Page 1 of Wells

ONE

Cera

The Masquerade: A masquerade hides identity so completely that the point stops being the costume and becomes the freedom of going unknown, untouchable by anyone who cannot name you. Behind the lace, the wig, and a borrowed city, she finds that unfindable feels a great deal like safe.

I have been staring at the same rejection email for ten minutes.

"We have decided to move forward with other candidates."

Three jobs in this entire city I was actually qualified for, and that is the second polite no. The third has not answered at all, which is its own kind of answer.

I was so positive about finding a new job after I was let go a month ago. With every day of silence, or, worse, a rejection, my confidence erodes a little more.

Locke plucks the phone out of my hand and sets it face down on the coffee table like he is confiscating a weapon.

"Stop reading it. It's not changing, so we need to figure out something else."

"I'm not expecting it to change. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though."

"I am trying to give you back your morale. Staring at that email won't do it, Darlin'." He folds himself onto my couch, all long limbs and certainty, and hands me the glass of wine he poured before I could pretend I didn't want it.

"Plus, anybody named Mark Rudy sounds like he irons his jeans and alphabetizes his canned goods. So fuck Mark Rudy. Put him out of your life once and for all."

A laugh comes out of me even though I’d rather cry than laugh tonight. It’s the entire reason I let him in tonight. Locke is the only person alive who can find a reason to laugh when the world is falling apart around me.

"Mark Rudy is the recruiter for the biggest hospital system in the city," I say. "I need Mark Rudy in my life if I want to get a job. He recruits for nineteen hospitals, and I don't even know how many clinics. I need Mark Rudy. I need a job."

"You hated that job."

"I hated that job. You're right. I would crawl back to it on both knees right now and thank them for the chance, because the pay is good and I can do it in my sleep."

"Let's recalibrate. We know you've looked at and applied for all of the medical billing-related jobs in the tricounty area. What else can we do with your experience? Let's think outside of the box, Cera Beara."

What I actually want, the thing I went to school for, is to make things. Layouts, brand work, the kind of design that makes a person feel something before they have read a single word. But design in this city pays like a hobby, and a hobby does not cover rent. Learning to code a femur fracture is survival.

"Locke, you're wearing me out. I don't think there is anything else that pays like this that will hire me with my experience. Or, lack thereof."

"That isn't true. People get jobs all the time without experience. Where do you think experience comes from? You've got to create it!"

I huff out an exhale. Maybe he's right. I've only been focusing on what I’ve been doing. I should branch out. Fuck, I don't even know where to start.

"You're allowed to be sad about Cas, too, by the way. Even though good riddance," Locke says, in as gentle a way as he can.

"I'm not sad about Cas."

"Cera."

"I'm not. I promise you." And it's true, which is the part that unsettles me. "I knew. Somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew he wasn't the one. I just kept turning the volume down on it, because the apartment was nice and the routine was easy, and being needed felt close enough to being loved that I stopped checking the difference.

Locke goes quiet. He's good at a great many things and best at knowing when not to fill a silence.

"Cas was a loser. You've always deserved so much better."

"I know that in the core of my being. The lease is in my name. I covered us every time his commission months came up thin, which was most months, and I told myself that was partnership."

After several seconds of silence, both of us sipping our wine, he pats my knee.

"And then you lost your job, and the one time, the single time, you needed him to carry it, he looked at you like a bill that had come due. He was gone in six days."