My heart plummets into the bottom of my stomach over the thought of moving home. It’s the last thing I want to do. The small town in New York that I come from is suffocating, with more cows than people in the rural community. There’s no opportunity, no excitement. The town practically partied when a pizzeria moved into an old store front on Main Street, but the lack of population and traffic made it close a year later.
I always told myself I’d get out of there, and I did. I won’t go back for more than a few days at a time to visit family around the holidays because I’m afraid of being stuck.
I drop my head onto the headrest. “You know, sponge baths don’t sound so bad.”
“You’re hopeless.”
I smirk. “But you love me.”
“And I question why very often.”
“You’d be sad without me.”
“I’d certainly be bored,” she surmises.
Knowing I need to eat now that my medicine has kicked in, I reach for my apple. “I need to get going so I can have dinner. I’ll talk to you soon, okay? I promise I’ll be fine.”
“No old men, Rylee,” she tells me in her serious voice. It’s the same one I imagine she uses on her elementary class full of first graders. The thought makes me snicker.
“I’ll do my best,” I say before saying goodbye and hanging up. I don’t want to hear a lecture on true love and fairytale endings that she’s believed in since the day we watched Beauty and the Beast for the first time. She’s a hopeless romantic and I’m just…hopeless.
Grandpa Al has always believed that things happen for a reason, and his life may not have been easy, but it was happy. So, he must know what he was talking about to find contentment in everything he did.
Biting into my apple, I stare out the window and shake my head. Unlike Moffie and my grandparents, I don’t believe in love at first sight, or anything related to it. True love seems more daunting than its worth, like we’re pressured to find our one perfect person. There are billions of people on our planet—how can only one person be the main source of my happiness?
Exhaling through my nose, I turn to glance at the photo of my grandparents on the dashboard. They were free spirits, always smiling and laughing no matter what moods they were in. It’s one of the reasons why I loved them so much—they were positive people who found something to appreciate in everyday life.
Swallowing down emotion, I squeeze the bitten fruit in my fingers. “What do I do, Grandpa Al? Send me a sign. Something.”
Nothing happens.
And by the time exhaustion takes over sometime later, I let it take me into a peaceful oblivion to get what little sleep I can.
I’m awoken to the brutal ray of hot sunlight beaming me through the windshield, then the extra noise I soon recognize as my phone going off where I tossed it in the passenger seat.
Launching for it when I see my boss’s name flashing, I hit the ACCEPT button and press the cell to my ear while wincing through the morning pain I have every day in my shoulders and back, certainly not helped by the uncomfortable seats I slept on. “Hello, Sarina.”
“Took you long enough,” my irritable, thirty-something boss greets me. “You wanted to know about any hot stories the press wants printed, and I found you one. Based on the history you have with the people involved, I think you’re the best option to cover it.”
I sit up too quickly, feeling lightheadedness take over. I blink a few times to adjust and dig through my bag for the travel notebook and pen I keep with me for times like this. “Who’s the story on?”
There aren’t many people I’ve covered that would require history for new stories. We’re all sharks in the water circling people we could make money on. I’m not the proudest of what I’ve done to get a scoop, and even still wake up in the middle of the night when my conscious haunts me with the memories, but we do what we have to in order to make money for ourselves.
To survive.
“Violet Wonders,” Sarina replies casually. I’m glad she can’t see the way my shoulders straighten and square—my body becoming rigid with tension. “Specifically, Garrick Matthews. Word around town is that he and Zayne Gray are on the outs again and not one of the band members has said a word since news broke over the juicy gossip. There are whispers that he’s thinking about leaving the group for good, some cell phone audio too that someone recorded. It’s hard to make out, which is why the scoop is so sought after. You already have an in with them, which means…”
She thinks I can get the gossip.
I refrain from sighing…and groaning. I rest my forehead against the edge of the steering wheel and internally exhale. “Last time I was around them, things were complicated.”
Her laugh is dry. “Rylee, if breaking a story that could make or break someone isn’t complicated then I might be worried about you. Or maybe proud. It’s a tossup.”
My lips press into a flat line. Unlike major newspapers, free presses and tabloids don’t care about morality that much. In their minds, you do whatever you can to get the story of the century even if it’s questionable. Sarina certainly always tells me to forget about what I believe in for a decent payday, and I’ve had too many close calls with over drafting my bank account to second guess what she says.
But what I did…
Shaking my head to free myself from the memory, I sit up and remember how much I need the money. Even though my voice is reluctant, I tell her, “I’m on it. When is the deadline?”
“As long as you give me something juicy before anyone else can, I don’t care. They’re
