“I’m staying with you and Garrett,” Devon told her matter-of-factly.
“What? It’s Garrett’s apartment. There is no way he is going to let you stay for three more months. Why do you want to stay anyway? Don’t you miss your boy toy?”
“Doesn’t really matter why I want to stay,” Devon said. “I’m staying, and you’re going to call and convince Garrett to let me live at the apartment.”
“What?” Hadley asked, eyeing Devon like she was insane.
“Otherwise, I’m going to tell him that you’re doing coke.”
“But he already knows,” she spat back as if Devon would believe her.
“Fine,” Devon said, pulling out her phone. “Then, I’ll just call and talk to him about it.”
Hadley openly glared at her. She was clearly waiting for Devon to bluff.
Hadley thought there was no way Devon was going to dial through to his line, no way Devon would actually do it.
Devon’s finger was poised over Garrett’s number. She was about to push call.
Then, Hadley cried, “Wait! Jesus, Dev. You can stay with us. Of course, you can stay with us. I’ll call him right now.”
GARRETT’S ONLY CONDITION for the summer was that Devon would contribute to the house by paying rent. That left Devon in an awkward position since she didn’t have any savings to draw from that her parents didn’t actively control. It would look suspicious if she suddenly laid out a grand without telling them. They would wonder if she was the one on drugs.
Devon wouldn’t dare ask Hadley to help her with the money situation. Devon didn’t want to know how much cash Hadley was shoveling into her new extracurricular activities. Plus, Devon couldn’t afford to ask Hadley for more help.
Devon felt bad enough as it was for manipulating Hadley into letting her stay for the summer. She should have just been up-front about it all. If Hadley knew what Devon was going through, then she probably would have been more understanding. Hadley also might have hopped on a train to St. Louis to burn the place down. Devon wasn’t really in the right mind-set yet to bare all her secrets, so she had acted impulsively and used Hadley’s weaknesses against her. It was low, even with the position Devon was in, but she hadn’t seen an alternative. And it had worked.
Now, Devon needed to find a way to pay rent. She knew Marina City wasn’t exactly cheap either, and she didn’t know how much Garrett was expecting her to pay. It was likely a third, but he hadn’t said. He didn’t really need the extra money, but Devon was sure he saw it as a compromise for her using the extra space, adding to the utility costs, taking away some of his privacy, and so on.
So, Devon had to immediately start looking for a job. Unless she wanted to sell her body for money, she didn’t see an alternative to working during the summer. She couldn’t exactly call her parents and ask them to clear the cash.
Her first instinct was to apply at Jenn’s Restaurant, but after her last encounter with Brennan, she just couldn’t bring herself to go there. Devon hadn’t talked to him since she had left his apartment. He had thought she was leaving the city anyway. If she didn’t alert him of her presence, then he would never have to know that she was staying. Her life was too complicated as it was without adding a romantic element to her time in the city.
Brennan was dangerous and attractive and caring…and she would have none of it. She had to shut down her brain when her thoughts began to venture in that direction. It would only do more harm than good. Eventually, she would have to return to St. Louis, and she didn’t want guilty feelings on her conscience as well.
Without further ado, Devon began walking around the city, filling out applications wherever she could. Not many places were hiring at the moment. So many of them had already filled up their staff for the summer tourist season. The places that had signs up in the windows were looking for more experience or offering low wages or not hiring immediately. Anything that could possibly get in the way did.
Devon returned home empty handed and plopped down on the couch in the living room, propping up her feet on the coffee table. She was exhausted from another day of searching for jobs. It seemed like a futile mission. She was convinced she would never find anything in time to pay rent at the end of the month. She had already been scouting for two weeks, and the month was dwindling away. After three unsuccessful interviews out of at least a hundred applications, Devon was spent. She didn’t know what else to do. If she couldn’t get a job, she couldn’t stay, which meant she had bullied her best friend at a time when she needed her the most for nothing.
She pulled up Netflix on the PlayStation and started flipping through the catalog of TV shows. She had never been a big TV fan before, but this was also one of the first times in her life she didn’t have anything to do. Hadley was always at work, and when Garrett was here during the day, he would usually be locked away in his bedroom.
Deciding on the first season of Heroes, Devon kept her phone close by just in case someone decided they wanted to give her a job, and then she vegged out. After she made it all the way through episode two, Garrett made an appearance outside of his bedroom.
“What’s up, Dev?” He pulled out a snack from the fridge and then took a seat next to her.
“Just praying that someone calls me for a job,” she said, turning on episode three. Then, thinking better of it, she offered Garrett the remote. “Do you want to watch something?”
“No, Heroes is fine. Just so you know, the first season is addictive, but the other ones suck. You should probably stop now,” he said.
Devon just shrugged, not having anything better to do. “I think I’ll let myself get sucked in.”
She swallowed hard, hearing herself say that out loud. Wasn’t that always her problem? She always let herself just get sucked in to things, and then she couldn’t or wouldn’t want to find a way out. Even now that she was out of it, she couldn’t believe it had all happened the way it had. She sometimes wondered if Chicago was the dream, and her dreams were reality.
“So, the job search isn’t going so well?” Garrett asked, offering her a carrot from his plate.
“Ugh,” she grumbled, tossing her head back. “It’s the worst possible thing ever. Why do businesses even advertise that they’re hiring if they’re not actually hiring? Or better yet, if they already have someone else in mind, why do they waste your time by setting up an interview with you? It’s total bullshit.”
“That’s the worst. What kind of jobs are you looking into?” he asked sympathetically.
“Everything. Anything. I’ve scoured the newspapers, craigslist, and all over the fucking Internet. I’ve walked up and down the streets, checking for new signs. I think I’m pretty familiar with the landscape now,” she said, half-joking. “There’s just nothing out there. Most places aren’t likely to hire someone they don’t know who doesn’t have a degree. Even a lot of the serving jobs…well, most are full, but they want someone who will be here after the summer. And when they see that I went to Wash U, they don’t believe me when I say I’m not going back to St. Louis for school.”
Devon wasn’t sure where it had all come from. During the last two weeks, she had been so frustrated from trying to a find a job and having no one to talk to. Hadley was avoiding her as much as she could, Garrett was mostly absent, and Brennan was completely out of the picture. It was nice to just talk to someone.
Garrett pursed his lips. He seemed to be contemplating her scenario before speaking. She didn’t know what he was going to say about it, but it couldn’t be worse than what Hadley would likely say.