Calendar Girl (June) Chapter 3:
Mia joins Warren for breakfast and without hesitation makes things incredible awkward when she confronts Warren about his relationship with Kathleen. In front of Kathleen.
“It seems you have become aware of some very private information. Would you care to discuss it?” His tone was straightforward with absolutely no hint of concern.
Kathleen looked away as she poured me a cup of coffee and refilled Warren’s.
“Not especially. Would you like to discuss why you hired an escort while your girlfriend serves your breakfast?”
He hired an escort, but so far his assertion that he wasn’t paying Mia for sex has proven true…so if anything it seems like another Tony/Hector situation, and Mia should mind her own business.
Mia kind of makes this same point to herself after she’s already made the rude comment:
The last thing I needed was to lose my bundle of cash before I could ship it off to Blaine, the dirty rat bastard ex of mine.
Either Carlan is acknowledging that Blaine is such a non-character we’d be forgiven if we forgot he was the driving force behind the plot or there are large swarths of people jumping into Calendar Girl six novellas in. Who are these people and has anyone thought to conduct any in-depth research on them? They sound fascinating.
Warren rightfully tells Mia off, and she’s chastised. So she waits until Kathleen leaves the room, and tries a gentler, equally invasive, tactic.
“I guess it’s hard for me to understand why I’m here when you have a perfectly beautiful woman ready to do as you bid.”
Another baffling dialogue choice in the world of Calendar Girl.
“Kathleen has been with this family since Aaron was a young boy. She helped raise him when we lost his mother. Only recently have we begun something more.” Warren inhaled and then sighed. “Honestly, I’m not even sure how to broach this. Having an affair with the help wouldn’t look good for me— or the business. I’m uncertain whether Aaron would accept it or not…”
These reasons seem pretty thin. It’s not really an affair, or at least not a truly scandalous one, since he was single. People would probably eat it up. She worked with the family for years and supported them through tough times and they fell in love. Romantic and wholesome!
As for Aaron, he’s an adult. I know he wears sunglasses indoors and asks women if they can feel the energy between them, but he probably is normal enough to be happy that his father have a happy, healthy relationship with someone Kathleen. You’d also hope he’d prefer it to their father spending a huge amount of money to hire an escort to pretend date him. For business.
More importantly, why is Warren opening up to Mia and not shutting her down? He has no one else to blame but himself for inviting this into the conversation:
“Then why don’t you trust her with your heart? Bring her out into the light. Has she not earned that?”
He ran a hand over his chin as his jaw tightened.
“Maybe you don’t love her like she does you? Is she just someone you use to get your dick wet?”
Mia!
He freaks out, but then clocks that Mia said Kathleen loves him. Shocking revelation this may be, he should not move on so quickly from Mia’s awful, awful comment.
Obliviously, Mia tells us this is all evidence of what a great matchmaker she is. The true lesson in the Calendar Girl universe really isn’t that everyone should become an extremely well-paid escort who selectively sleeps with her sexiest clients (and gets a bonus to boot), but that everyone should shell out for an escort in order to have her solve a wide-range of problems in their life – from business to pleasure!
“Mia sweetheart, you are definitely a handful all wrapped up in a pretty package, aren’t you?”
“A handful?” I shrugged. “I’ve been called a lot worse.” I grinned, and he placed his hand over mine.
Oh good, glad there won’t be any consequences for Mia’s actions here.
Warren says that they need to proceed with their plan despite this revelation that was for Kathleen to reveal, not Mia. He gives her the rundown of the events she has to attend and the people she has to strategically befriend.
Later, Tai texts Mia a picture of a tattoo he got to honor their friendship. It’s sweet, but the whole thing is just so fucking weird.
Mia calls Tai, and Amy answers his phone. For some reason, she is overjoyed to hear from Mia:
“Mia!” the woman responded with a heaping dose of enthusiasm. “Babe, it’s Mia!”
[…]
“It’s Amy. Remember, you set Tai and me up at the restaurant last week?”
“And now I am already answering his phone, so you can tell it’s very serious or that I’m incredibly invasive and he should run from me immediately.”
It gets even stranger when Amy gets emotional on the phone and thanks Mia for everything. Is Tai listening to this? What a weird thing to reveal to Mia for a variety of reasons.
Tai gets on the phone and confirms Amy is his soulmate. Is Amy listening to this? Tai tells Mia she’s like a sister to him now, which is unconvincing. He also tells her that he told Amy all about them, and she’s “not jealous in the slightest”. Amy will probably murder Tai within the week as she is clearly a serial killer.
The end of the chapter is just Mia recapping each book and the lessons she’s learned, and I think most of the time she’s just making things up because I can’t remember these lessons at all.
My time with Mace helped me to realize that trying to be something I wasn’t only hurt me and the others around me.
But there was that whole, albeit random, lesson she’d learned about teamwork at the end of that book! What about the teamwork?
She then decides she must get a tattoo to commemorate everything that’s happened.