Chapter One
Ellie
“What did you say?” my sister gasped. She loved gasping. She also loved not waiting for me to answer. “Tell me you kicked her ass.”
I shook my head. “She’s my boss.”
Rachel rolled her eyes as she took a vicious bite of her cheeseburger. We were in my parents’ backyard at a picnic barbecue in honor of my cousin, the amazing catcher for the Indianapolis Bobcats. Though I lived in Indiana, I’d driven up to Chicago for the party and to hang with my older sister. Fortunately, the team had just pounded the White Sox, so everyone was in a good mood as they ate burgers and chips. But despite the huge selection of hot male specimens lounging around the patio, Rachel’s attention was all on me and my job disaster. “She’s not a boss. She’s a vicious dictator. You need to put her in her place.”
Easy for her to say. In fact, being bold was exactly what Rachel did best. Right from the shock of red in her flyaway blond hair to her artfully sliced band T-shirt. She was a radio personality whose voice sparkled as much as the rest of her animated body. Me? What was easiest for me was keeping my mouth shut as I did what I was told at work. I was a nurse, and we weren’t paid to make trouble. Besides, I had too much school debt to risk losing my job.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she stressed.
“I also didn’t catch the error,” I argued. A doctor had ordered the wrong medicine, and being the nighttime medicine nurse, I had filled it. It would take more brass balls than I had to question a doctor’s orders, but the patient had nearly died and someone had to take the blame. According to Mrs. Sargent (and yes, that was her real name), that shitstorm was headed for me.
“No, no, no! You cannot let her get away with that!” My sister had always been my champion. The problem was that this wasn’t grade school anymore. She couldn’t just throw Joey Winston, the class bully, into the mud and end the teasing forever. Besides, Mrs. Sargent wasn’t the real problem.
“Look, I’ve got a plan. Better yet, I’m executing it.”
Rachel sat up and leaned forward with a low, “Ooooo! Sounds juicy.”
I nodded, feeling my heartbeat speed up. It wasn’t excitement. It was terror. But at least I wasn’t sweating, so that was an improvement. “It’s called exposure therapy. I’m doing something every day that gets me rejected. Eventually, this kind of stuff won’t bother me anymore.”
My sister blinked at me. “Come again?”
“Look, I noticed that the medicine looked weird, but I was too intimidated to ask about it. The head nurse that night is a real witch, and I knew she’d tell me to do what the doctor ordered.”
“Ellie—”
“That’s always been my problem. I’m too afraid of being wrong to speak up.”
“You’re cautious. That’s not a bad thing.” She gestured to the empty seat beside her. “You notice a distinct lack of male companionship sitting here? That’s because Freddie was a dick. With three other women. If I had a little bit more of your caution—”
“You’d still be ten times bolder than I am.”
“That’s not true! You used to take risks all the time. You tried skydiving in college—”
That had been because of a guy. Bad choice—the guy, not the skydiving. Though eventually I gave up both.
“You enter trivia contests when you know nothing about sports—”
That was just fun.
“And you organized that kazoo squad for homecoming.”
I’d done that, and yes, it’d been pretty out-there. But then I’d had a string of bad-choice boyfriends, which had shot my dating confidence. Then I thought I could manage school, a job, and an apartment on my own. The exhaustion was topped off with a bout of mono, which ended with me losing my job, dropping a semester of school, and living back at home while Mom told me every day that I had to be more careful. I hadn’t taken a risk since, and I was just now realizing how big a problem it had become.
I straightened to my full height. “I haven’t done a risky anything since I moved to Indianapolis two years ago. But I’m changing that.”
“By getting rejected every day?”
I grinned. “And living to tell the tale. I’ve already done it five times, and look, I’m still breathing.”
“Okay, color me intrigued. What exactly have you done?”
I flushed hot at the memory of my first rejection. It had been stupid and terrifying. “I went into a Starbucks and asked for a burger.”
She tilted her head. “They don’t sell burgers.”
