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Today
I’m here.
I text Trish the second I finally make it to Thompson Street. My phone instantly buzzes with a response and then another as I gaze out the front window of my brand-spanking-new apartment and then look back to the expansive dining room. I feel sick and anxious. None of this is me. It feels too expensive, too chic.
Too much like how it felt when I realized what the other side of this world is like when I first met Maddox …and there I go thinking of him again.
Too much like a woman trying to fit into a world that doesn’t belong to her. From the thick silk curtains lining the floor-to-ceiling windows that could have come straight from thatElle Décormagazine, to the accent pillows that would be stained with makeup if I dared lay my head on them.
There’s too much white. Too many hard lines.
Too much money being spent on me that I didn’t earn…Yet.
My finger hovers over the send button. I’m struggling to compose a message to Adrienne, the woman who hired me and told me this place was covered by my employer. No matter how many times I read the text I wrote, rewrite it and read it again, I sound like an ungrateful bitch.
Dammit! I roll my eyes as I delete it, warring with how I want to handle this situation. I should roll with the punches, get my footing, prove my worth and then take charge.
It really is too much though. I can’t believe a company would give all this to me when I haven’t even worked a single day yet.
My cardboard moving boxes, filled with IKEA merchandise, don’t belong here.
I take another slow walk around the first floor and a faster one upstairs. The apartment’s ready to live in. Even the fridge already contains milk and eggs. When I first got to the address, I thought I must have been mistaken. Although the key fit, it was obviously someone else’s house. But the parchment on the dining room table read:Welcome Sophie, make yourself at home. We start on Monday.
Signed by the one and only Adrienne Hart.
The tips of my fingers are numb as I shove my phone into a wristlet. The sky is gray and rain is most certainly looming, so I dig through three boxes marked “closet” until I find one with a hoodie in it and head straight for the door.
I didn’t earn this. It makes me feel like I’ve missed something or the expectations they have for me are higher than I anticipated.Maybe this is what having Imposter syndrome feels like.
Trish has already called three times, so I call her as I head downtown, searching for a place to eat or grab a drink. I look like shit; feel like it too. But this is New York. You can look like whatever you want here, and as long as you can pay the bill, no one gives a shit.
As the phone rings, I start thinking more about drinks and less about food.
Because that’s what I really need, a giant chill pill at the bottom of a martini glass.
“You’re freaking out,” Trish tells me the second I say hi.
“Yeah.” I breathe out the word, feeling the energy of the fast-paced city move around me. It’s dark, getting darker by the second and it’s true what they say; the city comes to life at night.
“What’s going on?” Trish asks and I can hear another question lingering, but she doesn’t voice it completely. With cars beeping and everyone else on their phone all around me, it’s hectic, but I love it. In this city, it’s easy to blend in. A person can get lost here in the crowds.
I like fading into the background. I prefer to go unnoticed.
“It just seems like so much pressure, or…” I pause, making a left as I quicken my pace so I can cross before the green man on the crosswalk sign changes to a bright red hand. “It just happened really quickly and it seems like too much.”
“You don’t think you’re worth it.” Trish’s voice carries through the phone with equal amounts of hardness and insight.
I almost stop in the middle of the street, even as the green man symbol starts to flash, a warning that the mean red hand is coming.
“Youareworth it. If you can find someone willing to pay you an obscene amount of money to do what you love, you’re worththatamount. Period.” Trish’s self-assurance comes from a different upbringing than mine. She lived here too, three years ago. Two different family lives though. I imagine Trish could have grown up on these very streets.
The posh shops and chic cafes with macarons would have been her favorite shops at only five years old when she wore lace and learned how to behave in boarding school.
She and Brett would have ruled these streets. Thinking about Brett makes me smile. Being the younger of the two of them, he got away with bloody murder and loved how it riled her up. He’s a goofball who can also fit in with high society.
Trishishigh society. She is whatever she wants to be.
She was salutatorian in her high school, and she graduated with a double degree by the time she was twenty-four. She wanted to leave NYC and make a name for herself as an artist in San Francisco. When I asked her if I could come with her, I wasn’t sure what she’d say. It was last minute and I wasn’t in the best of places back then. We weren’t particularly close either. I was just one of her brother’s friend’s ex-girlfriends – sort of, not even an ex really – she’d seen me come and go throughout the years. But I was also someone in desperate need that night to get away from here and everything else. The same night I left Madox.
