Page 4 of Make Your Shot
I stay beside my car and watch as she pulls away. I don’t move until her tail lights fade in the distance and I’m left wondering what the hell I’m actually going to do.
The season is about to start and I need to figure my shit out.
I need to find a nanny—and fast.
CHAPTER TWO
MIA
Frustration rolls over me as my shoulders sag in defeat and I shut my laptop in a rush. My chest deflates, the air exiting my lungs in a rush as my stomach knots with a familiar anxiety.
Suddenly, the coffee shop is too loud. Too busy. Too small. Panic tangles with the knots and my throat tightens. Blocking it all out, I let my eyes shut, counting to four as I inhale and exhale for a beat longer. I repeat it three times, until my heart rate slows to a steadier beat beneath my ribcage.
I pick up the receipt beside my plate, double and triple checking the line items to make sure my order is gluten free.
“It was from their gluten free case.”
My eyelids lift, and my surroundings come back into focus as I lock my gaze on my friend Willow sitting across the table from me. Her blonde hair is pulled back away from her face and her sage eyes are locked on mine.
There’s no judgment in her expression at all. She knows my compulsions that are driven by the fear of accidentally eating gluten.
“We can go if you want,” she offers, her voice gentle as she lifts her iced coffee, sucking down a sip through a reusable silicone straw she carries in her purse.
My throat bobs as I swallow hard. “I’m okay,” I tell her, my voice quiet as I tuck my hair behind my ears. “I’m good now.”
“You seem pretty anxious today,” she states, flipping to a new page in her notebook. “Want to talk about it?”
Willow and I met during our freshman year at Aston University and the rest was history after that.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, a frown tugging the corners of my lips down. “I didn’t expect it to be this difficult to find a job in marketing.”
Willow chews the inside of her cheek before releasing it. “What about the Archers? Could you still work for their marketing team?”
Reaching back, I pull the hair tie from the bottom of my braid, threading my fingers through my long locks as I shake out the waves. “I don’t know,” I tell her with a sigh. “I’m not even sure that’s what I want to do.”
My father is the head coach for the Aston Archers hockey team and I did an internship with their marketing department during my final semester of college, but I didn’t love it.
Sure, it was an easy job and one that was practically handed to me, but it just didn’t feel like the right fit for me. When I first decided on my major in college, it was because of my father’s voice in the back of my headreminding me that I needed to get a job that would provide financial stability.
In a perfect world, I would have found my dream job working with horses, riding and training them. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be sitting here with no idea of what I’m going to do with my life.
When I was a child, I was obsessed with horses and I was a persistent little girl. My father put me in riding lessons and supported my hobby until I was in high school. He bought me my first horse when I was in middle school. Hank is retired, fat, and happy, grazing in the meadow at Willow’s family’s farm.
It was an expensive hobby that I loved with every ounce of my being and my father wasn’t hesitant to support it, but he just didn’t see how it could provide a viable career path.
“You’re twenty-three, Mia,” Willow reminds me, her eyes twinkling beneath the lights above. “I don’t think you’re supposed to have it all figured out.”
“Says the girl who actually does have it all figured out,” I retort, raising my eyebrows at her.
Willow’s spending a few weeks here with me in Aston before she heads back home for the weekend. Both of her older brothers run their family’s maple farm in Sugar Hill Hollow, which is only about forty-five minutes west of Aston. She’s visiting them before heading off to Portland for her internship before grad school.
Sugar Hill Hollow isn’t far away, but it feels like a completely different world. It’s a small, quaint town nestled at the base of themountain, surrounded by the Sweetwater River that runs along the perimeter of the town and spills into Sugar Hill Lake.
“Hardly,” she says with a laugh, shaking her head at me.
My father moved to Aston a few years ago, but he didn’t sell my childhood home at the lake. Instead, it’s become more of a vacation home, with memories etched in the wood and stone exterior. Personally, I miss it there. Time just has a way of moving slower there. Like the world outside of the small lake town ceases to exist.
Right now, lake life sounds like a nice distraction from trying to figure out what the heck I’m going to do with my life. I should have gone back when I had the option to, before my father decided to list it as a vacation rental.
