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thought it would be… possibly slightly worse.”
    “You’ll take it? To remember me by?”
    “Come on, Tammy. What’s six months?”
    “It’s a long time,” Tammy said. “When you’re dealing with people who knew your biological father, and when you’re living where he lived, and when you’re dealing with all the fall-out of a cheating fiancé.” Her violet eyes were serious in her round face. “Jules, I’m worried about you, and I’ll keep being worried about you. You’ve got a lot going on, and I won’t be there to help if things get to be too much.”
    “I’ll be fine.” Julie took off the hat and smoothed down her hair.
    “If you need me, I’ll come. You just call.” Tammy shrugged. “I already checked: it’s less than four hours to fly from here to Denver.”
    “Yeah, but, the expense…”
    “I found cheap tickets for around two hundred dollars.”
    Julie looked at her friend, smiling at the determined look on Tammy’s face. “Tammy. You don’t have two hundred dollars.”
    “If you need me, I’ll come,” Tammy repeated. “Don’t worry about the money.”
    “OK, how about this? If I need you, I’ll call you and pay for your flight. Deal?”
    “Deal.”
    The two friends looked at each other for a minute and then hugged, spontaneously. They broke apart and Julie grinned.
    “Now, how about this packing?”
    “OK, OK,” Tammy sighed. “I’ll go through the bathroom. You want everything, right?”
    “Right.”
    Tammy took the matching fiery orange Louis Vuitton cosmetics bags and headed in to the bathroom to start packing Julie’s makeup. She’d be in there for a while, she knew: Julie adored beauty products.
    “Hey,” she called from the bathroom. “What about your offer from Plum Designs? Has it arrived yet?”
    “Yeah. I got it yesterday afternoon.” It had felt good to cross that one off her list.
    Tammy reappeared in the doorway. “And?”
    “And… it was great.”
    “How great?”
    “The total of five months’ salary after all deductions.”
    Tammy gaped. “Really? I never thought that dickhead would be so generous.”
    “Well, the thing is that I found out from Tricia who was replacing me as Head of NBD.”
    “OK. Who?”
    “The dickhead’s son-in-law. Fresh out of Harvard, with no work experience and who knows nothing at all about design.”
    “Hoo-boy. That sounds like one hell of a stupid move.”
    Julie shrugged. “Maybe. But the point is that if word got out that a respected and known designer got demoted under such conditions – I mean, it’s blatant nepotism – Plum would lose credibility, I can promise you.”
    “And you pointed that out to Timmy-boy, did you?”
    “Well, discreetly. You know.”
    “You bitch.” Tammy shook her head in admiration. “You have got guts.”
    “And now I’ve got a bit of a cushion. I won’t be freaking out about money for a couple of months, at least.”
    “Awesome.” Tammy went back in to the bathroom, chuckling.
    Julie looked around the bedroom, and it suddenly hit her exactly what she was doing. She was leaving this apartment tomorrow, this place that she’d called home for almost eight years. At the very first viewing, she’d fallen in love with the fireplace in the living room and the hand-painted tiles in the kitchen. Moving in here had been such an amazing declaration of independence and success: she’d paid her first and last month’s rent with the first bonus she’d ever been awarded at Plum Designs, given to her for her work on the Campbell Law Offices. After that job, she’d written her own ticket in terms of clients and projects and fees. It had been an amazing time. It was all over, now.
    The leasing agent had a dozen people interested in sub-letting the apartment while she was gone, but she couldn’t stand the thought of having a stranger in here for the next six months. She bit her lip, calculating the cost of the rent payments to the landlord. With the severance from Plum Designs,