"I want to come too." Stacy pouted.
"Stacy, why are you here?" Allie growled.
"I moved here! You inspired me! I have a job and an apartment. I'm living with someone you know." She smiled coyly.
Allie did not take the bait.
"Stacy, you can’t just stalk Carter."
"I’m not here because of Carter," she protested.
Several people in suits looked at them strongly as they exited the building.
"Keep your voice down! I can’t afford to lose this internship," Allie said. "Why didn’t you stay in North Carolina?"
"You said that you were doing really well here," Stacy whined. "I'm tired of that two-bit town. I want to do something different. Plus," she said, "there are a lot of rich men here."
"Except that you clearly are here after Carter," Allie said with a frown.
"I already told you," Stacy hissed. "He’smine. We’re going to be married. He just has to see that I’m the one for him."
"Go home or go back to work or whatever you’re doing, Stacy," Allie said. "I don’t have time for this." She walked away.
"I’ll call you!" Stacy shrieked after her. During lunch, she received a text message with an address and an emoji-littered note to meet at Stacy's after work.
Her curiosity got the better of her, and she dodged Carter's advances after work and met Stacy in front of her new apartment.
"Hi," Stacy cooed when she came down to meet Allie in the lobby. Allie followed her former roommate to the elevator, and they were let off on one of the upper floors. Stacy skipped to the apartment and opened the door.
As she peered into the luxury condo, everything in Allie seethed with jealousy.
"It is a beautiful space," she strangled out.
Tuning Stacy out as she chattered about the glorious condo, Allie studied the surroundings in awe. The condo had expansive windows that let in a lot of natural light. The kitchen was all white with gleaming white marble countertops with a touch of grey striations. There were tasteful brass accents in the drawer pulls and the lamps. The furniture was clearly high-end, and the finishing touches made the whole place look like something out of a design blog. There was even a small balcony overflowing with potted plants.
Allie wanted to curl up and cry.
"How did you afford this?" she asked Stacy.
"I have a sugar daddy!" Stacy said, whipping out her phone to show Allie a picture.
Harris Holbrook. Great. Just great. She wondered if she should bring it up with Carter.
She received a message on her phone after she left Stacy's building. Could it be him? No. It was Bryce. He wanted to meet to talk about their relationship.
"That's never going to happen," she muttered to herself.
She wished she could block Bryce from her phone, but she wanted to keep tabs on him to see if he would escalate.
It was just one more thing to add to her already unbearable load. Between the intense work and the horrible home life, she felt frazzled. She couldn't sleep enough, and she was always on edge.
She envied the other girls—the well-dressed ones whose boyfriends came to take them on nice trips and paid for their apartments. A boyfriend like that would solve all of her problems.
"You never had anything with Carter," she told herself. "Men like him don't like girls like you."
She felt tears prick her eyes. She worked so hard and never made any progress.
"Why is life so unfair?" she whispered
