Chapter One
Grace
The past can be a tool for learning, today’s horoscope tells me.
I sit back in my office chair, wincing at the creaking noise it makes, which is just yet another reminder that I need to attack my blogging career with a vengeance if I’m ever going to renovate this apartment.
I glance around at the peeling wallpaper and the big framed photograph of a Shih Tzu I got at Goodwill, that will justnotstay straight, not matter how many times I adjust the fricking thing.
“What do you think?” I ask the photo. Then I tip further back in the chair, shaking my head so that my loosened auburn curls fall across my forehead. I brush them out of my way.
I’ve really lost my mind. Talking to a photo of a dog.
I turn back to my laptop and the horoscope, using the Zodiac Zone website, the one with the big pink-lettered banner at the top.
Your Dreams Can Come True,it reads.
I let out a sigh, indecision and uncertainty washing over me in waves. I wish I could believe it.
But they can be an anchor, too, the horoscope goes on.Cling too tightly to them and you could sink. Be brave and face the day with a fresh perspective and a belief you are not ruled by the past. Rewrite the past.
I jump to my feet and slip on my soft wooly slippers, the one indulgence I allowed myself this month since working from home without slippers should be a crime, in my opinion.
I walk across the whining floorboards and past my bedroom, ignoring the clothes mounded like some sort of creature on the bed. I want to tell them that my washer’s broken and I’ll get around to taking them to the laundromat soon.
But I’m drawing the line at talking to photos of dogs. Talking to laundry would be a whole other level.
As I brew a fresh mug of coffee, I look across the room divider to my laptop. The apartment’s walls crowd in around me closely, so small that I can read the subject heading of the email from here.
I’ve got two browser windows open side by side: the horoscope and the email.
We’re Sorry for Any Inconvenience,the email heading reads.
I grip the mug hard as I open the cupboard and bring it to the counter, my hand shaking a little.
It’s just an inconvenience to them. That’s the word they choose. Just a little oh-sorry-ma’am-no-harm-meant fluff. To them, I’m just another fitness blogger they can string along for months with the promise of sponsorships like a mirage in a desert.
I managed to keep my blog from dying of dehydration for a little while as I churned out posts of them … posts which garnered some widespread attention, thank you very much.
But when the time came to pay up, they decided that my services were no longer required. Of course they weren’t. They’d already gotten what they wanted from me.
I try to resist the urge to scream as I stare across the room at the email header.
My blog is a fricking call-to-arms for people everywhere, shunning the more perfection-focused slant other blogs and channels on social media sites take and going instead for relatable and human.
I post about when my diet fails and I end up knee-deep in a tub of ice cream.
I let my readers and viewers know when I try the latest gut-busting workout regimen and it fails.
If I set myself a fitness challenge and I end up a crumpled pile of sweat and throbbing muscles, I bare all.
I’m honest, and even if that doesn’t pay big-time where dollars are concerned, every time I get a letter from a single mom or a person who’s never tried exercise before, telling me they followGrace’s Fitness Grapevinereligiously and wouldn’t have been able to make the change without me …
It’s fricking heaven.
Cheesy as that sounds, it’s the truth.
I was planning on taking the cash this sponsor paid me and using it to massively boost advertising.
