Page 8 of Mended Hearts

Everyone expected me to follow suit when she started making money with her makeup brush.

That’s the thing about being pretty.

People assume beautiful people all somehow workinbeauty.

They never ask what your interests are, or what sport earned you a scholarship, or what kind of obsolete diploma you have framed and hanging on your office wall—business and journalism, by the way.

They just assume you’re destined to make other people feel pretty, orbepretty for the satisfaction of those around you.

From the first creep that tells you what abeautiful womanyou are before your tits even bud, to the guidance counselor at your high school, there’s an unspoken rule about career potential that eventually sounds a lot like: congratulations about yourface.

Me?

With motherhood off the table and my soccer career unceremoniously amputated by the cruel hand of fate, I’d always wanted to write.

To get my hands dirty digging for truth in the stories that set my soul on fire.

But with papers all but extinct, and every Jenny with a semi-functional laptop running a blog these days, it seemed like a lost art.

The Harts had newspapers, but writing for one felt too much like a handout I wasn’t willing to ask for—and working for a competitor felt sleazy, since I spent at least three days a week in one of their living rooms.

If I had an ounce of experience, I’d love to help small businesses refine their processes. But that felt like something that would take decades of experience to justify.

Which left me...sitting in my parking garage, tears in my eyes, with absolutely no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I had less than a grand in the bank, plus a few hundred in my pocket from the last of my on-hand cash.

Alice’s condo was paid off—no rent, thank God.

My new Jeep was a different—very expensive—story.

Shit, I loved that car.

I barely had enough to cover this month’s payment and a week of groceries.

Maybe I could donate plasma or sell some stuff from the loft and cover my phone bill next Monday.

Oh God, what if my Jeep got repo’d and?—

No.

It was fine.

Iwas fine.

I always landed on my feet, and this would be no different.

I wouldn’t let it be.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna freak out a little first. This was a full pot of coffee on the back porch with my mom kind of conversation.

Maybe a phone call would do.

Problem being, Tampa was three hours ahead of us, and my early-bird mother was likely snoozing.

Still, I snatched my phone and fired off a message.

Leighton

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