She didn’t finish; she didn’t have to. We both knew the math. I was the only one paying bills right now, and she was praying to match locally for residency next week. Until then, she was broke and buried in loans.
I didn’t answer right away. I let my eyes drift over the living room of our family home. Our parents had handed us the title before retiring and moving to Florida. “Young and energetic,”they’d said. “You can handle mowing the lawn and patching the walls.” All they wanted was to travel, to enjoy life after working hard to get us through college.
They gave us a choice: take the house now and keep their tax rate or wait and risk getting slammed. California had rules for this kind of thing; we did the math and said yes. It was paid off. All we had to cover were the repairs, utilities, and annual taxes.
Those taxes were a springtime sucker punch. Each year, they chewed through my assistant’s salary like a rabbit in a vegetable patch. But I told myself it was worth it, a good deal, and that was before becoming jobless.
Jobless—such a foreign word in my vocabulary. I’d never gone without work, not since those summer camp jobs back in high school. Sam shifted beside me, pulling me back to the present.
I glanced at her. She wasn’t even supposed to be here right now. “How come you’re home early?”
“Half-day clinic,” she said. Then, more gently, “So...how long?”
“They were generous,” I replied with a bitter smile, trying to inject levity into the situation. “Two-week stipend, a gold star of a whole fourteen days to reinvent my life.”
Her lips parted. “You’re already out.”
“Yup. Just me, the couch, and a to-do list that starts with ‘don’t cry in public,’ followed by ‘figure out how to make ramen look gourmet.’”
She didn’t say anything, and leaned against me. If only sisterly shoulder pressing could physically hold up my ego and the whole damn day.
After three years at the law firm, work had gone stale. I had wanted more movement, more excitement, but the steady paycheck kept me lazily scouting instead of leaping. Today’s bombshell shook me; now I regretted not having aggressively looked for another job.
We sat quietly. Normally, I’d call Erica, my disaster hotline, but she and her husband had recently moved to Thailand for his job. Three years overseas, right when I could’ve used her the most.
I let my head fall back. “Are you still going out tonight?”
Sam didn’t say anything at first. She had plans, something low-key with her med school crew. She needed it. Lately, her life has been all research and deadlines.
“Yeah,” she finally mumbled. “Match-week stress relief with some tequila in order.”
“You should go,” I said quickly. “Live your youth. Someone has to keep the spirit of our financial disaster alive.”
The idea of being alone tonight—me and the weight of my what-now spiral, sounded more thrilling than pretending I had energy for small talk. The date I’d agreed to, wouldn’t like this mood. My social battery was officially one percent.
She gave me a small, wistful smile. “I hear you,” she said, squeezing my shoulder before standing to get ready.
I stayed right where I was, sinking deeper into the couch, but it couldn’t swallow the entire day. My eyes drifted to Sam’s med books stacked under the table. The room carried our fingerprints now—my thrift-store lamp perched on the side table, a throw blanket sliding halfway to the floor. The old oil painting of Lake Tahoe still hung over the mantel, but now it leaned against a framed photo of me and Erica mid-laugh at a festival in SoCal before she left.
What used to be Mom’s drop-in-ready living room had softened into ours, lived in, a little uneven, but real. Normally, it comforted me. Tonight, though, even this space felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for me to figure out what came next.
I didn’t even reach for my purse to cancel my date. He could take the hint from the ghosting, or from a selfie I would send him with my hair screaming torched ambition and panic sweat.
“I hate leaving you like this,” Sam said, stepping back into the living room.
I looked up.
She slung her crossbody over one shoulder. “You’re not even going to have a proper Friday night meltdown. A couch crash with existential dread and no snacks, that’s it.”
I smirked. She was the sassier version of me, and better at knowing when to take a break.
“I was actually about to cancel on someone I was supposed to meet tonight.”
She faced me directly. “Wait. Cancel on who?”
“Andrew Clifford.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “That sexy intern from your firm?”
