Continued, The Write Off
I was raised to believe in almost everything: astrology, curses, magic, you name it.
Superstitions, soulmates, and seers. Kismet.
Transmutation. You can turn anything into gold, Mimi used to say.
Aliens, obviously, but doesn’t everyone believe in aliens these days?
Not religion—not in such defined terms—but in the mystical and divine, certainly.
Most of it seems about as real as Sasquatch, if you ask me.
Still, I find myself flinching if I exit a building through a different door than the one I entered, and I don’t argue with Mimi when her eyes slide out of focus and her voice falls to a hush, even if I (mostly) think it’s a bunch of theatrics.
There’s something sticky and fundamental about the stories you’re told as a child, about the beliefs that wind through the family tree.
Left to my own devices, I fostered a trust in science, facts, and evidence.
And yet, on occasion, I can admit when the undeniable evidence supports the implausible myth.
As much as I once hoped to divorce myself from the Rhodes family magic, I can’t deny the truth. By some stroke of good luck or misfortune, every woman in my prolific family, spanning back as far as anyone cares to look, has met the love of her life at age twenty-one.
It’s not the most interesting magic—I’ll take instant hair-drying powers if the universe is accepting requests—but it does guarantee a soulmate for everyone, just like the stories.
Everyone except me.
The Rhodes women refuse to accept this. If Mimi and my mom and my sisters are to be believed, it’s not that I didn’t meet the love of my life at twenty-one; it’s just that I couldn’t hold on to him.
I had him, I lost him, and it’s the saddest story in a long line of enviable romances, with the possible exception of my great-great-aunt Willa, whose husband died in World War II when she was pregnant with their first child.
When reminded of Willa, they begrudgingly admit that things could be worse for me—but if, and only if, I were a knocked-up war widow who was forced to ration sugar.
They pity my personal tragedy, but there’s really no need. It’s liberating to know that true love is never going to happen for me. It leaves me free to live my life, to date or not, without the unbearable burden of expectation.
Take the man across the desk from me, for example.
From the moment he first kissed me, in the break room after everyone else had gone home, I knew it wouldn’t last. My sisters tell me this makes the decision to date my boss even more baffling, especially when half a dozen men like him can be found in every fair-trade corner coffee shop, with their beards and their bicycles and vast collections of flannels.
And yet, in the infinite wisdom of a twenty-seven-year-old with zero hope of forever, I chose him.
And now I’m suffering for it, because there’s nothing quite as humbling as asking your ex-boyfriend for a raise.
If only someone would have warned me that dating my boss was a bad idea—someone other than my family and my common sense.
If anyone else had warned me that one day my rent would increase 50 percent and I’d be forced to sit in Alex’s office and explain to him why my time is worth more than my current salary, perhaps I would have been struck by the divine foresight not to get into a relationship with the man who signs my paychecks.
Alex would object to the label of ex-boyfriend. We were, after all, never official. Not in the eyes of our one-person human resources department, anyway.
As he sits across from me now, his lips turn down. “I don’t know what to tell you, Piper. A raise is not in the budget right now.”
I’m prepared for this response. “Kaylee left four months ago, and because her position still hasn’t been filled, I’ve been doing school visits and nature workshops on my own.
It’s a job for two people, at least.” Frustration and bitterness bleed through my words, because Alex knows this better than anyone.
When we were together, he used to badger me to take lunch breaks and chastise me for never using my sick days or vacation time.
He watched me stay up all hours of the night preparing wildlife lessons and demonstrations, often leaving for school visits on only a few hours of sleep, pushing myself closer and closer to burnout with each passing month.
Alex takes his glasses off in a show of disappointment and puts his fingers to his temples to pretend he feels a headache coming on. Sometimes he forgets that I know all his tells. “If you’re in nonprofit work for the money, you’re never going to be happy.”
I tighten my fingers around the edge of the chair I’m sitting in. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my happiness. It’s about paying my bills.”
Alex threads his fingers together on top of his desk and leans toward me, like we’re sharing a secret. “You can’t ask me for preferential treatment, Piper. It’s not appropriate.”
I feel my face twist in a slow-motion wince.
“I haven’t asked for a raise once in five years,” I remind him.
One look at our building—with its stuck windows, peeling paint, and leaky roof—makes the state of things very clear.
We’re barely staying afloat, on the verge of shutting down year after year.
I knew what I was walking into when I joined the nonprofit sector; I’m here because I love teaching kids about wildlife conservation.
When our program director decided that we should expand our education to high schools, I helped her plan the new demonstrations.
When she made an offhand comment about bringing live owls into the schools, I made it happen.
And when I didn’t feel like we were doing enough, I pitched the idea of holding weekend nature workshops outside schools and then built the program from the ground up.
The more I did, the more responsibility I was given.
My job title is wildlife educator, but I also keep the office break room stocked with snacks, I place buckets under leaks when it rains, and I sweep spiderwebs out of our doorways from September to November.
By the time I’d been here long enough to realize that I deserved a raise, Alex and I were together, and it was too late to ask.
“All I’m asking for is a raise that is in line with the work I do and the rise in the cost of living,” I tell him now, nearly choking on the words.
