“I read your newest chapter last night! Ughhh. You make Barrett so dreamy. He might have been kissing Amanda, but I felt like he was kissing me through my phone screen,” she says.
I feel myself blush. “Now if I could only get one of my own manuscripts to be noticed like this stuff has been. I never knew fanfiction could be so popular.”
“It’ll happen, Rachel. You’re such a good writer,” Emma gushes while using her phone as a mirror so she can fuss with her platinum-blonde hair. “The perfect circumstances will come.”
“You’re right.” I shake myself out of the doom-and-gloom that had slowly been settling over me all morning. “Where’s my optimism?”
“Not in this place,” Emma grumbles as she nods her head toward Mr. Williams’ office.
Mr. Williams is glaring.
At me.
I meet his cold eyes with a stiff smile. It’s hard to conjure up sunshine in a workplace that feels like a storm cloud, but I sure do try.
I groan through a forced smile as I give a thumbs up to Mr. Williams. “I better get this article submitted.”
I move my mouse on my computer to locate the file to attach to an email, and a couple minutes later, I hit Send.
Now, on to the next human-interest piece, which unfortunately isn’t much more interesting than my last. My dream is to sit down with Evan Michaels. Well, okay, that’s not really mydream. But it’s as close as I’m going to get to a dream working forThe New York Standard. I want to write the interview no one has been able to write. The one that is filled with personal details that make Evan known to the world as someone beyond the neat and tidy blurb on the back of his books.
And selfishly, I want to get to know him, too.
I don’t really know who he is, and that mystery is more thrilling than the mysteries he pens. Especially since he’s not exactly awful on the eyes. If I was a teenager, or if it was appropriate for a thirty-year-old woman to have a poster hanging on their ceiling…I’d hang up Evan Michaels like he was Nick Carter from The Backstreet Boys.
“Mr. Williams is insufferable,” Emma mumbles, her thick, fake eyelashes framing an eye roll. “One day soon, you’ll be out of here, writing for yourself. I can feel it.”
Emma is a huge believer in intuition, or at least, what she believes is intuition. But when it comes to intuition and her love life, it seems like what Emma feels is more like false hope. However, I suppose false hope is better than no hope at all. Hope, false or not, at least feels like choosing to believe in something beyond the difficulties and disappointments.
Like the disappointment I had been feeling this morning.
“Thanks, Emma,” I say before she turns to go back to her own cubicle, most likely to Facebook-stalk the newest engaged couple in New York City that submitted for an announcement in the newspaper.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes before listing five things I’m grateful for.
Today is payday. I had coffee made of coffee beans this morning instead of fungus. Evantheauthor might be following me. Evantheauthor might know who I am. (Okay, not exactly who I am, since very few people actually know who BarrettBeyondtheBadge is.) Today is Friday.
I open my eyes and try to lose myself in my next assignment.
Stats. Sponsorships. Superstardom.
My mind fills with sports jargon and dollar signs—numbers that make me both roll my eyes and ache with envy. All that money for someone who throws a ball around for a living. Butc’est la vie.
He’s just chasing a dream. Maybe he doesn’t even care about the money, or the endorsement, or the contract. Maybe he just loves football.
And me?
I get paid to make him human. To tell the story behind the shine and the heart behind the headlines. To convince people that there’s more to him than passing yards, touchdowns, or his impressive lineup of ex-girlfriends. And theyareimpressive. This guy has kissed more A-list celebrities than I’ve read books, which means he’s basically swapped spit withallof them.
But I know the truth.
People don’t always care about the person. They care about the win. About the title. About the kind of success that is loud enough to silence all the mistakes and flaws.
Success scrubs things clean. It doesn’t just hide the dirt—it rewrites the whole story.
And that’s what I know success can do for me. It can rewrite my own story.
The day I left home, I didn’t just choose to chase the unwritten…I chose to surrender a story that was misunderstood. I was twenty-four and inexperienced at figuring out the difference between a broken heart and a broken spirit.
