Chapter One
Ivy
The flyer clearly said applicants wanted for a brand-new marketing firm under Emory Enterprises.
That’s it, the end.
Or maybe that’s just the beginning.
I wasn’t homeless yet, but it was looking to go that way post-graduation—why did nobody ever warn me about life after college? I mean, I vaguely remember my grandma giving me a lecture on how important it was to pick a major that would guarantee me a job post-graduation—but I also remember her smoking a ton of weed while she was going through chemo sooooooo some things got lost in translation.
Apparently, a lot of things.
Like when I found the chihuahua in the toilet because she wanted to give it a bath and the bathtub was too large, and she was afraid it would give him nightmares. Or the multiple times I found her sitting on the couch eating chips and going on and on about Baywatch and how she could one hundred percent fit in a red bikini better than The Rock or Zac Efron.
So, it’s not like I truly paid attention when she said at one point that all of this was important, well, until the pink flier and the fact that I double majored in piano performance and music.
I wince at the sound of stapling a piece of blank paper fills the air, and then I sigh. After applying for the internship, I was shocked when I actually got the job along with ten other interns.
And it was a paid internship!
I‘d already mentally spent all the money I was going to earn by my first day, but by day twelve, I was ready to commit murder.
And it was all his fault.
Staple.
Staple.
Staple.
Newsflash, basically everything we do is digital, but he clearly remembered that things like stapling and nails going down a chalkboard trigger me past the point of sanity.
Staple.
Staple.
Must he hit it so hard?
What the hell is he even stapling?
All of our desks are in the same area of the office, the newbie area, and lucky us, the CEO doesn’t believe in cubicles, so everyone can see everyone and hear everything.
I can still smell the tuna from Anderson four desks down.
My row of five desks faces the other row of five with a nice little community area in the middle with coffee, snacks, and a nice little conference table.
And yet I still hear the staples being punched into the paper.
I didn’t know when I took this internship that he would too. My old next-door neighbor, childhood nemesis, high school bully, and college crush.
It was a slight crush, but he’d really filled out, and I hadn’t recognized him, so I hit on him… he kissed me then said he didn’t date girls like me.
Whatever the hell that meant.
He then grabbed another girl’s hand and took her upstairs. After that, the party was a blur except for puking up those little Jack in the Box tacos into the toilet and watching them swirl down toward the ocean to meet Nemo.
It’s his fault I can’t even eat Jack in the Box anymore!
Not that it matters since his name is, in fact, Jack; should have been a huge beaming neon sign in front of that one. My roommate at the time said that I was so sad about his rejection I wanted to actually eat him.