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I closed my eyes, doing my best to keep those thoughts far, far in the back of my mind where they belonged.
My current policy was that if a guy wasn’t willing to woo me in some way, I wasn’t going to get it on with him, no matter how hard up I might be feeling. So far, I had been doing just fine. Granted, I hadn’t really even given anyone the time of day since the whole Marx implosion.
Well, except for Cooper.
“Ugh!” I flopped over, face down into the plushy couch cushions.
I lay there for a few minutes, slowly suffocating in cat fur, before I decided that I was truly in danger of becoming Mrs. Havisham if I didn’t get up and out of this apartment immediately.
I called Hannah, and sure enough, she was out with Jett. I listened to her gush about him for a few minutes before wrapping up the call, mentally swishing around some brain bleach to rid myself of her play-by-play report of how good he was in bed.
“Sam, just be glad you’re a cat and you don’t have friends who don’t know the meaning of TMI. Ugh,” I said to Sam. He meowed in agreement and I refilled his food dish. “What do you think? Should we go back to Kansas? My mom would p
robably try to fatten you up with chicken scraps. You’d like it.”
He meowed again and rubbed against my leg before digging into his dish and munching the kibble.
I thought about Kansas for a few minutes longer, wondering what had changed in the last few years. Wondering if certain people still lived there. Lord knew there were people in that town I never wanted to see again. One in particular. I shuddered at the thought.
“No, Sam, we are never going back to Kansas.”
I patted his head and then started to dial the next person on my mental list. Now that the Pandora’s Box of bad memories had been opened, it became even more essential for me to get out.
“Hello?” Bryce answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Bryce!”
“Who is this?”
“Uh—it’s Allie,” I answered, my brow wrinkled. I was confused by his confusion.
“Oh! Hey! Sorry about that, I had to get a new phone and for whatever reason, all my contacts were lost.”
“Oh, what happened?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t want you to feel bad, but I got demoted at Spotlight and Rita now owns my ass. As you can imagine, my life has been a waking nightmare, and a couple days ago I threw my phone out the window…of my car…when I was on the freeway.”
I winced. “Yikes. I’m so sorry, Bryce!”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll figure something out. So what about you? Any leads?”
“Not yet. I had a couple interviews this week, but still waiting for a call back. It’s all beginning to feel a little hopeless.”
“Now, don’t be like that. Something will work out.”
“Thanks,” I replied, remaining unconvinced.
“Allie, listen to me. Do you know why I hired you?”
It wasn’t something we had formally discussed, but I had always figured it was because he knew I was looking for a new job, someplace I could make more money, and he had an opening.
“I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t now,” I tried to joke.
“Allie,” he scolded. “One day, I was in there drinking my coffee and your boss was sitting at the table next to me, working on his laptop. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he was cussing and pitching a fit. You raced over and within two seconds you had his back up and running. And he told you to mind your own business and get back to the counter. I knew you were never going to be able to grow in a place like that, and you obviously had the skills, you just needed someone who would give you a shot. So, I decided to be that someone.”
I was actually a little choked up listening to him tell me the story. It wasn’t a day I could distinctly remember, but the fact that he not only noticed me, but saw that potential and took a gamble on me, was overwhelming. All my life, people had been trying to get me to stay in the box, color inside the lines. Bryce was probably the first person to see my potential and actually want to let me loose, to learn and grow as a person.
And how did I repay him? I got him demoted…
