Highway Princess - 5

In the end, Emma offered Carmel to stay with her, and her mother accepted happily.
Her mother. Emma felt dizzy as she watched the leather-clad blond walk out the back door and come back, hips swaying, a big pair of saddlebags slung over her shoulder.
“You travel light,” Emma said. Her brain was spinning, she needed to talk to keep her confusion at bay.
Carmel shrugged. “My needs are simple,” she smiled.
Emma showed her the spare room, that was right now some sort of storage area. “I have an inflatable mattress,” she said. Carmel looked around, nodding happily. There was an old desk, with a disassembled computer, in a corner, a rickety computer chair, and a pile of boxes.
“I was thinking about turning this into a home office,” Emma explained. She opened the window, to let in some fresh air. Carmel lit a cigarette.
“You plan on working from home?” her mother asked.
“It would be an option. I have a lot of experience with counselling, I might try and get a certification—”
Carmel nodded. “I like that. You are not letting this thing get to you. You react. You are tough.” She grinned. “You take after your mom.”
Emma looked at her. “I don’t feel so though, you know.”
Carmel gave her a wicked grin. “Oh, but you are. Believe me, I can see that.”
“You read it in the cards? More of your gypsy magic?”
Carmel laughed. “You know, maybe I should start getting into that sort of shit. Magic and tarot reading.”
Emma sighed. “Me too. Might make a living with that.”
“Why did they fire you?” Carmel asked, bluntly.
Emma blushed. “Structural cuts, they say.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”

Carmel took a hard pull on her cigarette. “You are good. I know that just by looking at you. Skilled, competent. Serious.” She grinned. “Maybe too serious. No manager would kick you out so fast and so thoroughly. What happened?”
Emma walked around the room, running her hands along her sides. “I asked for a raise.”
Carol hummed. “And?”
“I was asked—something I wouldn’t accept.” Emma said. “In exchange for the raise.”
Carmel arched her eyebrows.
“My boss asked me to—”
Emma snorted, and shook her head.
Carmel’s eyes widened. “He asked you to fuck him? To get your raise?”
Emma nodded. “He wanted me to—”
Carmel sat on the computer chair. “What? To blow him?”
Emma looked up, and Carmel stubbed out her cigarette in a coffee cup. “Guys are like that,” she said. “They have this thing about being blown.”
Emma sighed. “I felt so humiliated.”
Carmel sighed in turn. “It’s not like that big a thing, I mean—but it’s not like they have a right to you sucking them up just because they happen to have a cock, right?”
Emma stared at her, frowning.
“I mean,” Carmel said, slowly, “you have a boyfriend, right?”
Emma nodded. Then her mouth opened in disbelief. “Ed is not like that!”
“Every guy is like that, believe me.”
“Well, we never—Oh, what are we talking about?”
“About you not blowing your boyfriend. Nor your boss. And he fired you? Just because you would not go down on him? That’s harsh.”
Emma’s jaw was set. “I reported him.”
“Ouch!”
“What should I do? We were supposed to work with people to put a stop on sexual harassment and abuse. And the guy just—”
Carmel nodded. “I can see that. You are principled, and you did the right thing.” She gave her daughter a bittersweet smile. “Only you did not consider the fact that guys are bastards.”
“Yeah, I guess you are right. And so I was made part of the structural cuts.”
Carmel shook her head. “Bastards.”
She lit up again, and offered her crunched packet to Emma.
The younger woman shook her head. Carmel shook the packet. “Come on, you need one.”
Emma shrugged. “You’re probably right,”she said.
She placed the cigarette betweenher lips. “I’m sort of a social smoker,” she said. She leaned into her mother’s flame. “Ed hates me smoking.”
“And what does Ed say about your boss firing you after trying to put the moves on you?”
Emma stared at her through a cloud of smoke. “I did not tell him.”
Carmel arched her eyebrows and exhaled smoke through her nostrils. “Why didn’t you? He’s your man.”
“Exactly because he is my man I didn’t.”
Carmel looked at her, her eyes burning into Emma’s.
“You don’t approve,” Emma said.
Carmel paused for a moment, and then coughed a burst of smoke, laughing and choking at the same time. “Approve?” she asked. “Honey, who the fuck am I to approve of you or not? After what I did? I walked out on you on the very first day of your life. And now I should have a right to,” she made air quotes with her long-nailed fingers, “approve of you? Fuck, no!”
“You did what was right for you,” Emma said in a thin voice.
“I was a fucking egoist.” Carmel shook her head and snorted. “Don’t get me wrong. I still am. Egoist, self-centered, fucked up and a total narcisist.” She grinned ruefully. “A bit of a slut, too. But I am expanding my egotism to include you, now. And you are afraid I will judge you? Fuck, no. I want to help you, I want to have your back. You are my tribe. Help you with paying the rent? No problem. Help you find a job, or help you go on as you look for a new career? Here I am. Share a cigarette and have a talk? Believe me, honey, it’s something I missed all these years and I realize it only now. But judging you, approving of you? Screw that. You are a fine woman, Em, a gorgeous babe, and honest. Tough but kind. You made a great life for yourself and you had the cojones to stand up for what you believe in. You’re not some kind of tart that gets down on her knees for a fucking raise. Shit, Em, how could I not approve of you?”
Emma smiled. She took another drag on her cigarette.
“But what I am asking is this,” her mother went on. “What sort of man is this Ed of yours, if you can’t rely on him in a moment like this?”
“I can rely on him!”
Carmel looked at her. “But not enough to tell him the truth.”