Chapter One
There’s nothing quite like getting fired and spending six weeks scouring Miami for a new job, only to end up declaring defeat, to make you reevaluate your life choices.
As I drive along the familiar, palm-tree-lined road on the opposite side of the Floridian peninsula, my battered confidence rattles around, complaining as loud as my car’s engine. Not sure why the motor gets to whine whenI’mthe one who’s had to work the pedals while needing to pee for the last twenty-seven minutes.
This three-and-a-half-hour drive has given me too much time to think, to relive sitting across from my now-former boss, dragging my palms down my pleated skirt and sweating so much my antiperspirant didn’t stand a chance.
Anyone who says all publicity is good publicity has never had to come up with an explanation for a stray pair of underwear.
Sure, I’ve been in trouble before, but this time was different. This time, I couldn’t smooth it over with a cheery smile, perfectly curated response, and my signature can-do attitude. Not with my client blowing up on social media…for all thewrongreasons.
What happened?
My boss had opened with that question that never fails to make me feel like a kid, and I’ve always been a goody-two-shoes. The rule-follower, the appeaser, the fixer. The sort of student a teacher puts in charge of a classroom, cementing their position as an unpopular nerd among their peers for years to come. I’m Mia Andrews. I don’t drop the ball. Don’t make careless mistakes. Not as the reliable one, the adult in the room, the person people turn to for help during an emergency.
Six weeks later, and I still don’t know how I could’ve bungled things so badly. How I could’ve let so many people down, especially myself.
With my destination in view, I signal and slow. The instant I turn down the ostentatious entryway, I feel like a little kid again. But this time, in the best of ways. It doesn’t matter that my life’s a mess or that I’m twenty-six years old—there’s just something about Grandma’s house.
That’s right, I called in my version of the calvary. What I usually am for everyone else, my Grandma Helen is for me. When I broke down over the phone about my lack of employment opportunities, she insisted I drive over the swamplands and through the Everglades, to grandmother’s active retirement community, I go. Not because my five years of being employed by one of the biggest PR firms in Miami was a long enough career to be pensioned off already, but because a position had opened up, and Lakeview Retirement Community was willing to take a chance on me.
Theonlyplace willing to take a chance on me,I think, my throat beginning to clamp. Aftermy grandma called in a favor.
At least this job—polishing the village’s image to attract new residents—keeps me in the field of PR. But it’s a task that seems laughable, considering my memories of tennis courts and oases of crystalline pools, shrubbery kept neat and trim, and flowerbeds planted so something’s always in bloom. Why would anything so squeaky-clean need polishing?
But I needed the job and the win. While I still didn’t have a complete grasp of why I crashed so hard, I knew I was burning the candle at both ends, going way too long without a break.
It’s not like I didn’t realize a career in public relations would be demanding. If anything, I considered being busy a perk—I thrive in fast-paced environments. It’s during the quiet, calm stretches my brain attempts to sabotage me.
But I’d felt off for months, the fog in my head so thick I couldn’t access my short-term memories or full range of vocabulary. Somewhere in the middle of all that, my stepbrother needed help enrolling in college and then settling into a dorm, and couldn’t I just fly to Virginia for a few days to help? Knowing he wouldn’t get assistance from any of the parents we had between us, that left me to do the heavy lifting. So even as my inbox continued doing its best impression of Mt. Everest, I did what I always do when times get rough—I buckled down and pushed myself harder, faster, longer.
Until I hit a wall.
We’re talking Wile E. Coyote, running full speed ahead. Exhausted from long hours at the office, evenings and weekends spent on the sidelines of the basketball court or traveling for my family, and another Saturday night date gone wrong, I’d groaned at the blur of notifications on my phone and done something wildly unlike myself.
I silenced the dang thing and fell into bed for a nap that turned into the sleep of the dead.
For fifteen whole hours.
And what did my NBA superstar client do while I was completely do not disturbed?
Ezekiel King (or King EZ to his fans) did what he did best and landed himself in a mess.
Social media influencers from every platform came rushing out of the woodwork, adding more claims of infidelity and panty-snatching.
It took me three years of running errands and volunteering for side projects to convince my boss to give me an account of EZ’s magnitude, and for the past eleven months, I’d handled the eccentric baller’s publicity like a boss. A bleary-eyed, tired boss who showed up to basketball games and night club openings and oversaw commercial shoots. I spun his dirty plays on the basketball courts into displays of passion, finessed stories that highlighted his altruistic side, and stayed far, far away from any whispers of infidelity between him and Dahlia Vale, his movie star girlfriend.
Mostly because I’d witnessed them both getting pretty hot and heavy with other people. At the beginning of my career, I would’ve balked. But by year five, I barely batted an eye.
Until he passed me a pair of panties to hide as his girlfriend rushed up to surprise him after a game. They fell to the floor in the shuffle, as I’d obviously hesitated to touch someone else’s dirty underwear, the extra-lacy, extra-red thong starkly contrasting the white tile just outside the press-room door.
King EZ looked at me, pleading with his big brown eyes and unfairly long lashes, leaving me to stumble through an explanation about a wardrobe malfunction as I snatched them off the floor.
Mere moments before a swarm of reporters headed our way from the other end of the hall.
After that, I told him I was done covering for him, which evidently meant nobody was doing it.
Typical.
