Like a foghorn ripping across a wide open plain, I wanted to gather more followers.
Obviously, there’s a career incentive for me to do so, but there are also those emails and letters carefully stowed away in the upper drawer of my desk, secreted in a lockbox. They tell me that there are people out there who are just waiting for a call to action but are sick and tired of being talked down to by self-righteous fitness Adonises.
So this sponsor screwing me ten ways to Sunday isn’t just bad for me in terms of cash—even if money makes the world go around and all that—but it’s also bad for me in terms of any fricking feelings of fulfilment from life.
Sighing, I turn to the whining coffee pot, suddenly wanting nothing more than to grab the chipped cup and launch it across the room. The steam rises into the air, tickling my nose and pricking my skin.
I pour the coffee, gritting my teeth and grinding them side to side until my jaws start to ache.
My horoscope is telling me to rewrite the past, but how the heck am I supposed to turn back time so that I don’t get fooled by this sponsorship company?
I sit back down at my desk and move the cursor over the text of the email, as if by reading it over and over—and over—I can erase the words. I’m not sure how long I sit here, but by the time I finally take a sip of my coffee, it’s cold and makes me spit it out.
I shiver, putting the mug down.
Then my cellphone buzzes from the desk, making a loud woodpecker noise. A smile spreads warmly across my face when I see that it’s Kelly.
I’m outside, hon xoxo
At least there’s one person who’s not going to string me along.
Stop with the self-pity, I chide myself. Because, yeah, talking to myself is way better than talking to a fake dog or a pile of laundry.
I nod firmly to myself, standing up and walking over to the apartment’s intercom. I skirt around my workout gear, some dumbbells and a yoga mat, not even glancing at the running machine. I’ll just want to dismantle it, break it down, like it almost broke me the other night when it decided to malfunction and toss me cartoon-like to the floor.
I press the intercom button, having to give it some extraoomphthat hurts my thumb a little, because it’s busted, too.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ll buzz you up.”
“Crrrk… broken …crrrk… again …”
“I’ll. Buzz. You. Up.”
After a pause, she yells, “Okay!”
I return to my desk and spin around and around in the chair. Part of me just wants it to finally break just so I don’t have to listen to the whining noise anymore.
Everybody told me quitting my day job as a receptionist to become a full-time fitness blogger was a bad idea. And by everyone, I mean my mom. She’s super-supportive and only wants the best for me, but she’s also a sassy, vivacious woman with a tongue as quick as her wit.
“Now listen here, young lady,” she chided, wagging a manicured blood-red fingernail at me on Skype. “Can’t you do your blogging business alongside your work?”
“Well, technically, yes,” I admitted. “But I’ve just got this new sponsor and the workload is killing me, Mom. I’m lucky if I get three or four hours of sleep a night sometimes.”
She pouted, leaning back in her wicker chair in the garden of my childhood home, the flowers like a fallen rainbow in the beds behind her. In the background, my dad was bent over, weeding. As we spoke, I sometimes glimpsed his forearm gripping a persistent weed.
“Well,” she said finally with a sigh that caused her kaftan to heave. “Then perhaps you should come home and do your blogging from here. I hate to think about you starving in New York.”
“I’m not gonna starve, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Anyway, I’m twenty-four years old. I’m pretty sure I can make my own decisions.”
But now, as I look across the short length of my apartment watching motes of dust circle in the midday sun, I can’t summon that same sassy dismissal.
I know one thing, though. I’m not running home with my tail tucked between my legs. No way.
Finally the front door opens and Kelly walks in.
She tosses her wavy carmine hair when she sees me sitting here, pacing across the room and wagging her finger at me so that her colorful bracelets all jangle together. She stops in front of me, hands on her hips, a frown pursing her lipstick-heavy lips.
“No. Way.”
