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1
AMELIA
Irun up the dirty steps to get out of the NYC Subway system, cursing the backed-up trains, and tapping frantically on my phone. I can still save the morning, get to work on time, and make a good impression on my new boss if I take a rideshare. I can get to work in...I hold my breath, watching the app’s loading signal.
Ten minutes. That’s when the nearest car can get to me.
I blow out a sigh of relief and wrap my puffy coat tighter against the winter cold. I can make that work. In my headphones, Carly Rae Jepsen is breathlessly singing about throwing a wish in the well. I love this song because you can hear the smile in her voice. I take a few more deep breaths and remind myself thatthis timethings are going to work out. For good.
I wait for my heartbeat to slow from a sprint to a jog. The truth is, I’d be a knot of anxiety, even without the backed-up trains. I'm a 26-year-old graphic designer, and I have the worst possible luck with jobs. First there was the theater company that went belly up. Then there was the greeting card company thatdownsized. And, finally, the urban gardening nonprofit which I managed to ruin all by myself.
But that was the old me. The me who gave my all to people who couldn’t return the favor. The me who felt every rejection like a freshly broken heart.
The new me is tough. The new me has a plan. The new me is going to stand up for myself, and plan ahead, and be a calm professional adult, and...
The nutty, savory smell of baked goods wafts out from the bagel place behind me and my stomach growls.
Shit. Breakfast.That’swhat I forgot.
I’m in one of the fancy parts of Manhattan where the rich people live, so breakfast will cost an arm and a leg, but it doesn’t look too crowded. I bet I can get in and out before my car gets here.
I adjust the strap on my one professional purse, which is looking a little worse for wear, and head into the bakery. I step inside and let the warm, golden smell of carbs and coffee wash over me.
That’s when someone bashes into me from behind, and I stumble forward like a lurching goat in high heels.
“Sorry” I say, on reflex, but then I catch myself.Hebumped intome.And now he’s already striding past me, gettingmyspot in line.
I feel the ticking clock in my head.
The old me would spend the next five hours starving in my new fancy office building because this asshole stole my breakfast time. Hell, the old me would smile and assure him that it was fine, I should probably eat healthier anyway.
But I don’t want to be the person people take for granted anymore. And now seems like as good a time as any to start practicing.
Even if he is tall, hot, and wearing an expensive wool coat with the kind of exquisitely designed suit that makes business-wear haters like me reconsider my hatred of suits.
“Actually, sir,” I say. “I’m not sorry. You bumped intome.”
He ignores me.
I tap him on the shoulder. “Sir. You took my spot.”
He looks back over his shoulder, grumpy as a bear woken from hibernation. He’s got tousled brown hair, blue eyes, and the kind of tan that implies he didn’t spend his Christmas in snowy New York like the rest of us.
He frowns, and now he’s looking less like a generically grumpy bear and more like one resisting the urge to charge.
Do bears charge?
I remind myself not to go hiking until I’ve looked that up.
“I’ll buy your coffee,” he says gruffly, not yielding his place in the line. “Or whatever pumpkin sweetened atrocity women like you drink.”
Standing up for myself just got a whole lot easier. “How dare you—”
“May I help the next customer?” the barista asks, like he’s trying to move the line along before me and the Suit break into an all-out war.
“Yes!” I say, beaming at the barista with the smile that once made a man in midtown walk straight into a trashcan. “Coffee with a cream and a toasted—”
But the Suit is talking over me, tellingCarloshe’d like his usual,quickly.
