Seven years later

I needed a job.

Like, a real job. A grown-up job. Not temp work, nothing part-time with no benefits, and definitely not an unpaid internship. No, I needed a career, something that was not only fulfilling but would actually pay the bills too—bills like the eighty-thousand dollars in student loans that had somehow snuck up on me in the year since graduation.

I had started sending out my résumé months before I’d even graduated, but I hadn’t been hired by anything better than a temp agency. It wasn’t like I was underqualified for anything I applied to—with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a near perfect GPA, and a myriad of internships under my belt, I should have been the perfect candidate for the jobs I wanted. Yet, hardly anyone called me back. Even for the handful that did ask me to come in for an interview, I never made it past the second round. It didn’t matter that I’d been to see career coaches and sought out every available resource—nothing had helped me land a full-time job, and now I was up the creek of adulthood without a paddle.

At this point I was starting to get desperate. My dreams of working at a top consulting or lobbying firm had been shattered in my first few months out of school, and since then I had lowered my standards from having my future business cards read Rose Thompson, Senior Consultant to Rose Thompson, Glorified Errand-Girl. I would have done just about anything to get my foot in the door at even a semi-respectable company.

But to be honest, respectability wasn’t about to pay my bills. Sure, I was making a little money with the temp jobs I managed to snag here and there, but it wasn’t nearly enough to support myself. Which was why at the ripe age of twenty-two, when all of my friends had already moved out on their own, I was still living in my childhood home in a suburb of Washington, D.C. with my father.

In the grand scheme of things, I was lucky that I had somewhere to go and a family to fall back on, small as it was. It was just the two of us in the little brick house, and although some days it was absolutely suffocating, I knew I had it better than some people. Together we mostly subsisted on his meager retirement checks and whatever I could manage to pull in from week-to-week, but it was enough to keep our heads above water. Although once my loan payments started next month, things were going to be tight.

“I’m home,” I called as I stepped into the house, taking a moment to hang up my keys and kick off my uncomfortable heels by the door. I only broke out those particular shoes when I had an interview, the three-inch pumps tying together my skirt-suit and helping me look a little more professional. But so far, all they’d done was give me blisters, not help me get hired. “Where are you?”

“Kitchen!” Dad shouted back.

Considering I could already smell the savory scent of a roast, it should have been no surprise to find my father in there cooking, but the fact that he was somewhere other than his bedroom or his favorite armchair in the living room was a bit of a shock.

There was no easy way to put it: Dad was sick. He’d been diagnosed with kidney failure a year ago and had been receiving dialysis treatments ever since. Most days he only got out of bed for the essentials, or to simply move to the living room before sitting down again, too fatigued to do much else. I usually had to fix him breakfast in the morning and make sure he had everything he needed before heading off to work, only to spend the rest of the day worrying about him.

It had gotten to the point where he desperately needed a kidney transplant, the doctors estimating that he may only have another year or so to live if he didn’t receive one. I would have given him one of mine in a heartbeat if I could, but despite the fact that we were blood-related, we weren’t a match.

If that didn’t make me feel like a failure as a daughter, I didn’t know what else would.

Well, other than being severely underemployed and struggling to pay not only my student loans but his mounting medical bills as well.

Blowing out a breath, I padded around the corner to the kitchen, finding Dad lifting the lid of a pot on the stove, steam curling into the air and fogging his glasses. I couldn’t see his eyes as he turned to shoot me a grin, but I knew their dark depths were full of warmth.

“Hey, Rosie-posie,” he greeted, blindly lifting an arm to beckon me in for a hug. “How’d the interview go?”

I gratefully leaned into him, wrapping both my arms around his waist and grimly noting how his ribs were more prominent than they had been just last week.

“It was okay,” I answered, cheek pressed against his sweater-covered shoulder, but it wasn’t exactly the truth. The interviewer, a harsh woman with a chilly stare, had offered me nothing more than a tight smile and a We’ll call you after the interview had ended, which was pretty much a sure sign that I hadn’t gotten the position. “What’s for dinner? I’m ready to eat my feelings.”

Dad laughed as I pulled back, glasses finally unfogged as he glanced down into the pot he’d taken the lid off of. “Roast and mashed potatoes. Well, they’ll be mashed as soon as I get my second wind, give me a minute.”

