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2
SELENA
Ihated flying, but as soon as the wheels lifted off the runway and NYC shrank outside the small oval window, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. Tension I didn’t even recognize had been bunching up the muscles around my neck suddenly released, and for the first time since I moved here two years ago, I let myself realize how much I hated the city.
I’d tried to make it my home, I really had. I’d found a small apartment that wasn’t so bad. I made a few friends. I dated a few guys. But just like the Glade plug in couldn’t cover up the smell of damp rot in my apartment, all the friends and boyfriends in the world couldn’t cover up the fact that I hated my job. I didn’t know if the entire Financial District was as soul sucking and cutthroat as my former company, but I was willing to bet they were. New York City just had that vibe. LA would be better.
I hoped.
A cold, unsettled feeling disturbed the pit of my stomach. For once, it had nothing to do with the earth falling steadily away and the white fluffy clouds enveloping the airplane. It had everything to do with the job I was leaving behind and the one I was potentially heading toward. I was grateful for Jake’s connection, I really was. I needed the job at his uncle’s company, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this job wouldn’t really be different than the one I’d just left. That it didn’t have anything to do with New York and everything to do with the fact I just didn’t like the work.
And if that was the case, majoring in finance had been a mistake.
As always, when the thought flitted into my brain, I shut it down hard.
I pressed my forehead against the cold acrylic window that stood between me and freezing air outside. The motion of the plane vibrated through my skull like I was trying to shake the thought out. I took a deep breath and blew out the exhale. A thin layer of vapor formed and then evaporated.
This will be a good job, this will be a good job, I chanted silently.I want this job, I want this job.
If nothing else, I wanted–and would love–the salary. It would definitely be enough to get a good apartment for my sister and me. We’d need a three-bedroom when the baby came, and those were expensive, but we could do it on this salary. She’d never have to ask our parents for help. The two of us would figure it out.
A warm glow filled me as I pictured it. Christi was due in June, so we’d need to move out of her small place into our new apartment by May so we could decorate the nursery. It didn’t matter if I didn’t like the job. I was going to love the life it gave me.
If I got it at all.
Jake hadn’t made any promises, and I knew I’d have to impress his uncle, which didn’t seem like an easy task. “Uncle Nic” as Jake had always referred to him so casually didn’t seem like the type to be impressed by anything. I’d never told Jake, but Dominic White had always intimidated me the few times I met him. He was so tall and remote. Handsome, but not the way Jake was. Jake’s smile warmed you. Dominic’s was wintry, as cold as his frost-colored hair, so startlingly white against his tanned skin. His silvery-gray eyes seemed to look right through you, like he was calculating something inside you. Tallying up your worth.
Maybe it was the refrigerator cold air coming out of the nozzle above me, but I suddenly felt the need to wrap my arms more tightly around myself. For just a moment, despair swamped me. What if I couldn’t impress this man? I’d have to take a position in one of the wealth management companies that didn’t pay as well. Christimighthave to ask our parents for help. But in the next second, I managed to shake it off.
I’d never failed in my life.
I wasn’t going to start now.
* * *
Christi met me at the airport looking younger than her twenty-one years, especially since the baby wasn’t showing yet. Her hair was a brighter, sunnier color than mine, but other than that, we could have been twins born three years apart.
“Selena!” she dodged through the crowd, breathless, car keys still dangling from her fingers, and threw her arms around me. “I’m not late, am I?”
The question was so ubiquitous from Christi that I could only laugh. “No, I literally just walked out.”
While we waited at the baggage carousel for my huge Samsonite to come around, Christi updated me on everything. Practically the day they found out she was pregnant, her deadbeat boyfriend had moved out of the crappy two-bedroom apartment they’d been living in.
“Which is so great because he would have been theworstdad, and now you and I will have our own place just like we always talked about!” Christi finished. She was practically bouncing from her heels to her toes. Pregnancy hadn’t slowed her down a bit.
“So great,” I agreed, trying not to laugh. Jake had called mePollyannawhen we were dating after the relentlessly cheerful protagonist in the movie, but I had nothing on Christi. Nothing could dim her optimism and enthusiasm. Nothing except our parents.
I loved them, but Christi and I used to wonder, seriously, if we’d been adopted. Mr. and Dr. Sinclair were straight out of another century. Austere, eschewed all fun, thought that makeup and skirts above the knee were straight from the devil’s catalog. And somehow, they’d had us–two girls who loved bright, sunny things and didn’t believe in a hell that wasn’t of your own making. We’d both moved out the day after we graduated high school. The plan was for her to come to New York City when she finished her cosmetology degree, but then she’d met Danny, and then…
I felt the familiar gathering storm of irritation, dislike, and disbelief that Christi had fallen for a guy like him. All looks and brains and no heart. I liked muscles and intelligence, too, but I liked them as part of a warm, kind package. Like Jake, but not actually Jake himself because we’d tried that and realized we were better off as friends.
Christi chattered the entire time she was driving us back to her apartment, and I realized belatedly that it was because she was nervous. I barely had time to wonder why before she pulled into the pothole ridden parking lot in front of a crumbling building. Chunks of the brick siding were lying among the scrubby strip of bushes that encircled it. When I opened my car door, there was a broken bottle in the next parking spot.
I looked over at Christi and saw her biting her lower lip, her eyes huge in her face. “It’s a fixer upper,” she said, the lilt in her voice weaker than usual.
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Only Christi would describe this place in terms of potential.
“It’s better on the inside,” she insisted, starting to laugh herself.
