3+ years of professional writing experience preferred
Okay, so I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m an “animal lover.” I always wanted a dog, but Dad said no one would ever be around enough to take care of it. Then at the Start of Summer Carnival, I won a goldfish, but let’s just say I knew there was something I forgot when I left for camp.
Besides that, the rescue is also pretty far from here and I have zero or less years of professional writing experience, but it does get me thinking.
I never thought about piecing work together until I could figure out my next move. I have had it so ingrained into my head that there’s only one right way, only one direction, that it never even crossed my mind that there might be something that allows more time in my schedule for my novel but also pays my rent.
I favorite the post and change the job search at the top from “Education” to “Freelance Writer.” Dozens of jobs populate, so many of them either nearby or remote — news journalist for a local paper, interviewer for an online memoir company, food-feature writer for a restaurant chain — now that’s something I could get excited about.
The possibilities seem so vast to me. As someone who’s lived the last decade or so on such a narrow path, I guess black and white thinking has become a learned trait. I condemn my Dad for thinking my life’s work means teaching or failure. Am upset by his thought that if I leave education, I’m not the successful child he raised me to be. But somewhere along the line, I’ve started to see the world the same way. I have developed the thought that if it’s not teaching, it’s book-writing or nothing. That I either have to give up on my dream or take it on so aggressively that I have to give up everything else. But the world is filled with so much gray. So much beautiful, glistening silver that holds opportunities I’m just now seeing for the very first time.
I close my laptop, determined to ride out this new high.
And find my best friend.
I’m prettysure Chloe’s neighbors either hate me or are eighty-year-olds with their hearing aids turned all the way off. I am pounding on Chloe’s door and not one has poked their head out to see where the fire was. I didn’t even knock first, just went straight to breaking down the door. Call it adrenaline but the second I got here and didn’t see her car anywhere nearby, I started freaking out.
I raise my hand to whack the door one more time, but instead of the door, my fist hits bone. I yell and two other cries follow. One is Chloe’s God-awful screech and the other is deeper, more guttural — low like a growl. I focus my eyes and see a half-naked Ronan hunched over, hands to his face.
“Oh my God, Ronan!” I yell.
“Claire!” Chloe yells back. “What the hell?”
“I didn’t kn…What is even happening here?”
The aftermath is pure chaos, Chloe running to the freezer for ice, me running to Ronan, and Ronan stumbling back onto the chaise behind him.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” Chloe says as she wraps a bag of frozen fruit into a dishtowel.
“You weren’t answering your phone!”
“It’s dead!”
“Well, I thoughtyouwere dead!”
Meanwhile, Ronan holds his nose, blood slowly creeping from his nostril, and snaps his head back and forth between the two of us.
“Not dead! Just wish I was!”
“Hungover,” Ronan clarifies. I try to steady myself, pieces slowly falling into place. Ronan, Chloe in a man’s t-shirt, two glasses on the kitchentable, Chloe’sSpiritual Gangstatank top near the bathroom on the floor.
“Wait a second. Did you two—”
“No,” they both say in unison.
“Then will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
“I got drunk,” Chloe says.
“Very,” adds Ronan.
“Okay, I got very drunk. Ronan drove my car home for me andallegedlyput me to bed.” She winks at me waiting for his response.