I could only imagine how much going to the grocery store and preparing dinner to this point had taken out of him. So as gently as I could, I nudged him away from the stove, nodding towards the living room. “You go sit, I’ll take care of it from here.”

Though he hesitated momentarily, Dad pressed a kiss to my forehead before shuffling out of the room. I searched the drawers for the potato masher as I waited for him to go, but as soon as he rounded the corner, I sighed and leaned against the counter, the weight of the day—or honestly, the past year—pressing down on me.

I’d never thought life after college would throw so many curveballs. Going into school, everyone had convinced me that a degree would solve everything, that a job would practically land in my lap after I was handed my diploma. I had done everything I could during undergrad to give myself the best chance afterward, but none of that seemed to matter.

Not even the connections I’d made had panned out, and more than ever I found myself wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that I was not only a woman, but a woman of color trying to break into industries that could only be described as boys’ clubs. But most of the time, I was too busy wondering what was just wrong with me in general.

Some days I wanted to scream in frustration, but like I did whenever that feeling arose, I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and told myself that tomorrow would be better.

It had to be.

***

Dinner managed to make me feel a little less miserable.

There was nothing like a home-cooked meal, and there was no denying Dad’s talent in the kitchen. The roast and vegetables were cooked to perfection and he’d even complimented me on the mashed potatoes, high praise coming from him. Besides, it wasn’t often that we got to sit down and eat together, especially something he prepared himself, so this really was a treat.

Once the dishes were washed and Dad was settled in front of the TV to watch the nightly news, I retreated to my bedroom, a tiny sanctuary in my current mess of a life. I hadn’t bothered to change much in terms of décor since returning home from college, meaning the walls were still the same bright blue I’d painted them in high school and there were definitely a few boyband posters hanging on my closet door. To be honest, those probably did need to go, considering that phase of my life was long over.

The only thing I wouldn’t have changed were the bookcases crammed into the room. The narrow shelves were packed full of books I’d collected over the years, ranging from the young adult novels I’d voraciously consumed in my teenage years to the classic literature I couldn’t say I truly enjoyed, but always read and reread to see if I would ever understand what the hype was about.

I had always loved reading, so much in fact that I’d minored in English and had considered even majoring in it, but for the sake of landing a job after graduation, I had picked a more marketable major instead.

Ha, fat lot of good that did me.

Tonight, I skimmed one of the shelves for something to reread, which had become my ritual after every not-so-great interview. At least this way I could lose myself in a different world and not have to worry about all the bullshit of the one I actually lived in.

After grabbing a well-worn fantasy novel and tossing it onto my bed, I stripped out of my suit and threw on a pair of ratty pajamas, glad for a moment to finally relax. Tomorrow I’d have to get up and return to my insanely boring temp job, but for tonight I could escape into fiction.

Well, I could after I checked the job boards one more time.

It had come to the point where I was terrified of missing out on any listing that was even remotely relevant to my interests. While my original plan had been to land a job at a consulting firm, I would have taken nearly anything in the business world now, even if it meant I had to be someone’s assistant for the next five years. Going on coffee runs would have been ten times more entertaining than inputting data all day like I currently did.

After opening my laptop, I refreshed all of the job websites I religiously visited. Considering I had checked them this morning, most didn’t have too many new listings, and all of them were for positions I was woefully underqualified for.

Ten years’ experience and a master’s degree? That’s not happening.

Disappointed but not surprised, I was about to close my laptop again when I heard the ding of a new email. Pulling up my inbox, I quickly found the new message, heart racing when I realized it was for a new job listing—one that I was actually qualified for.

From the looks of it, the position was for a personal assistant to the CEO of a prominent energy company called PersOil, but I couldn’t have cared less what company it was as long as it was legitimate and paid well. And judging from the starting salary mentioned on the page, a whole sixty-thousand dollars per year, it more than just paid well—it paid amazing.

Other than a few lines about the company, there wasn’t much more to the listing, but that didn’t matter. I was already pulling up the page to submit my application, knowing that with a starting salary that high for a position that didn’t ask for anything more than a bachelor’s degree, it wouldn’t be open for long.

So without giving it another thought, I attached my résumé and clicked submit.