He tilts his head and studies me for far too long. “New skirt?” he asks, setting my teeth on edge. He knows it’s not. “There’s really nothing to be done about your hair today, is there?” He smiles in a way that I once would have considered affectionate but now sends shivers down my spine.
My fingers twitch. I sit on them to stop myself from smoothing wayward curls away from my face. It’s late afternoon, and the bun I wrestled my hair into this morning has surrendered, allowing seditious ringlets to spring out in every direction.
Alex is not a fan.
He slaps his hands once on his desktop, making me jump. “I’ll tell you what. You’re right. You’re invaluable, and we can’t afford to lose you.”
I exhale heavily. “Thank you, Alex. It means more than you know.”
“Of course. Don’t give it another thought.” He sits back in his chair and smiles softly. “I’ll have to get it approved by the board, but I think they won’t object to giving you five extra vacation days a year.”
A bubble of surprised laughter escapes my throat. “Vacation days won’t pay my rent.”
“It’s a good offer.”
“For you. I don’t even use my vacation days!”
“You’re free to use them anytime, as long as your request is approved,” he says, a gleeful schadenfreude dancing in his eyes.
A flush of painful embarrassment sweeps across my skin.
“Or, if you prefer, we can forget about all this, and I’ll help you save your butterfly.”
My eyes snap to his. “What?” I ask sharply.
“Your butterfly. I assume you still want to save it?”
“Obviously.” I practically spit the word at him.
“Drop your request, and I’ll speak to the board about funding. I’ll find out what’s possible,” Alex says casually.
It feels like he’s sucked all the oxygen from the room.
My heart beats in my throat as I struggle to maintain my composure.
How naive of me to think this conversation could have gone any other way.
I stand slowly, my chair scraping loudly across the floor.
I smooth my shaking hands down the pencil skirt that Alex didn’t like me to wear because he thought it was too tight, and take a fortifying breath. “I’ll see you Monday.”
He frowns. “It’s not five o’clock yet.”
“My work is finished, and I have plans for this evening.” I flinch even as the words roll off my tongue. Answering his unspoken questions is an ingrained habit.
He kicks his feet up on his desk and surveys me again as my stomach roils in protest. “Tell your family I say hello.”
“How do you know—”
He scoffs. “Who else would it be?”
I turn away and bite the inside of my cheek. I hate him for trying to make me feel small and predictable for going to Mimi’s eightieth birthday party.
“Have a nice weekend,” I say blandly, hoping he understands the words mean I hope you freeze to death in Puget Sound.
As I quickly pack up my desk, my eyes fall to the twenty-year-old photo that I have taped to the wall behind my computer.
My sisters and I are gathered around Mimi.
Her hand rests lightly on my head of messy curls, the ever-present twinkle in her eye piercing the camera lens.
I trace my fingers over my wide smile and think about family magic and curses and how the stories we’re told as children can lead us down paths we were never meant to take.
If I’d met Alex at twenty-one, I’d have taken one look at his broad shoulders and his scruff and his passion for nonprofit work and tricked myself into believing that he was my soulmate.
Left to my own devices, I could easily have wedged myself into a situation even worse than the one I’m in now.
It took me too long to realize I needed to leave Alex, but when I did, it was as easy as waking up from a bad dream.
One night, he was holding my keys hostage so I wouldn’t meet my sisters for dinner, and the next morning, I was boxing up his beard oil and his record collection and pushing him out the front door.
I couldn’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy because I never entertained the delusion of spending forever with him.
After our breakup, there was no lost future to mourn, no expectations to realign with reality.
When it comes to romantic relationships, I don’t get too invested, and I move on quickly. It’s not as good as having a soulmate, but at least I won’t spend a day of my life waiting for a train that I’ve already missed.
Traffic is slow on the way home, and I have just enough time to change before I pick up Mimi.
We’ll be late to her own birthday dinner because we’ll watch Wheel of Fortune (her favorite) followed by Jeopardy!
(my favorite). I grab my mail and let myself in, kicking off my shoes and freeing my curls from their bun.
The tension on my scalp dissipates, and I sigh as my hair falls to the small of my back.
The air outside is thick with promised rain, and my hair has reached dangerous proportions, but I can’t bring myself to tie it back again.
I comb my fingers through the strands as I fan myself with the large stack of junk mail and walk into my bedroom.
My skirt hits the floor, followed by my blouse, and I drop the mail on my bed before I step into my small closet.
I quickly change into jeans and a casual top, grabbing a cardigan because spring in Seattle is as moody and temperamental as a preteen, and step back into my room.
I slip my feet into sandals, grab my purse off the bed, and head toward the door.
Two steps later, my mind catches up with my body.
I pause. Turn slowly. Retrace my steps. I sweep my hand over the pile of mail, uncovering a thick white envelope at the bottom of the stack. My eyes drift to the names above the return address, and for the second time today, it feels like someone has siphoned the oxygen out of the room.
First Alex and now this. Maybe I do believe in curses, because why am I holding an invitation to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding?
We don’t keep in touch, not even to say happy birthday. I haven’t spoken to him in years, and I’ve never met his fiancée. The only time I even think of Lachlan is when my family decides to remind me exactly why I’m alone.
Every Rhodes woman has a soulmate, and Lachlan Blair was supposed to be mine.