Are you going to always just report on other people’s adventures or have your own?
When she had gotten on that gondola, that choice had changed her life. For the first time, she hadn’t been worried about playing it safe and following the life plan that she’d mapped out when she was an overambitious thirteen-year-old. She had just lived in the moment. She still remembered how she felt going up that mountain. She’d felt free, free from her own expectations and pressure she’d put on herself.
Brendan had poured them both a glass of Champagne and had made a toast . . .
To a lifetime of adventures . . .
When their Champagne glasses touched, their eyes had met, and she’d known in that moment that her lifetime of adventures was just starting.
She’d dated Brendan for four years. From that first night, the spark between them had ignited something inside her that made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt in her life. Brendan was constantly challenging her, pushing her to take risks, to be daring, and to always go after what she wanted.
After six months, they’d moved in together. They were already together 24-7 so it had just seemed like the natural thing to do. Brendan was a ski instructor, and in the off-season, he worked as an outdoor guide, doing everything from white-water rafting to hiking and fishing adventures. Their schedules had worked well together. Even though she had been anchoring three shows a day, which meant she’d go to work in the afternoon and come home around midnight, they always found a way to spend quality time together.
Riley had always appreciated how Brendan had given her the freedom to do what she loved and never made her feel guilty for the long hours she worked. His hours had also been all over the place, and sometimes he’d be gone for several weeks as a guide on different tours.
When she’d fought hard for the opportunity to go to Afghanistan as an embedded TV reporter with a local Army Reserve unit, Brendan had supported her decision. He’d also stood by her when her boss had initially refused to send a female reporter into a war zone, and she’d threatened to quit her job over it. After she’d finally won that battle and gone to Afghanistan for several months, Brendan had understood how emotionally and physically challenging the assignment had been and had welcomed her home with open arms.
He had continued to support her when, after doing her first TV documentary, she decided she needed to go back to Afghanistan for a second story. This time, when her boss had refused to approve her trip, she’d made a life-changing career decision and quit her job. That’s when she’d called her mom and said she hadn’t just quit her job, she’d quit her career.
She’d seen the way news reporting was changing, favoring the more sensational, and she hadn’t wanted to be a part of that change.
Within a week of. her quitting, Brendan had planned a trip for them to Switzerland, where he’d been asked to guide a two-week tour in the Swiss Alps. At first she had said there was no way she could go, she had to figure out what she was going to do for work, but when Brendan had said the outfitting company he worked for was looking for a freelance writer to go along and report on the story for a national travel magazine, she’d agreed to give it a try.
At the time, she’d only ever covered hard news stories. She’d never written a travel story, but with Brendan’s encouragement, she gave it a shot. When it turned out she not only loved it but was also really good at telling inspiring, uplifting stories, they’d started traveling the world together. She had never been happier, telling stories she loved with the person she loved. It was a dream come true. Until the dream didn’t pay the rent . . .
While they had gotten to travel for free, living a million-dollar lifestyle with all their amazing trips, they were getting paid hardly anything. To make ends meet, she started dipping into her 401K retirement fund, which everyone warned her not to touch. When all her savings were almost gone, that’s when she came face-to-face with her financial reality.
It’s not as if she had planned for it to happen. She was always searching for new ways to monetize her travel writing, but this was before the world of influencers and travel writers getting paid to post their content on social media. Her only outlets were print and online magazines, and they had started paying less and less, barely making it themselves.
So where she’d started in high school always doing everything right financially, making sure she’d have a secure future, she now found herself living the life of Peter Pan, traveling the world, having an amazing time, but not acting like a real grown-up.
When her savings had almost run out, she had known she’d come to the end of this adventure. She’d needed a new plan, and to come up with one, she had to stop traveling and put in the work. But this time, Brendan hadn’t understood or supported her decision. He’d loved their lifestyle, and he’d had no intention of giving it up. He’d kept telling her it would work out, she just had to have some faith.
As the tension between them continued to grow, Riley no longer saw Brendan as her great adventure. Instead, she saw him as her great distraction. It had been clear that to truly move forward with her life, she would have to let him go.
The breakup hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought it would be.
He’d already come to the same conclusion that they no longer wanted the same things in life. But since their apartment technically had been his,
