Josie and Darla talk -- an excerpt from It's Complicated

From It's Complicated. This conversation takes place before Darla meets Trevor and Joe in Random Acts of Crazy (actually, she's about to get in her car and find Trevor on the side of the road, but she doesn't know that!):

“Hey! Howzitgoin'?” Darla's voice boomed through her smartphone. Hitting “pause” on her movie, Josie curled up with Dotty in her lap, wondering what her niece was up to.

Niece. Cousin. Technically, they were cousins, but considering the seven and a half year age difference, and the fact that Josie had practically helped raise Darla after their dads died in the car accident, they just called each other “Aunt” and “Niece,” finding it easier. There was no rhyme or reason to it – Darla had just started calling her Aunt Josie when she was four and they lived together while their moms recovered in separate hospitals, and it stuck.

“It's going. How about you?”

“Booooooooring. Everything is so booooooring here. Nothing fun ever happens. I'm about to drive home from my shift and it's soooooooo dull.”

“I see nothing's changed back home.”

Darla snorted. A cash register dinged in the muffled distance. “Nope. What about you?”

She thought about spilling her guts about Alex, but stopped herself. Her mom and Aunt Cathy always hoped Josie would meet and marry a doctor, and then everything would be just perfect, as if she'd be rescued from her own life. For Marlene, she knew, a son-in-law as a physician meant money. Maybe access to pills. Ah, the delusions of a woman with the conscience of a cockroach and the narcissism of Kim Jong Il.

Her hesitation made Darla ask, “Josie? You got something to say?”

“No. Not really.”

“'Not really' is different from 'no.'” Darla was fishing, and she was right – Josie wanted a friend to talk to, and Laura hadn't answered her texts or two voice mails yet. She was bursting.

“True.”

“Aaaannnnnnd....?”

“Hypothetically...”

“Unicorns and fairies are hypothetical.”

“So is my story, if I'm going to tell it.”

“Fine.”

“Hypothetically, imagine you're dating a guy who makes you feel like you can trust him. Like he doesn't judge you.”

“Oh, look!” Darla shouted. “A unicorn with a fairy on its back, shitting gold coins!”