Capítulo 8: Chapter 8

Emma

Gail didn't say a word as I arrived at her desk with tears streaming out of my eyes. She didn't even give me her usual voice of encouragement. Instead, she joined me in a little crying session once we hit the elevators, and our tears escalated as soon as she hailed a taxi and we sat down in it. We rode back in the taxi in silence, other than the sobs that escaped as we clung to each other.

I felt like a walking disaster. Thinking that if I'd shown more confidence, then he wouldn't have dismissed me as if I was the hired help. Or if I'd told him that he would be a fool not to hire me. Like Jennifer Hudson did in Dream Girls, she was the voice and the confident one. Why couldn't I be like that? Just stand up for myself, instead of running to the city like a child and sleeping on the sofa like a woman with no home.

I had a bed and a room of my own back home, I just chose not to go back there.

I wouldn't hire me either, I thought with a dismal sigh as the taxi came to a stop. I was dressed like a hooker, singing like a pop-star. Nothing flowed, and as I'd been taught from the first day that I hit the city, image was everything, and I had no idea what picture I was going for by singing that song and wearing this dress.

Gail paid the taxi driver, and once again I felt pathetic as we walked into the entrance of our building. Paying for the taxi was something that Gail did all the time, but she must have been fed up with me by now. I was fed up with me.

I was just about to tell her this when the one person I didn't expect to see came tottering into our building. I thought that maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me.

"Nana," I cried as I realized that it was her. Only Nana would be wearing a straw hat, pencil dress and heels too high for her. Nana was the best-dressed lady in Minnesota, and she didn't want anyone knowing that she was raised on a farm. She tried to look like someone who was brought up in the city, not someone who hadn't set foot out of the county she was born in.

Her words, not mine.

"Emma, baby, at last, you're dressing like a lady. Gail did manage to convert you!"

She cried out as she squeezed me in her arms.

She hugged me tightly, but I hugged her even closer. Gail was great, and the best friend that anyone could have wished for. Luckily, she never grew tired of me. But, right now I wanted to go back home.

"Nana, I'm so glad that you're here. I need to go back home."

She shook her head, "No. You need to stay here."

Gail and I exchanged a look. As if we were both thinking the same thing at the same time. It was clear that staying here wasn't my option. I'd been here six long months, and sure, I didn't have a career back home, but being thrown off a sofa wasn't exactly going to be on my list of moments to remember.

"Look, we can't have this conversation outside like this. Let's get inside, so, you can show me more of your clothes. Maybe I could borrow that when we go out."

I shouldn't have been surprised by her glittering eyes or the shocking words that came out of her mouth. After all, she was sixty-five and had a body of an eighteen-year-old, so she'd told me a thousand times.

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