it wasn’t long after moving to aglæca that ruby had met josie carson. over shared brooding, the formation of what the redhead liked to refer to as the she-woman man haters club —- one that still met at least once a week, even if there wasn’t NEARLY as much “man hating” to partake in. at least not from her end. god, did that make her a traitor??
while the other girl knew more about her than most, there was still a major secret kept. one that, with what seemed to be happening in town as of late, ruby was growing restless about keeping. unsure what josie already knew on her own, tangled in her own debate on what to say, on how she might even approach it without sounding like a complete nut case. &&. without exposing everyone else.
it’d been bread into her, in a sense, that others might not accept it. and while she’d learned to take her father’s words with a grain of salt, there were things she’d come to realize he might have been right about after all these years. it was that inner debate that caused for the awkward air around their most recent get together, around the concerns that kept her up late at night. a p a r a n o i a that brewed ( as much as she’d hate to call it that, thus proclaiming for lack of a better word. )
it was the cop-out route taken, her question soft &&. distracted. “still searching for that job? i hear the zoo’s always looking for someone —- not that I’D want to work there, not unless it were life or death. i guess that’s why they’re always hiring, cleaning up elephant droppings isn’t exactly anyone’s cup of tea …”
( @josiecarson )
No other person in Aglæca had to endure as many rants about a particular Charles Thomas Lancaster as Ruby. Some evenings, especially recently, Josie felt bad about it, because the other girl seemed to have less ex-boyfriend rants of her own, which made her feel like the idiot who, after months, still complained about her ex in New York.
Tonight, however, she’d decided that she wouldn’t bring up his name, not once, which, much to her chagrin, posed more of a challenge than she would have liked. After everything Charlie had done, it should have been easy to simply erase him from her memory despite the sudden flood of text messages he'd started sending her this week. It was maybe because of this, that Josie drank just a little more wine than on their usual she-woman man haters club evenings, her cheeks colored a healthy red, her mind pleasantly tipsy.
“Why does everyone want me to work at the zoo?” she exaggerated with a short laugh, Ruby being only the second person who’d suggested she'd look for a job there. Stretching her legs out onto another chair on the balcony of her late aunt’s house, wine glass in hand, the blonde let out a dramatic sigh. “Cleaning Figaro’s litter box is enough. I don’t need any additional interaction with animal droppings.” Talking about how her job hunt was something Josie was trying to keep as brief as possible, the fact that she, at her current age, had no idea what to do for the rest of her life, was bothering her. “Because I am picky, I’m still looking, and probably will be for a while.” She realized how privileged that sounded, but it wasn’t as if it was untrue - she was born into wealth, she’d never much had to worry about money, and she didn’t want to acknowledge that that might change soon. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind,” Josie added then, if only to draw the focus away from herself, blue gaze resting on her friend.
