Chapter 15
Sarah’s cabin was small, but at least she didn’t have to share.
The guys would be busy for several more hours, and as long as she poked her head in every so often and checked in with her team, she was doing her job.
Resting was important. She climbed into her bed with her clothes on and set her walkie-talkie on the bedside table.
Sarah closed her eyes. Maybe when she got home, she’d adopt her own cat.
Or maybe she’d meet a new girl, and the girl would have a dog, and they could take it for walks together.
She liked the idea of having someone—even just the dog, come to think of it—waiting by the door when she got home.
Mr. Whiskers had been Lexie’s before they got together, and so Sarah had always felt more like a stepmother anyway.
“Set my alarm for half an hour,” Sarah said, and closed her eyes.
All she could picture was Lexie’s Instagram, and Plum’s.
She’d found it, of course. It wasn’t hard.
Lexie had started tagging Plum in pictures before Lexie and Sarah were even broken up.
Plum worked as a barista too; that was how they had met in the first place.
It was cliché, but then again, so was stalking your ex’s new partner on the internet.
Plum was great-looking—tall and thin with dark eyebrows and a nose piercing.
Plum looked tough, which was how Sarah had sometimes felt when she was younger.
Thirty didn’t feel old, but it did feel old to have nothing.
It was a classic millennial story. Graduate from college into total economic collapse and somehow do what your parents did?
Get married, buy a house, have decent health insurance, buy a car, play bridge with your friends on Saturday nights?
Impossible, unfathomable, not even aspirational.
It all felt like fiction, someone being able to have a normal job and pay for everything.
The only way Sarah could imagine buying an apartment was to do it with ten other people and live in a glorified dormitory, which she didn’t want to do.
Until now, Sarah had always had a roommate.
She was in more debt than she could ever comprehend paying back.
Now she didn’t even have a girlfriend to think about marrying.
Her parents were never getting grandchildren, not at this rate.
The idea of having a baby was so laughably far away, not that she and Lexie had ever even talked about it.
Human biology seemed like a cruel joke—by the time anyone actually felt ready to have a baby, it was already too late.
Sarah’s walkie crackled. “Keith’s MIA, Sarah.
Help, please?” It was Tyler, who was on door duty in the Marilyn Monroe Lounge.
It was the easiest job in the world, just standing in one place and opening a door.
All Sarah had wanted was a little nap, a tiny rest, but no. She had to do everything herself.
“Be right there,” Sarah said, and sat up.