oh, it's a hole really," Jodie says. "Lord knows why he wanted to move here."
"Shouldn't you talk about your child or something?"
"Hazel," he starts. "She's good."
But Jodie gets much more than she bargained for, as he goes on about Hazel, and his ex-wife, and their house, which was worth more than the equity he was granted from it. And about visitations and lawyers and bitterness, going on almost solidly until their food comes.
And then he goes on further, into their meal, to the point she imagines even the creepy statue behind him has become bored. She wonders what more he could possibly have to say about it, or if he'll still be talking about it when the wedding starts later that evening.
***
This is so foreign. Jodie Larson has never been in love, that she knew of, and she figures it's something you'd probably know. She never met anybody she wanted to marry, never even had a date to the prom. She can hardly walk in these heels, and she's not in the habit of being gawked at by hotel staff.
Or in the habit of being gawked at by her dates, what few dates she has.
"Well, come on then," she says to Berjes as she strides by him. "My brother's been dying to get married for a long time."
After a fairly short courtship, Jason Larson and Lynn Louis were married at sundown in Abandia City. They both look forward to starting a family soon.
Jodie does her very best not to scowl at the happy couple.
With romantic music burning her ears, and wedding flowers irritating her allergies, Jodie agrees to a dance. Berjes insists that since she brought him all the way out here, she at least owes him one dance.
"I'd do it again, I think," Berjes says. "Some day."
"Get married?" she says. "You know they say the second is more likely to fail than the first?"
He laughs. "You're a ball of sunshine, Ms. Jodie Larson, you know that?"
"Well," she says. "We can't all walk around with our heads in the clouds."
But after four glasses of wine, Jodie's head is positively in the clouds. She owed him one dance, but she gave him a few. She's forgotten just how handsome he is, despite the obvious mess he's made of his life, and despite the quiet distance he maintains. She always forgets this pull until she's near him again. It hasn't dulled in these years. The attraction holds its substance, even though she's not an eager young med-student anymore.
She forgets that he always seems to pull back. That's not just in her head. Even when she's wearing birthing scrubs, which is far more often than a gown and heels.
They got separate rooms. Jodie is not in the habit of assuming things. First, because he's her boss. Any time they've blurred those lines before has only been in fun. And second, because he's a pathetic, wreck of a man, even if a handsome one. And third, because she hasn't been wanted for a very long time.
"Thanks for coming," she says. "It's not the kind of thing you want to come alone to. I know it was a long way. Didn't you want to talk about something?"
"I forgot," he says.
He kisses her. And if it's been so long since she kissed someone that she's become rusty, he's thankfully too drunk to notice it. Or maybe they're both too deprived of it to care, two romantic outcasts, fumbling around in the bright lights of the hotel hallway until they finally stumble into her room.
He pauses, sliding a hand along her back. "Your skin," he says. "It's freezing."
"Bad circulation," she says. "It's not an uncommon condition. I'm taking medication for it."
But the chill of her skin doesn't break his attention. He moves her to the bed, stripping off their layers as he goes. This, like the gown and heels, is just as foreign to her. Has Jodie Larson ever been romanced before? Has she ever been made love to? She's certainly gotten her rocks off, with some college fling, or drunken casual encounter, or arranged mutual pleasure buddy. But Jodie Larson is 27 years old and has never
made love.She's out of her element entirely, and she feels like a blinded frog in the road.
He takes off her final layer, holds her in his arms, stripped down to nothing. He says, "Relax."
So she does. She tries. She might have cold skin, but her blood is 98.6 degrees, and her heart still pumps, and she hasn't been touched in so long she even forgets she's still a woman.
Because she is, and not just an approximation of a woman, but a real, actual woman, who hasn't been made to feel like a woman for a really,
really long time. And as she suspected, the very thing that led him to fail as a husband, only makes him succeed as a lover.
A really fantastic lover, which he proves to her, once. And again.
And then a third time.
"This is going to be weird at work," she says.
"It doesn't have to be," he says. "It could be really fun."
"Oh, that reminds me," he says. "The election this fall, you weren't really serious about running for it, were you?"
He's waiting for a response, but she doesn't know what to say.
"I mean, my job, the hospital, it's all I have. It's what I do, and I'm good at it. I love it, and I already lost my family over it."
He just looks at her all desperate, reminding her of the wreck of a man he really is. She honestly does feel very badly for him, as deeply as she's felt for almost anyone.
"That's very compelling," she says. "But I do want the job."
More than anything, she does.
He lets go of her then, moves across the bed and gets up.
Jodie is once again, an ignorant frog in overwhelming headlights.
Wrong answer, Jodie, she's telling herself.
Wrong fucking answer.He dresses quickly, not even bothering to button his shirt. "Where are you going?"
"Home," he says.
"It's two in the morning."
"I'm not tired," he says.
"We're three hours away, we drove together."
"I'll get a rental," he says.
She's searching for something inside her, some venom to spew before the door closes behind him. Something hard, something cutting.
But there's nothing like that. Surprisingly, there's only disappointment, spilled out and laid wide open.
*******
(footnotes: Jodie's roommates moved out // Jodie likes Drew too // Amelia and Drew, all in love 'n stuff // Berjes got divorced, and it was a little bit Jodie's fault)
notes: both Berjes and Jodie have the "Chief of Staff" LTW, by the way. Neither of them are actually there yet, and it isn't even necessarily required for the Head of Health Services position, but I imagine it's what drives them.
And oops, lol, Berjes came into her room wearing a suit, and left wearing his jeans and shirt! Duh! My bad! Ignore that please!
Behind the scenes and gameplay notes in a separate post :) 
