The line clicks dead, and for once I’m glad that Catherine’s not chatty. “Thank you.” I sound like a robot trying to be human. I’m going to make some calls, see if anyone’s looking for freelance work. Who said life was fair?Ĭatherine sighs with relief. I’ve worked so hard …ĭeep breaths, big girl. I’ve lived out of my car for weeks, chasing freelance opportunities up and down the West Coast. I’ve served about ten thousand tables for crappy tips. I’ve worked every unpaid internship I could find. For the last two years, everything in my life has been about making that hole go away. I watched her presentation breathless because I wanted to be her so badly that not-being-her was an aching hole in my chest. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I met Catherine during undergrad, when I could hardly even talk to her because I was so starstruck in front of one of the best chief photographers in the business. My first full-time staff gig, at the best outdoor lifestyle magazine in the country. I want to work for her at Wild, just like I was promised. I don’t want her to talk me up to anyone else.

“Just so long as you promise to come back to us after.” Whoever you want me to talk you up to, I’ll do it.” I can hear the effort in Catherine’s humor. But at least it proves I’m alive, because the only thing that could make this worse is Catherine calling a wellness check on me with the Rincon PD. I have a trash-filled car that looks like I slept in it, because sometimes I do. I mean just regular, normal people with regular, normal jobs and nice boyfriends and 401ks they know they should probably pay more into. I don’t mean millionaires or movie stars.

It seems like the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with my life. I nudge an empty candy wrapper with my toe. Just hold tight, okay? This isn’t a never. “Sometime next year we’ll get you on the team, I promise. I’m meant to be starting my dream job in a week, and instead I’m being fired. But instead my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and all I can do is press my forehead to the steering wheel and try not to be sick. Hell, even a yeah would be better than silence.

“Let’s just hope we aren’t going down as fast.” But with the sponsor drop out … Our budget has more holes in it than the Titanic.” She laughs darkly. “I feel like the world’s biggest asshole, telling you so late. “I’m sorry, Brooke.” Catherine clearly isn’t enjoying this. That’s when it hits me: I’m being fired from a job I haven’t even started yet. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The people who appear inside the book are also imaginary.

Though the locations in this book are real, they have been altered to serve the story. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Ride by harper dallas read online