Chapter 2
Your Fears Are Like Bullies
The rules were never written down, but I learned them fast: Be competent, but never threatening. Warm, but not soft. Stylish, but not loud. Be sleek. Be sharp. Be always, always available.
The real dream was culinary school. Making food with my hands instead of merely writing about other people making magic.
Some people meditate daily. Some people learn guitar chords they’ll use at parties. I practiced pate à choux, that tender, bouncy dough you coax into shape with a pastry bag, piping it into perfect, satiny mounds for cream puffs, and pretending I was the kind of person who could afford to do this for real. When my brain got loud, I’d slice an onion into perfect half-moons, a carrot into matchsticks—steady pressure, straight cuts—until my pulse matched the rhythm of the knife.
But dreams—and tuition—get expensive when there’s no one left to split the bill.
If life had gone as planned, I would be pulling croissants out of an oven right now—not walking into Valerie Thorne’s office with my stomach in knots. But I took the smart job. Just three years, I promised myself. Long enough to save up. Five years later, I’m still here. No savings. And, I rarely cook, unless warming oat milk in the microwave counts.
And the only thing Pulse has given me?
A seat at the table—as long as I’m not too loud and don’t eat too much.
Fuck the rules.
Still, the second I approach Valerie’s office, my heart jackhammers. As I push open the door and hover in her doorway, the old instincts line up: don’t provoke, don’t need, don’t take up space.
She doesn’t even bother looking up from her computer.
“You have three seconds,” she says, thumbs flying across her phone now.
My eyes catch on the green smoothie perched on the edge of her desk, condensation dripping down the plastic like it’s trying to escape.
It’s not just Valerie sitting there anymore.
It’s Laurie, from foster home number five. Ordering fifteen-year-old me to make her protein shakes every morning. Complete her chores. Write her book reports. As if she were doing me a favor by letting me exist in her house. Because otherwise, she’d tell her mom I was “a bad influence.” And in foster care, “bad influence” didn’t mean detention—it meant a trash bag and a new house.
It wasn’t that I was happy with Laurie’s family, but their home was decent compared to the others, and her mom cooked real food, not whatever unidentifiable protein product came out of cans in my other foster homes.
I force a breath. Your fears are like bullies. Stand up to them, and they’ll disappear.
“You stole my pitch,” I say, stepping closer.
She leans back in her chair, her silk sheath unruffled, her expression a mix of irritation and amusement. “Weren’t you the one who said, ‘The best ideas are always a team effort’?”
I slap a folder down on her desk with dramatic flair.
“Is that how it works? Well, here’s a list of every time you’ve ‘team efforted’ your way into someone else’s work.”
“You brought props. That’s new.”
Heat crawls up my neck, but if I stop now, she wins.
I read the first page aloud.
“Number one: guilting me into covering Christmas week while you disappeared to Cabo. Number two,” I continue, my voice climbing. “Taking credit for Pulse’s new social strategy after it doubled traffic. You paraded around like you’d masterminded it while I worked in the background, editing hashtags.”
“If this is your version of leverage, Ava, it’s…adorable.”
My hands tremble, but I flip to the last page. “Let’s skip ahead. Number thirty-two: sleeping with Marisol’s husband.”
There’s a tightening at the corners of her mouth, just enough to let me know I’ve hit bone.
“Ava,” her voice full of manufactured patience. “I get that you’re upset, but you really need to learn how to pick your battles. Marisol loved the campaign. Gavin Jones loved the campaign.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point you’re trying to make? Because all I’m getting is proof that you don’t have the polish Marisol expects from her executive team.”
She stands and smooths her dress. “But you still have a job. If I were less generous, you wouldn’t.”
She breezes past me like we weren’t mid-confrontation.
I follow her into the open office, where the rows of cubicles stretch before us like a maze designed to test my endurance.
“I quit.”
The words land louder than I meant them to. Colleagues pop up from cubicles like meerkats.
The words hang there, loud and irreversible. Even I blink, like my mouth just went rogue. Where did that come from?
“Very funny,” Valerie tosses over her shoulder. “Like you’d give up future Deputy Editor.”
“I’m serious.” The fear shows up in my voice like an uninvited plus-one, but I pretend I don’t hear it.
A low gasp rolls across the floor like a glitch in the matrix, and the look on Valerie’s face is priceless. Kiki’s face? Even better: eyes wide, mouth half-open, a perfect what-the-actual-fuck moment.
“Ava, if you walk out that door, I’ll make sure you never work in this city again.”
That almost sounds like a blessing.
But then I catch the looks from my coworkers—the whispers, side-eyes— and doubts start popping off in my head like kernels in a microwave, each louder and hotter than the last: Economic downturn. Low deductible health insurance. Deputy Editor. Stability.
Kiki recognizes the doubt spiral. It’s the look I get when I’ve declared I am going to eat gluten-free for two weeks, then someone sets a raspberry croissant before me. It’s the look she’s seen a million times when I’ve vowed to stand up to Valerie and then folded. Because deep down, I am still that teen girl weighing the cost of rocking the boat when the alternative is losing everything and everyone—again.
Kiki stands up so fast her chair screeches across the floor like it’s trying to escape the impending disaster. She turns to our stunned coworkers, arms raised.
“Who’s with us?!”
Nobody moves.
“Okay, wow. Love the solidarity,” she mutters, and starts stuffing her life into her oversized purse: a Jane Austen figurine hugging Ruth Bader Ginsburg, five different colored highlighters, a lipstick she thought she lost in 2024, and—
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Valerie shrieks. “You—whatever your name is—remove one more thing, and you’re fired.”
Kiki locks eyes with her, then slowly, deliberately, drops the company stapler into her bag.
“Great,” Kiki says. “Now I don’t have to come to the company picnic.”
I notice her hands are shaking, just a little. And I realize, for the first time, that for all her confidence and enthusiasm, Kiki’s not bulletproof. She’s just brave.
I follow her lead, grab three dead succulents off my desk, and place them in a box with the last photo ever taken of me with Mom and Dad and another with Jared at the top of the Empire State Building, grinning ear to ear.
We walk through the sea of cubicles together, trying our best to look cool (we suck in our guts), calm (we grip each other’s hands like we’re about to jump off a cliff), praying we don’t trip and ruin the moment, and the wild thing is, the floor doesn’t open up.
It holds.
On the subway, I open my phone with my thumb hovering over the screen. Valerie should be there. Valerie is always there. But my notifications are blank.
For a second, it’s so unexpected I almost laugh.
Silence. Tiny, improbable, perfect.
The subway car lurches, squealing against the tracks, and I clutch my cardboard box tighter against my chest, my weird bouquet of dead succulents bobbing with every bump.
For the first five stops, I’m riding on pure adrenaline. Bright, fizzy, electric.
I did it. I stood up for myself. I didn’t shrink into someone else’s version of me.
Across the aisle, an old woman with a neon-green scarf gives me a slow, approving nod, like she can smell my freedom. Or maybe she just likes dead plants. Hard to say.
I hug the box tighter, grinning into the overhead lights, already rehearsing how I’ll tell Jared. He’s always said I should bet on myself more.
Today, I placed the bet.
And it feels—good.