Chapter 1 - Gaby
The cursor blinked at me accusingly from my computer screen, marking the end of yet another paragraph I'd rewritten three times. My eyes burned from the relentless glow of the monitor, and when I rubbed them, mascara flaked onto my fingertips like tiny beetles. Ten-thirty at night. The office had emptied hours ago, the fluorescent lights clicking off one by one as my coworkers escaped to their real lives—the ones with Thai takeout and Netflix queues and people who actually cared if they made it home.
I had a marketing report due to Mr. Brown by eight tomorrow morning, and every cell in my body screamed that it wasn't good enough. Would never be good enough.
"Gabrielle, you're not stupid," I muttered to myself, fingers hovering over the keyboard. "You graduated summa cum laude. You've been here three years. You know what you're doing."
But the voice in my head—the one that sounded disturbingly like my father—whispered back:Do you, though? Or have you just been lucky? How long until someone realizes you don't belong here?
I scrolled through the report again, analyzing every sentence for flaws Mr. Brown would inevitably find. The quarterly projections looked solid. The consumer behavior analysis was thorough. The recommendations were backed by data. And yet, my stomach churned with the certainty that I'd missed something crucial, some glaring error that would expose me as the fraud I really was.
Imposter syndrome. That's what the self-help books call it. As if naming the beast made it any less hungry.
My phone buzzed, making me jump. A text from Lisa:Still there? You promised you'd leave by 9. Come get drinks with me!
I should go home. Shower. Sleep. Start fresh in the morning with clear eyes and a functioning brain. But what if I'd made a mistake in the demographic segmentation? What if the font choices weren't professional enough? What if—
Another buzz.I'm not taking no for an answer. Meet me at Finnegan's in 20.
I slumped back in my chair, the leather creaking in the empty office. Through the window behind me, Manhattan glittered with a thousand other lives being lived. People laughing. Touching. Existing without this constant, gnawing fear that they were seconds away from being revealed as inadequate.
My father had taught me early that love was transactional. You earned it through achievement, through perfection, through never showing weakness. Every A-minus was a disappointment. Every second-place finish was a failure. When Mom died during my sophomore year of college, he'd given me exactly three days to grieve before reminding me that "Blanchards don't fall apart."
So I didn't. I became the daughter he wanted: driven, successful, impeccable. I climbed every ladder, checked every box, and somewhere along the way, I forgot how to exist as anything other than a list of accomplishments.
I saved the report—for the ninth time—and shut down my computer. Lisa was right. I needed to get out of here before I started seeing errors that didn't exist.
The elevator ride down felt longer than usual, my reflection in the polished doors showing a woman who looked older than twenty-five. Dark circles shadowed my eyes. Myauburn hair, usually neat in its bun, had started escaping in wisps around my face. My navy blazer had a coffee stain on the cuff I hadn't noticed until now.
Pathetic.
Finnegan's was a dive bar three blocks from the office, the kind of place where the wood was sticky and the music too loud and nobody cared what you did for a living. Lisa had already claimed a corner booth when I arrived, two shot glasses and a pitcher of beer waiting on the scarred table.
"There she is!" Lisa's face lit up as I slid in across from her. "The woman of the hour. Come on, we're celebrating."
"Celebrating what?" I accepted the shot glass she thrust at me, the vodka sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
"You finished the Brown report, didn't you? That's worth celebrating." She raised her glass. "To my brilliant, workaholic best friend who needs to learn the meaning of work-life balance."
I clinked my glass against hers and tossed back the shot. It burned going down, harsh and medicinal, but the warmth that spread through my chest afterward was almost pleasant. Almost enough to quiet the voice telling me the report still wasn't perfect.
"So," Lisa said, pouring beer into two glasses, "tell me you're at least going to take a personal day this week. You've been working yourself to death."
"I'm fine."
"Gaby." She fixed me with that look, the one that said she saw right through my bullshit. "When's the last time you did something just for fun? When's the last time you went on a date, or saw a movie, or did anything that wasn't work-related?"
I couldn't remember. Didn't want to remember. Fun felt dangerous, like if I let myself relax for even a moment, everything I'd built would crumble.
"I like my work," I said, which wasn't entirely a lie. I liked the structure of it, the clear metrics of success and failure. You either hit your targets or you didn't. You either impressed your boss or you got fired. Simple.
Lisa sighed and took a long drink of her beer. "You know what your problem is? You think if you're not constantly productive, you're not worthy of existing."
Her words hit too close to home. I forced a smile, trying to deflect. "That's not—"
"It is, though." Her voice softened. "And I get it. I know your dad's a piece of work. But you don't have to prove anything to anyone, Gaby. You're already enough."
I am not enough, the voice whispered. I will never be enough.
