Page 9 of Single-Minded
I let the idea roll around in my head while I ate another bite. The thought of starting a new position with a different company doing what I’d done since grad school… There was a part of me that missed the challenge, the thrill of success, the sense of accomplishment, but… “Honestly? It sounds exhausting.”
“I’ve thought you were nearing burnout for the last year or two.”
“You might be right. I didn’t see it while I was in it. I didn’t have time to see it.”
“You didn’t have time to do anything but work, eat carryout, and hit Bronson’s every day.”
“Fact. I thrived on it for so long…”
“But you’re human, and that job required a superhuman effort always. Plus your boss…”
I made a face. “Toad.”
Rob Landers was the one part of my career I’d detested. He was twenty years older than me, had been in the industry forever, had been good at the job in his day, but he sucked as a manager. Throw three parts barely veiled misogyny into the mix, and I’d been at a slow boil for the past few years.
From the day he’d become a partner and been put in charge of my division, my love for the job had slowly leaked out of me. The final straw came when I’d expressed interest in becoming a partner. He’d assured me I had no chance, even though I was the youngest VP in the firm’s history and had the numbers to back up my competency.
Normally when someone told me I couldn’t do something, I put my head down and proved them wrong, but between years of friction with Landers and other old-schoolers in the industry, the extreme demand of the career itself both in terms of time and stress, and my doctor’s advice, his condescension had snapped something in me. I think I’d been working toward making changes in my life on some level for months. He merely fast-forwarded me.
“You were a badass superhuman investment banker for more than a decade. You gave it everything,” Chloe said with admiration in her tone. “But I don’t know how much longer you could’ve sustained that, even without the toad. You haven’t had a life since undergrad.”
She didn’t lie. To succeed at that career, you had to eat, sleep, and breathe it. To succeed as a woman, you had to give up the sleep part and basically hustle for eighteen hours a day.
“It’s time for you to have a life,” she continued. “Maybe meet a guy, fall in love, start a family.”
I scoffed. “Should I take cooking lessons first so I can be a good housewife?”
Chloe laughed. “I’m getting you an apron for your birthday.”
“You know me better than that.”
“I know you’re not the relationship type or the ‘stay at home and look at the lake all day’ type.”
“And I’ve been at home looking at the lake for two days straight now.”
“Thus the desperation.”
“I’m losing my mind.” I dared a drink of coffee, then chased it with a bite of waffle.
“Didn’t the remodelers start yesterday?”
“They did. Demolition is loud. I spent most of the day outside. I even planted flowers.”
Her brows went up as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Twenty pots,” I told her. “I set them around the deck and along the steps going down to the water. They’re gorgeous, but next time I’m hiring a landscaper.”
“Gardening is supposed to be relaxing. Therapeutic.”
“I’m not the right girl for that. It turns out I don’t like dirt.”
Chloe laughed. “That’s an important thing to learn about yourself, I guess. Cross landscaper off the list of possible new careers.” She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “So demo. Remodeling. Have you seen West yet?”
I tried to hold back a smile, but the thought of him made that difficult. “Eight a.m. yesterday, he was the one at my door.”
Chloe’s brows rose. “Not Levi?”
“Levi had an emergency of some kind, so it was just West at first, then three of the other guys joined him with all the equipment.”
