Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
But I’d already dug my grave. I needed to lie in it. “Alright,” was all I said. I got up and headed outside into the California night. I was going to pick up some greasy pizza and eat it in bed while I worked. Was I being a sentimental little bitch? Yes. But I was going to stick to my guns, no matter how much it stung.
34
DARCY
The trip to California felt like it was months ago. Since then, I’d left my job at The Squawker and joined Jasmine at The Union Coast. Farhad and Kirk left The Squawker along with several others who were fired or quit after Dominic’s father came on. Farhad and Kirk were writing an online only project that focused on politics. Elizabeth and Polly were still at The Squawker and complained about how miserable it had become nearly every time we met up for drinks with the old crew.
My life had become incredibly busy since those days. I stifled a yawn at my desk. I had an office to myself, now. It was cramped and crowded with stacks of paper and half-finished books, but it was mine. The Union Coast was what my dad would’ve considered an “actual, legitimate publication.” There were no articles about celebrity gossip. There wasn’t some flavorful local piece full of Elizabeth’s contagious humor. There was just news and reporting on facts. It was the kind of stuff you would see men and women in fancy clothes reading. No smiles allowed.
At The Squawker I had some autonomy. Every week, we had a running list of categories we needed stories for, but it was somewhat fluid. I had the freedom to dig a little and sometimes come up with creative angles to fill the assignment. Here, there was a separate research team. The legwork was already done and I was just tasked with transcribing it into a readable, respectable article for my editors.
I’d been getting nothing but praise since I started three months ago, but I was starting to dread coming to work. When I thought about still being here ten years from now or even two years, dread crept in from all the dark corners of my mind.
So I’d spent the last week cleaning up the pitch that seemed destined to never be caught. I was planning to bring it to Jasmine’s office today. It was like deja vu, except this time, Dominic wasn’t going to stride into my life and mess everything up.
At least that was how I kept telling myself it went when I thought back on him. He messed things up. But was that really what happened?
I’d been chasing a dream when Dominic came along–completely blind to my own needs as a woman. I was waiting to start my life until some unforeseen point in the future. I was living for “later” and telling myself it was okay to be relatively miserable in the “now”. But Dominic showed me just how incredibly fun “now” could be. He made me wonder if I was being an idiot. After all, what was the point of throwing away “now” for years and years on the gamble that “later” was going to be amazing? Who said I wasn’t just sleepwalking toward a depressing existence of loneliness and dry vaginas?
I rubbed at my eyes and groaned. This always happened when my thoughts drifted to Dominic. I could sometimes get lucky and go a day or two without thinking of him. I could sort of close my eyes and drift through my days, telling myself I was “working for the weekend”. I’d get to hang out with Polly, Elizabeth, Farhad, and every few weeks I’d even meet up with Charleston when he wasn’t too busy conquering the world. That was enough, right?
But when Dominic popped in my head, it was impossible to tell myself the same lie. Before him, it was like living my life without ever tasting sugar. You could’ve handed me a pepper and I might’ve said, “that’s so sweet!”. But then I had a taste of Dominic, and now everything was tasteless in comparison. He’d fucking ruined me, and I hated him for it. I hated him because we could’ve had something amazing and he decided to throw it away. Did I want it back? Yes. Was I way too mad at him to reach out or accept an apology? Yes.
I was planning to stew and marinate in my anger. That was me. The girl in a big old pot full of annoyance, frustration, the occasional shameful dirty dream about her old boss, and stubbornness. And I planned to keep my ass right there in that pot for as long as I had to.
I headed to Jasmine’s office with a thumb drive in hand. It had all the elements of my pitch laid out in agonizing detail. I’d researched every damn scholarship on the planet at this point. I’d vetted them and figured out which ones were legit. I even interviewed students who had worked with the legit ones. The thumb drive in my hands represented hours and hours of work. Somehow, it felt like it was also the last dim light of hope in my life. It was what I’d been clinging to before Dominic came along, and if I couldn’t find a way to make this happen, I wasn’t sure what I could cling to.