But it did work. They worked.
For a while, anyway.
2
Grace
All Brooklyn-Grace wanted was to hear something positive.
Just three months ago, her husband would have been the one she turned to for comfort and strength. But since he decided their marriage wasn’t worth sticking around for, she would have to find someone else to lean on.
She knew that ultimately, she needed to rely on herself. She needed to find peace being alone. But she wasn’t quite up for that challenge yet, and until she was, she would lean on her best friend Maisie.
Maisie Jefferson was twenty-six years old, a year younger than Grace. She had driven nearly two hours with her husband Bill to help Grace move out, and the two of them had just arrived.
Grace lived in a leafy suburb in a new build. She and her husband, correction, ex-husband, had been renting for several years and had always assumed that if the place ever went up for sale, they would buy it immediately.
That was clearly not going to happen anymore.
Without her ex in the picture, and without any job to speak of, Grace had no business applying for a car loan, let alone buying a house.
When Maisie and Bill arrived, they came in through the front door without a knock. Grace was in the dining room packing up the last of her possessions when she heard Maisie call out, “How’s packing going, babe?”
“Just taping up the last box right now!” Grace called out.
Bill and Maisie came in through the French doors and smiled as they caught Grace on the floor with a tape gun in her hand.
Looking up at them, Grace smiled and said, “Care to watch the ceremonial ending?”
"Of course," Maisie smirked.
Grace gripped one end of the tape gun to the side of the box and pulled it along the opening, sealing the two flaps together in the solemn final boxing of her old life.
"All right, girls, put me to work!" Bill said, clapping his hands together. "What's the heaviest thing, and where am I headed?"
"You can start in the kitchen," Grace said. "I have a dish set and a couple of glasses."
"You don't want to start with furniture?" Bill asked.
His question prompted Grace to laugh. She gestured around the near-empty house and said, “What furniture?"
"He didn't leave you any furniture?" Maisie repeated, concerned.
"Nope. Not one—oh, wait!" Grace exclaimed with humor, tossing a finger in the air before ushering her friends into the living room.
"He did leave this," she said, pointing to an old coffee table in the corner. The table, while great for setting drinks on, was absolutely hideous. It was a golden, almost orangey wood grain with chicken carvings and paintings all over.
Bill needled his brows together with amusement and gave a well-timed nod as he said, "How nice of him."
Grace laughed. "Right? And check out this stellar note he left."
The three stared down at the note that had been scotch-taped to the top of the coffee table. Bill leaned down to pluck the paper from its chicken canvas and read aloud in a stilted tone, "Grace. You should be lucky I left you with anything. I won't hold my breath on a thank you."
Bill's eyes went comically wide as he looked up at Grace and tilted his head to the side. "Seriously? He wants a thank you for this?"
"His grandpa made it," Grace said dismissively. "He died just before our wedding, and so his grandma gifted it to us when we got married."
"Ick," Maisie said before gritting her teeth awkwardly.
Grace nodded. "Yeah, so I made the mistake of going 'Ah, cute!' when we first unwrapped it..."
"Why would you do something crazy like that?" Bill asked.
"I guess to prevent myself from screaming 'It's hideous! It's hideous!' at the top of my lungs and offending his dead grandpa," she said and they all chuckled.
"Looks like you're stuck with it now," Maisie said.
Bill heaped in a breath and looked down at the table that was practically gobbling back at him. "You want me to load it into the truck?" he asked.
"Only if you guys need scrap firewood," Grace snorted.
"You wanna leave it for the next tenants?" Maisie confirmed, and Grace nodded.
"There's no way I'm taking that thing," she said.
"Don't worry about it, or the furniture thing. We have a whole guest room, dressers, nightstands, and a big giant bed with your name on it. Got it?" Maisie reassured her, and she wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
Grace was a strong person. She was alone, but she was okay. She was stubborn and tried to make light of the fact that her life was falling apart as to not make others uncomfortable, but the truth was she couldn't have been more grateful to Maisie and Bill for letting them come and live with them for the next couple of months. She knew it was a complete inconvenience to them and their two children.
"Thanks, you guys," she said, already feeling her throat swelling with emotion. "Honestly, I don't know what I would do without you—"
"Tut-tut-tut!" Maisie said, quickly but sweetly interrupting her. "Don't even mention it. This is quite literally what friends are for." Then she gestured to Bill and said, "Babe, you wanna grab those kitchen boxes and me and Grace will start bringing out stuff from the bedroom?"
"Sounds good to me," he said, and with that, he disappeared from the living room.
With Bill occupied, Maisie and Grace walked through the rest of the house and Maisie kept commenting on how surprised she was at how few boxes there were to transport.
"I was expecting a full load," she said. "Bill brought his work trailer just in case you needed the extra space! I just can't believe he took everything. It's so not Aaron."
"Yeah, well, he got pretty bitter at the end there," Grace agreed. "You heard from him at all?"
"Aaron?" Maisie asked before blowing an exasperated breath through her lips. "Yeah, right! I'm never talking to that idiot again."
Aaron had taken a lot. Which, he would argue, was because he paid for a lot in the house. When they first got married, Grace was only working part-time and couldn't contribute as much to the household as Aaron could.
Less than a week ago, Aaron asked if Grace would clear out for the day so he could move some of his stuff out. When she came home, she didn't even have a bed to sleep on.
She knew plenty of women who would have called and screamed at him, who would have made a fuss or called the police. But not Grace.
Grace had lost a lot in the last couple of months, so to complain about him taking the sofa or the kitchen table seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of her life.
Let him go. Let him have it. Let him do whatever he wanted.
Aaron had left so little for her that by the time they had finished loading the trailer, only an hour had passed.
"Wow, that didn't take long at all!" Bill mused. "I thought we'd be here for hours. I thought there would be pizza involved!"
"I'll buy pizza when we get to your place," Grace offered with a smile.
"Hey, our guest doesn't pay for a thing, you understand?" Maisie said. "Bill, you wanna go start the truck while Grace and I will do a last walkthrough?"