Chapter One
TALLY
Ifhangoverscouldkill,I’d have been taken out by a sniper.
One bullet after another had come flying through the window—cheap wine, a failed situationship, and the creeping dread that I was once again making a mess of my life.
See, I could have done what I’d always done. I could have packed it all up and headed for the hills, or another country altogether, and pretended a change of scenery was the answer to all those dead-end prayers I kept sending skyward, forever unanswered.
Without fail, my life tended to spiral back to that same, chaotic choice. Stay and sort the wreckage, or duck out and hope it all looks better from somewhere else. And I was an expert at running. New cities, new jobs, new men—none of it had to stick if I told myself it was temporary. Reversible. Forgettable. Pencil marks I could erase later.
Running was easy. Running let me believe the problem was the place, not me. Staying meant I’d have to face the possibility that I was the common denominator in every failed attempt at a life.
So I kept moving. Hunting for the perfect moment, the perfect city, the perfect man—as if perfection itself would show up with a neon sign that said,Congratulations, you’ve arrived at adulthood!
Instead, all I’d managed to rack up was a pile of frequent flier miles and a nagging suspicion I was running in circles.
What I really wanted wasn’t perfection at all. I wanted somewhere to land. Somewhere that felt like home.
Which, for me, wasn’t a house, an address, or a name on a lease. Home was that weightless, fleeting feeling I’d yet to discover—but knew would let me finally exhale. Somewhere I didn’t have to hustle, apologize, or explain myself. Somewhere I could let the tension in my shoulders soften and, maybe, just maybe, believe I was allowed to stay.
I’d never had that. Certainly not growing up in Newnan, Georgia, where my mother made sure I unfailingly knew I was an accessory to her carefully curated life, not the main event. Not in any of the cities I’d dipped in and out of like a girl trying on lives in a dressing room. Certainly not in New York, though I’d tried like hell.
That’s how I ended up in a clawfoot bathtub in Brooklyn, dry-heaving into a plastic shopping bag, while my poodle, NancyReagan, stared at me like she was debating calling animal control.
I’d spent twelve years chasing that idea of perfection as if it were hiding in another zip code. Paris in the rain. A noodle shop in Tokyo during a thunderstorm. A tent under the Northern Lights with a man still saved in my phone as “???”
And yet, somehow, every detour brought me back to New York. The city was my toxic ex—I knew better, but I still couldn’t quit it, no matter how hard I’d tried.
Three boroughs. Six apartments. One closet-sized storage unit I paid for and never opened. And unsurprisingly, I’d landed in a sweltering fourth-floor walk-up with a broken A/C and a dog who deserved better.
Nancy gave a half-hearted huff and did her usual slow spin before collapsing on the tile beside me.
“I know,” I mumbled, wiping my forehead with the hem of my t-shirt. “This is not our finest moment.”
She let out a sigh that sounded a whole lot likespeak for yourself.
There was, of course, the possibility that I’d been searching so long that I forgot what I was actually looking for. I thought if I kept moving, kept chasing, I’d eventually stumble into a place where I fit. Somewhere I belonged. Or into a person who made me feel like I’d mattered all along. Or even just into myself, without all the judgment and guilt I carried around like luggage I couldn’t unpack.
So instead, I took pictures of the kind of lives I wanted—ones with string lights, soup bowls, and hands reaching for each other across tables. I captured the joy of strangers because it was safer than asking why I hadn’t found any of that tangible happiness of my own. Why I’d never been the girl worth staying for, or the one someone asked to stay. Why I inevitably seemed to end up right back where I started, heart cracked, bank account empty,pretending the loneliness of it all didn’t feel like an open, gaping wound.
I wanted a life that felt still. That felt like it was all mine. And someone who wanted nothing more than to share that stillness with me.
But all I had was a plastic bodega bag full of nausea and a foreboding feeling that everything was about to change.
And God help me, I think I wanted it to.
In New York, I’d tried turning my camera into a livelihood. Weddings, engagement shoots, the occasional overpriced Bumble date session where some guy named Chad wanted to look casually windswept in Central Park. But the Big Apple didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for a girl with a Canon and a talent for spiraling.
My phone buzzed against the tile. I squinted at the screen.
VENMO REQUEST: $847.23 - SUBLEASE RENT (OVERDUE)Jess says: Hey girl! No pressure but my landlord is asking…
I turned the phone face down.
I thought that this time, I could finally make it here. I honestly believed it, in that stubborn, starry-eyed way people do when they’ve seen too many movies about wide-eyed dreamers and Broadway musicals where someone’s big break is right around the corner.
I’d arrived in the city once again with an unpacked suitcase full of half-baked dreams and a portfolio of shots from around the world, full of what I was sure were world-changing images. Ones I thought could stop people in their tracks and make themfeelsomething. I figured New York would take another look and scoop me off the sidewalk, a long-lost prodigy they’d be searching for all this time. That I’d land the dream job. The cover shoot. The Life.
