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Ali

I stare at the open email, my heart thudding loudly in time with the blinking cursor on my monitor. Terror floods through me.

It might as well be a poisonous snake shaking its tail violently at me for the level of fear it invokes.

Self-doubt spears me with worry, which sends me spiraling in denial. I narrow my eyes, unconvinced it isn’t some clerical error sent to the wrong person’s email. I’m sure the one I should’ve received is a sorry, no thank you letter.

My fingers nervously dust over my eyebrow while I scan through the words once more. From what I can tell, it seems legit. It includes my name and my current address, which is accurate, and the phrases I skim over all seem… positive. The panic and disbelief subsides a bit as I read over the email again.

Hello, Alison.

Congratulations. We would like to offer you the role of Communications and Event Manager.

Excited to work with you at Lighting the Lamp for Kids (LTLFK) Foundation.

We look forward to receiving your reply soon.

I read through the email more closely to pick up on the specifics, such as starting salary, benefits, and start date.

I still can’t quite believe I’ve been offered my dream position in a sports charity that raises money for kids in need. It’s a foundation that was the brainchild of and run by someone I am very close to, Vancouver Vikings hockey player and star defenseman, Tanner Rossco.

Who also happens to be my half brother.

Which makes me highly suspect on the validity of this job offer. It could very well just be a joke. A prank Tanner is playing on me. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Because it’s an irrefutable fact that my brother has done some stupid and impetuous things in his life.

Tanner, as my mom always says, is ridiculously irreverent. Outside of hockey and his charity, he takes nothing seriously. He coasts through life wearing rose-colored glasses and is outgoing and spontaneous, a guy who has proven time and time again to be highly inappropriate. Like the time he showed up at my sixteenth birthday party and insisted on carrying me through the room in his arms as everyone sang the birthday song to me. Could he be more embarrassing?

But the thing is, he does it because he cares about me.

Which is precisely the reason I think he’s out of his goddamn mind to allow his charity to offer me this role of a lifetime. He knows very well what my previous experience is and how it all blew up in the worst way.

I do love him. So very much. He’s my big brother, all protective to a fault and ready to bend over backward for me.

He would do anything for me, which makes me nervous about accepting this job offer. Outside of the fact that it’s clearly nepotism, the job’s located in Vancouver BC.

Where I do not currently live. I don’t even live in Canada.

Before my life imploded, I was confident young event planner and coordinator at a nonprofit here in San Francisco, my first job out of college. I was new and green, and I spent two years working hard to learn the ropes and get my feet wet in the nonprofit sector.

Now I’m jobless and nearly to the point of eviction because it’s expensive to live in the Bay Area. The only reason I haven’t been kicked out yet is because my brother has graciously footed the bill for the last two months. It’s humiliating to accept handouts from your big brother, even if he is a professional hockey player making the big bucks.

And for the record, I never asked him for help. He weaseled out that I was behind in my rent from my mother—Tanner’s stepmother—when he learned I hadn’t found a new job after a few weeks. My mother never could resist my brother when he turned on his charms.

So, nothing’s holding me here in terms of my career prospects or a lease. And there’s no boyfriend to speak of currently—although I still maintain that it’s love that got me in this position.

Truthfully, it’s not entirely all the fault of Scott, my ex-boyfriend. My own naïveté corrupted my usually sound judgment, and that sent the ball rolling. I am the perfect example of being too lovestruck to see things clearly.

I thought I was doing well on my own as I navigated true adulthood, and then it all came crashing down. Now I’m a jobless, boyfriend-less twenty-five-year-old hoping to leave the past behind me.

And it probably sounds cliché to say it, but I want to change the world. I want to help people—especially children in need—and make a difference in their lives. I was on the cusp of doing just that very thing when I screwed up royally and let myself get blinded by love, which only led to a humiliating and public fall from grace.

Which is the very reason I’m so skeptical of this job offer. The nonprofit sector focused on kids is a small world, and no one in their right mind would take a chance on me now. Except, of course, my protective and adoring older brother.

I look around my tiny kitchen with its four mismatched chairs that I collected at estate sales over the last two years. Maybe someday I’ll be able to afford a brand-new kitchen table, no more slightly beat-up chairs, lumpy mattress, or threadbare couch with ripped cushions. That thought alone excites me almost more than anything else.