Samiah had completed the phone app she’d been working on for years and, because she was an overachiever, had also snagged herself a cutie, her coworker turned boyfriend, Daniel Collins.
“I won’t claim success until I’ve secured funding for the Just Friends app,” Samiah said. “Winning this spot in the showcase gets me one step closer. What about you?” she directed at London. “Fill us in on your project’s progress.”
“I’d rather drink more wine.” London signaled their server, who’d just cleared the table next to theirs. “Can we get another bottle of prosecco and another order of the combo fajitas?
“I had back-to-back surgeries today,” she explained once the server left. “This is my first meal since the banana I ate for breakfast.”
Equal parts panic and dread clogged in Taylor’s throat. She wasn’t the best with numbers, but she could handle simple math. With another thirty-dollar bottle of wine and forty more for fajitas, tonight’s dinner had just crossed the two-hundred-dollar mark. And that was before tax and tip. Their practice of splitting the bill evenly meant she was looking at eighty dollars. That was more than her grocery budget for an entire week!
With their six-figure salaries, Samiah and London could easily afford to drop a C-note on a single meal without batting an eye. Meanwhile, Taylor was blocking calls from bill collectors like a thirsty match on Tinder.
“Umm, hello? Taylor!”
She startled at London’s fingers snapping just inches from her face.
“Huh? What?” Shit. If their concerned frowns were anything to go on, they’d been trying to get her attention for some time. “I’m sorry,” Taylor said. “What?”
“I asked about your project. How is it going?”
“No,” Samiah interrupted. “Before you get to that, you still owe us the full story behind your first and only day at the homeschooling job. And how it ended with you being arrested.”
“Oooh, you’re right,” London said. “Okay, you heard her, lady. Spill it.”
Taylor dropped her head back and groaned at the deepening purple sky. She would rather cover their entire dinner bill than talk about her humiliating stint in jail. She’d spent less than three hours behind bars, but that was long enough to convince her that nothing mattered more than her freedom. She felt claustrophobic just thinking about that holding room.
“Didn’t we already discuss this?” Taylor asked.
“You haven’t told us anything, except that you ran over a lawn chair with your car,” London said. “So what happened? Did one of the kids call you ugly? Talk about your mama?”
“Oh, stop it. It was nothing like that.”
“Then what was it?” Samiah asked, her words drenched with concern. “When Daniel and I bailed you out of jail, I could tell you were in no mood to talk, so I didn’t ask. But I’m asking now. What happened, Taylor? You said yourself that the opportunity to teach that phys ed class was too good to pass up.”
Taylor shrugged. “The parents didn’t think I was the right person for the job, that’s all.”
“So you ran over one of their lawn chairs?” Samiah asked.
“That was a misunderstanding.”
The server returned with the second bottle of prosecco and another steaming platter of fajitas. Taylor prayed the arrival of more bubbly would steer their attention away from her.
She should have known better.
“Explain the misunderstanding,” London said as she topped off their glasses. “How’d things go from ‘Sorry, you’re just not the right fit for the job’ to ‘Bitch, you’d better get out of that chair if you don’t want tire marks up your ass’?”
Samiah and Taylor both burst out laughing.
“Yeah, it sounds as if we’re missing a few details,” Samiah said, dabbing at tears of mirth with her dinner napkin. “Didn’t you curse out one of the kids too?”
“I never cursed out any kids. However,” Taylor continued, “I may have used a few choice words without realizing the kids were just a couple of feet behind me.” She raised her hands in defense. “I apologized to the kids! But, of course, little Jack or Ted or whatever his name was went tattling to his mom.”
“And the lawn chair?” London asked.
“It was a mistake! I was backing out of the driveway—which was long and winding and not the easiest thing to navigate when you’re upset because you’ve just lost out on a job.” Her shoulders sagged. “I didn’t even see the chair. I explained it to the police officer, and the parents even backed me up on that. They knew I didn’t purposely roll over the chair.”
It was just her freaking luck that a police cruiser happened to be driving by as she backed over that stupid piece of lawn furniture.
“Besides, I wasn’t arrested because of the chair. I was arrested because my car had an expired license plate tag, and I had a few unpaid parking tickets.” More like a dozen, but who was counting? Well, other than the city of Austin.
Now that she thought about it, luck had been on her side. She’d gotten off easy, only having to pay a fine along with the unpaid parking tickets. Sure, she’d maxed out her Mastercard, but it was worth it to get out of that stank-ass jail cell.
“I also didn’t lose out on the job because I rolled over the lawn chair,” she admitted. Taylor sucked in a deep breath and released it. This was the part that left a sour taste in her mouth whenever she thought about it. “They wanted someone with a college degree.”
The cement block in her stomach grew heavier.
“The woman who initially offered me the job claimed that it was dishonest of me to withhold that I didn’t have a degree, but she never asked! How is it my fault that she goes around making assumptions about a total stranger’s educational background? I was like, excuse you, lady!”
“Well, I can see where she’s coming from,” London said. “Public school teachers are required to have a degree, so it stands to reason homeschool teachers would as well.”
“No, that’s just—” Taylor started, but she realized she didn’t have a rebuttal. “Whatever. If I’d known they wanted someone with a degree from the very beginning, I would never have gotten my hopes up about the job.”
Her face grew fiery as the familiar frustration bubbled to the surface.
She had done everything she could this past year to take her fitness consulting business, Taylor’d Conditioning, to the next level. She’d studied the top Instagram fitness influencers, researching their journeys and trying her best to mimic their success. She just knew she would crush it, especially after coming up with the idea to use her background as an Army brat to specialize in boot camp–style workouts. She used all the right hashtags, offered free online fitness classes. She’d even started going live in her InstaStories—something she detested. But she couldn’t seem to break free from the pack.
Back in August, someone recorded the confrontation they’d had with Craig, and the video had gone viral. Taylor thought she’d finally hit gold. It wasn’t the most ideal way to get her business on the map, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and all that.