“Good luck with that, sweetheart.” He waves me off with a cocky grin, like he has all the answers and I have none. “See you tomorrow.”
Where was all this swagger on our date? If he’d shown even an ounce of this attitude then, I might have at least taken him home for the night and then maybe none of this would even be happening.
I flip him off as I push through my front door. “See you never.”
—
Sunshine warms my face againthe next morning.
I don’t need much more than that to know nothing has changed.
I’m still in Heart Springs.
For the third morning in a row, I’m waking up in a bed that’s not my own, in a place I’ve never even heard of. I haven’t been able to check my email in seventy-two hours, which is seventy-one and a half hours longer than I’ve ever gone before. My grandmother has no idea where I am, and though I know she won’t be fretting about my safety, she sure as hell is going to be pissed at me for screwing up a billion-dollar deal. I’m trapped here, with no way of getting home and no way of calling for help, loathe though I am to admit I need it.
We’ve gone beyond something being not quite right and I’ve been pushed over the edge into an unfamiliar emotion: hopelessness.
I throw off the covers and trudge into the living room. Everything looks just as pristine as it did the day before, and the day before that. My dragging feet carry me to the kitchen, where, luckily, I find an espresso machine waiting.
Espresso you make for yourself is never as good as when someone else makes it for you, but if my only other option is another face-to-face meeting with Mimi, who claims not to know me, then I’ll deal with subpar coffee.
After I knock back the shot, I open the door to the pantry. I don’t think I’ve even eaten anything since being here, and though I didn’t feel hungry before, my stomach issuddenly rumbling. And the pantry is full of my favorite snacks, all the junk food I only let myself indulge in on the rare occasions when I lose a case.
I scoop a bag of Doritos and a sleeve of Oreos into my arms, bringing the goods back with me to the couch. I sink—quite literally—into the cushy sofa, flicking on the TV as I open the cookies.
A woman’s face fills the screen as the TV comes to life. She wears a frilly pastel sundress, much like the ones hanging in the closet in my room. Her makeup is simple and natural, her hair curled and hanging over her shoulders.
I try to change the channel, but despite pushing the buttons on the remote and the TV itself, no other choices pop up.
“Whatever,” I grumble through a mouthful of cookie crumbs.
If I’m going to be stuck here in pastel purgatory, I may as well enjoy the break. When was the last time I let myself sit on the couch and just veg? Probably junior high, but even then, I was busting my ass to make straight As and win every speech and debate competition I could find. My mom would always encourage me to take it easy, enjoy time with my friends and not worry so much about silly things like grades and trophies. Which is how she ended up on the other side of the country working for pennies, tapping out on raising me before I even reached high school, leaving me in the care of my grandmother, who got a chance to fix the mistakes she made with her own daughter. Grandmother isn’t one to make the same mistakes twice, which is how I ended up a partner in our family’s law firm. I’ve never regretted not taking my mother’s advice.
But today, I let myself go with it. Minutes bleed intohours. The only time I move from the sofa is to get more snacks. Luckily the pantry keeps a full stock of options and I sample a little bit of everything.
When the first movie—a story about a brunette PR exec who goes back to her small hometown and falls in love with a bakery owner—ends with the woman giving up her dreams to stay in the small town, I throw a Twinkie at the TV.
Fortunately, I have terrible aim.
Unfortunately, as soon as that movie ends, another one begins.
This one is about a blond talent agent who follows her client to a small-town inn where she gets snowed in and falls in love with the owner.
At the end, she quits her agency—the one she founded—to move in and work with her new husband.
By the time the fourth film wraps, a horrifying realization has dawned on me. The towns in these movies, they look alarmingly like Heart Springs. Everything is bright and colorful and clean. The people sound like they’re in a sitcom from the 1950s. All the conflicts resolve in exactly one hour and forty-two minutes.
And I am the big-city girl—brash and “unlikeable” and with a high-powered job that, according to these movies, is making me miserable and sucking away my chance at true love.
I’m a big-city girl and I’m trapped in a small town.
I sit up straight—or as straight as the cushions will allow me to.
I’m a big-city girl and I’m trapped in a small town.
The opening of this story might be familiar, but I refuseto be the kind of woman who abandons her dreams for the love of a small-town man.
Fuck that.
