8
possible, he extracted a rather aged-looking box of Trojan condoms from near the back. He dumped the contents of the box on the bed and counted five condoms, still all connected to each other in a strip. He replaced them in the box and returned everything to the way he found it.
Darren emerged from the bedroom after twenty minutes and then the bathroom after another ten, most of that time mentally spent summoning the temperance necessary for the most casual proposal possible of maybe catching a quick lunch somewhere. While in the bedroom he had
heard Jo’s low voice with gaps of silence in between indicating she was on her phone, but there was no mistaking now that he was hearing hers and that of another woman. He rounded the corner by the big bookshelf to find Jo and a woman he instantly found vaguely familiar sitting at the dining room table, each with coffee, happily chatting. They both looked up to see Darren, and he noted that the mystery woman wasn’t in any way surprised to see him, indicating that his presence had been a topic of conversation in some form.
Jo looked up at Darren with a smile and jovially asked “All done?”, her good spirits undoubtedly a result of her new company and not at seeing him again. “All done,” he replied, not attempting to match her tone.
“Do you remember Rachel?” Now he did. They used to work together. Jo was always talking about this amazing new chick that started in the office and all the funny things she would say every day and how she would dress and do things to her hair without any apparent interest what anyone else thought and so on and so on. Darren had been glad that Jo seemed to finally find someone to replace the old friends who just didn’t seem to want to get together for happy hour anymore. Rachel didn’t last at the job for very long but they