Page 9 of Single Dad's Christmas Cookie

“But I can cook, Daddy! Humphrey knows.”

“I’m sure Humphrey has had many pleasant tea parties with you. But I’ll find someone to cook for us.”

“And someone to play with me?”

I let out a sigh. “And someone to play with you.”

5

NOVA

Istared at my laptop. I hated looking for a job. The one at Wentworth Academy had practically fallen into my lap. It seemed entirely too good to be true, and here I was a good four and a half months in, and I was regretting eighty percent of why I'd agreed to take the job.

I wasn’t mad about how it got me out of Atlanta or how I managed to get away from David. But the rest of it… the pay and bonus schedule had been completely bogus. When I read back over my signed contract, I realized their precise choice of wording had covered their legal butts when they actually changed what they had verbally promised me.

And of course, there was the wholeyou can live on campuspromise. No, I couldn’t live on campus because there were no actual rooms available for a teacher to live on campus. Some teachers did live on campus, to be fair. However, they had been with the academy for much longer than I had.

But I had been promised a place to live, and instead, I got a meager rental assistance “bonus” in my paycheck. It did not cover local rent. And then there was the whole thing about thecar. If I lived on campus, I wasn’t going to need a vehicle for a daily commute. Living off campus required a vehicle. There was no bus service, and the school was entirely too far away for me to be able to effectively walk.

I was filled with frustration and disappointment in my situation, but I possessed an absolute determination to find a temporary holiday position so that come the beginning of the month, I could afford my rent without having to call my parents and ask for assistance.

I was no longer in college. I was making my own money. I shouldn’t need their help anymore. At least that’s what the little voice inside my head told me. But I was struggling financially and mentally. The pay just wasn’t there to support being able to live locally on my own. What would have been smart when I got here and discovered I wasn’t going to have a place with free rent was instead of finding a cozy little apartment that I could call my own, I should have looked for a roommate or rented a room.

But hindsight was twenty-twenty and I was stuck in a year-long lease. I was trying to save up enough money to cover the cost of the rent I would owe during the summer after I left this place and returned to Atlanta. But that was six months from now, and I barely had enough saved up to help me get through the next couple of weeks.

I scrolled through the local online jobs board. I didn’t see very much in terms of seasonal jobs. I expected there to be job listings in retail. I was not above working at a big box store for a couple of weeks. But the problem was, this late in the season, most retail stores were no longer hiring. They had all the part-time help they needed.

I continued to scroll through the list listings, looking at all the different job postings. It didn’t matter what field the job was in. I was so desperate I would have gone to work on a deep-sea fishing vessel in the North Atlantic for the next two weeks if that meant I’d have enough money to pay for rent, food, gas, and all the other bills that I hadn’t expected to have because, again, that whole free place to live had been a mighty powerful carrot to dangle in front of me.

It was the deciding factor as to why I'd accepted the job to begin with. Honestly, I could have taught first grade anywhere. But after the disaster with David, I needed to rebuild my depleted savings account.

“Doesn’t anybody leave a phone number anymore?” I complained as I clicked on another online application. Only it wasn’t an application, it was a questionnaire filled with entirely too many ridiculous questions that had nothing to do with any skills I possessed or whether I was capable of doing the job at hand. For some reason, everybody wanted to know if I planned on stealing from them or if I planned on getting in a fist fight with any of my coworkers. The answer was no to both. However, they asked the question multiple times and in what felt like a hundred different ways. It was getting ridiculous.

“Why is this so hard?”

I stopped on the next job listing.Do you love to cook? Does feeding others make you happy?

I had to reread the listing to make sure it actually said what I thought it said. They were accepting walk-in applications with interviews on the spot for seasonal positions.

This sounded like a perfect fit for me. They were desperate for holiday help. I was desperate for a holiday job.

I took a quick shower and headed into town. The catering company was run by a local bakery and coffee shop. This looked promising.

I went straight to the serving counter. “Hi, I saw your posting for holiday help on the job board. Are you still?—”

She turned and walked away.

“Accepting applications,” I finished my sentence to the air.

She returned a moment later, holding out a sheet of paper.

“Fill this out. Carol said she can do an interview with you in a few minutes.”

“That would be great.” Anticipation nerves danced in my stomach. I took the paper form and parked myself at one of the small round tables in the front of the cafe. It was a simple enough application. I didn’t have to answer any questions about my proclivity toward stealing or punching people. Which was good because I was probably going to punch somebody if I had to answer that same questionnaire again.

When I was finished, I handed the girl the application with a copy of my resume.

“Follow me,” she said.

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