A Ring for Rosie. Maggie Wells
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overlooked. Her battered ego yearned to be impervious to his casual remarks about his love life. Every night she closed her eyes and prayed she’d awaken and magically be cured. Her prayers were never answered. She’d even entertained the idea of taking her mother on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. There she had a chance of falling head over heels for a handsome Frenchman.
An impossible love of the long distance variety had to beat the crap out of having to see the one you love, day in and day out, and not be able to have him.
The phone on her desk rang, breaking into her reverie. Out of habit, she clicked the save icon before reaching for the receiver, even though she hadn’t made a single change to the spreadsheet on her screen since Mike walked into James’s office and shut the door.
“Trident Security, how may we help you?”
“I have a bag of dicks. You wanna come over and eat ’em?”
Rosie blinked. If the voice hadn’t been female and familiar, she might have hung up in a panic. But she knew this obscene phone caller and was grateful for the distraction. Smiling, she cradled the phone against her shoulder. “No, thanks. I’ve already eaten so many dicks I can barely keep my pants zipped.”
“Whoa. Whoa,” a masculine voice boomed behind her. “Wow. Okay. Going back in my office.”
Her caller dissolved into fits of unrestrained laughter and Rosie couldn’t help but join in. “No! Wait,” she called to Colm Cleary, the third partner in the firm. “It’s Monica.”
At the mention of his girlfriend’s name, Colm visibly sagged with relief. “I might have known.”
“I heard you,” Monica snapped.
“She heard you,” Rosie relayed.
Colm pointed to his office. “I’ll take it in here.”
“Tell him I’m not calling for him. Mr. Smarty-pants.” When Rosie hesitated, Monica pressed on. “Tell him I called him Mr. Smarty-pants, though.”
Covering the receiver, she turned to find Colm standing at his desk, his hand on the phone. “She says she isn’t calling for you…Mr. Smarty-pants.”
A puzzled frown bisected his dark brows, but the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “She made you say the last part, didn’t she?”
“I am my own woman.” Rosie tossed her hair back. “No one makes me do anything.”
“Tell him, Rosie,” Monica cheered. “Call him some more names. Dirty ones, if you want. He likes when women abuse him.”
Rosie smothered a laugh, then adopted her most sober tone. “This conversation is not appropriate for the workplace.”
“Which is why I’m calling to invite you over to eat a bag of dicks with me and Georgie,” Monica answered without missing a beat. “There will be wine. Possibly pizza.”
Glancing over at Colm’s office again, she asked, “You’re inviting me over to your house?”
“Girls’ night in. Georgie has a pin the peenie on the weenie game we can play, I have Cards Against Humanity. Come over and we’ll laugh until the adult diapers run out.”
Longing and pride warred inside her. She wanted to have a girls’ night more than anything. Now her sisters were all busy with their own families, she ached for female companionship. Sure, they tried, but it’s hard to get really into a girls’ night when one or two were unable to drink due to pregnancy or breastfeeding, or they spent the whole evening fielding texts from increasingly panicked spouses. Having watched Mike, Colm, and even James master the complexities of single parenthood, Rosie found she had no patience for the manipulative incompetence her brothers-in-law employed on a regular basis.
“Okay, fine, you can get up and use the powder room if you’re going to be all persnickety.” Monica made the pronouncement with exaggerated magnanimity.
Though she’d spent time with Monica at parties and get-togethers involving the children, she hadn’t sought the other woman out socially. Still, she found herself whispering a weak, “I’d like that,” into the phone. When Monica laughed, she quickly joined in. “The girls’ night, I mean. If everyone else is up for peeing their pants, I don’t want to be the party pooper.”
“Oh, dear God,” Colm muttered loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, then swiped at his office door.
The walls shook with the slam, but Rosie didn’t pay any mind. Five years in the same office had taught her teenaged girls had nothing on grown men when it came to dramatic door slamming.
Rosie took a minute to jot down Monica’s address and phone number, smiling as she listened to the other woman prattle on about snack foods and movie selections. Colm must have been watching the lights on his phone, because the second she disconnected, he opened his office door again. “You’re going to Monica’s?”
Not one to be left out of the conversation, Mike opened his door as well. “Georgie texted, said she wouldn’t be coming over tonight because she got a better offer. Something about pinot, pizza, and penis. Should I be worried?”
Rosie fixed him with her mother’s patented you-foolish-child look and said, “Most likely.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”
“They’re going to Monica’s to talk over ways to fricassee Jimbo’s manhood,” Colm informed him.
“A good use of time,” Mike concurred. “Though, between us, I suspect he doesn’t use his as much as he wants us to think he does.”
“Believe it or not, some women are capable of holding entire conversations without once mentioning the men in their lives,” Rosie said with prim authority. “I doubt your names even come up. And there’s no reason for anyone’s manhood to feel threatened. No one has done anything wrong.”
“Right, but sometimes we do things that are plain stupid.” Mike shot Colm a knowing look.
“True.” Colm shrugged. “Or thoughtless.”
Mike nodded a shade too enthusiastically. “Oh yeah. Thoughtless is a big one. I’d say thoughtless accounts for ninety percent of most male stupidity.”
Well-meaning as they were, Rosie couldn’t take one more minute of male bashing for her benefit. “Stop,” she ordered, holding up one hand. “Stop, okay?” Both men snapped their jaws shut like marionettes. But she could read the worry in their eyes. Her cheeks burned as she remembered what Georgie said about everyone knowing about her feelings for James. “I’m fine. James will be fine. We will all be fine.”
Rosie could almost see them repeating her words in their heads. Like she was the damn Dalai Lama of Delano Street and she’d given them some kind of mantra to hang onto. Sighing, she let her shoulders slump as she turned her attention back to her computer. “Go back to work.”
She could feel them standing there. Hovering. Uncertain. At last, Colm muttered a good natured, “Yes, boss,” and retreated to his lair.
Mike wasn’t as easily put-off. Rather than returning to his desk, he circled hers until he stood directly in her line of vision. “Rosie.”
He spoke her name with almost killing gentleness. Tears seared her throat and scalded her eyes. “Mike, please.”
“I only…” He looked away, as if he needed to gather strength to go on. When their eyes met again, she saw the naked torment in his. “He’s stuck. The kids want Megan there.” He paused for a moment but didn’t break her gaze as he swallowed hard. “They don’t know any better…”
He trailed off, and she nodded her sympathy. And she did feel bad. For him and for James. She was scared, too. Not just for James and her feelings for him, but for the twins. She loved those boys. Like their father, she’d loved them from the first time she saw them. Cared for them every chance she got. And not because