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Chapter One, Shane
“I’m not going to get the job, am I?” I ask the balding man sitting in front of me, who very distinctly wants me out of his office. He’s been fidgeting in his chair and eyeing the paper bag sitting on the corner of his desk since I first sat down across from him. I’ve been staring at the birthmark or mole on his bald pate, barely hidden by his combover, and wondering if it’s cancerous.
Maybe I’ve made an overly straight-forward remark, but then again, I’m tired. It’s a couple of weeks into the new year, and this is approximately the thirtieth job I’m not going to get after quitting my old firm on Thanksgiving Day. My former boss, Fred Myles, warned me I wouldn’t get a legal job within thirty miles of Asheville if I quit. I didn’t believe him. He is more fossil than man, and his balls have probably shrunken into his diaphragm by now. But what do you know?
Turns out the old geezer was right about something.
Every good legal defense firm in the county has denied me, and so have most of the bad ones. I actually interviewed for a couple of ambulance chasers last week, men who have a billboard with a crying man on it that says,Someone hit you with your car? We’ll turn you into a star.
Fred Myles was a godparent to one of the guy’s sons, so that interview lasted all of five minutes. I got the sense he’d asked me in just to get an adrenaline rush from crushing my hopes.
The man across from me, whose name I couldn’t pull out of my pudding a of a brain if I tried, frowns at me and says, “Well, no. You came in here reeking of whiskey, and you don’t even seem to know what this firm does.”
Guilty.
“But the reason I’m not getting it is Myles, isn’t it?” I press. “You know Fred Myles?”
He frowns at me, his features pinching together. “I’ve never heard of the man.”
Huh. Well at least I lost this one honestly. That’s almost a relief.
Almost.
I salute him and get up, a little unsteady on my feet, because, yeah, I may have indulged too much last night, or very early this morning.
“Take it easy,” I say. “Enjoy the muffin.”
“It’s a scone,” he tells my back.
Fantastic. I am officially less interesting than a baked good, and not even a good baked good—a dry, shriveled little puck of a thing.
I leave the office and wander around the streets for a while, feeling the uncomfortable press of having no destination and nowhere to be. My friends Burke and Leonard run a home restoration business, and they’ve offered to give me work until I find a new job, but I didn’t go to law school so I could run around with a hammer. Besides, a part of me feels a little…resentful of Burke. He’s the reason I had to quit my job, and even though it’s not his fault, I still feel the prickle of it. If his parents weren’t unpardonable dicks, and if Myles hadn’t decided he was going to defend them in their legal case, then I’d still be a partner at the law firm—not unemployed and treated less important than a scone. Even so, as the month has crept on, doubt has entered my mind, sticky and cloying and not at all like me.
What if I don’t find a job here?
What if I have to move?
What if I can’t find a jobanywhere?
I loathe the self-doubt almost as much as I loathe Fred Myles for taking my life away from me.
Because my job was my life, make no mistake. I gave everything I was to that asshole’s firm, spending nights and weekends there. My mother framed the photo of me getting made partner, and I hung it up on my damn wall. Because when you’ve earned success, you should celebrate it.
I walk until I feel warm despite the January chill, then I finally duck into a bakery. Might as well try one of those scones that’s more interesting than I am.
“Coffee and a scone,” I tell the woman behind the counter. She’s a hot brunette with blue green eyes, the kind of woman I’d normally try to charm, but I barely notice or care.
“What kind of scone?” she asks. “We have thirty varieties.”
“Surprise me.”
“Bad day?” She tips her head, studying me.
“Bad year.”
Her lips tip into a smile. “We’re only two weeks into January.”
“When you know, you know.”
