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Chapter 1
Some girls watched Beauty and the Beast and wanted the prince. I want the library.
-Meme
Wink
The stairs screamed in protest as I made my way back down the ladder.
I hated my job.
Well and truly hated it; I had no clue why I continued to do it when I hated it so much.
In fact, if I’d just quit already, I would be free to do my photography full time.
But that was the thing about me. I hated quitting. Anything.
It didn’t matter what it was.
A sport. A novel. A job.
They were all the same in my book.
Not to mention that I had no guarantee that next month would be as good as this month.
Christmas was now over, and I’d realized that if I managed to get at least six clients a month, I could make enough to carry me through until next month.
I also sold my photography as well. Anything I was able to sell was an added bonus that gave me a tiny cushion and made everything a little bit easier.
But my brain was still stuck in ‘poor’ mode. Meaning that I couldn’t quit. Not when my mind still had me eating Ramen noodles when my bank account clearly could accommodate Velveeta mac and cheese.
My brain just couldn’t process that I was in the black on the balance sheet, not the red.
So, until I was confident in that, it meant I had to stick it out at my day job.
Once I had enough in my savings to hold me for a year, then I’d know it was time to stop my day job and pursue my passion, but not until then.
Not after the last four years.
Which was why I was currently crawling down the steps of the upstairs loft in my client’s house.
I was a professional cleaner.
Or maid, if you wanted to get all technical and shit.
I worked for a man who I never saw, yet he always managed to make a huge fucking mess.
My guess was that he only came out at night, after I was gone.
That would certainly explain why I never saw him.
It would also explain why his house was such a freakin’ pigsty every other morning when I came back.
Last night, it appeared, he’d had another party, because there were dishes and cups everywhere, as well as questionable things on his sheets.
My boss owned a large house on the outskirts of Dallas, right on the lake.
It was a three story monstrosity that was the bane of my existence.
But, alas, I had it clean.
For today, at least.
Now it was time to go home.
Which I did not five minutes later, being sure to lock up so I didn’t get another threatening letter from my boss for forgetting.
Which I never did.
Ever.
I was a freak about locks.
I had six of them on my door at home, as well as a reinforced door, a security chain, and a half-assed security system I’d bought off of Amazon.
So yes, I understood all too well the importance of locking doors.
Something I’d found out the hard way.
Meaning I didn’t screw up when it came to locking a door, especially not someone’s that I had to go into where there were so many freakin’ places to hide.
After locking up, I made my way home, thankful that the day’s traffic was over with. Mostly.
The interstate was always busy, but it was nothing like the five o’clock rush hour.
Today, as I drove by Taco Bell and decided to get myself a burrito that I ate in the car on the way home, I was told myself that tomorrow I would start my diet.
Tomorrow I would lose the ten pounds I’d been promising to do for the last half a year.
But would it even matter if I did?
It was highly unlikely that I would find anyone.
Not unless I could meet them in traffic, at my boss’s shitty big house, or at the houses where I painted my murals.
Speaking of murals, my best friend and brother from another mother, Shane, chose that moment to call.
“Hello?” I answered, pulling into my driveway.
“Why, oh why, do I not know how to paint yet?” he asked me.
I laughed.
“Because you like to work with metal,” I said amusingly. “And you don’t paint well.”
“You like to sculpt with metal, but you can paint, too,” he countered.
“That’s true,” I said, getting out of my car, being sure to grab the trash from my devoured burrito out of the cup holder.
I sighed and started up the front path that led to my apartment, then even further inside the building.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked him.
“Working at the bar,” he said almost distractedly. “Hey, can I call you back? I think someone’s here.”
He hung up before I could reply, and I sighed, dropping my phone into my purse and hitching the handles back over my shoulder.
I had no life.
