Page 45 of The Rules Of Attraction
Chapter 8
Summer
* * *
I’d officially hit rock bottom.
Seriously. All I needed was the seal of approval to stamp the word Loser on my forehead.
I’d taken the day to think about working for the Sullivan’s just as Eilesh advised but bounced between decisions on whether or not I could get over what happened with Alex and suck it up.
By noon the next day I thought that maybe I could try for myself to enquire at a few firms. Eilesh had been doing all the leg work for me, and it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her opinion. I just wanted to give it a try for myself.
I contacted Silver and Fox and spoke to their human resources manager, wowed her with my experience, but lost her when I got to the part about working for Ashfords.
She was nice and wasn’t rude to me, like most had been, but she flat out told me no. She said that Ashfords still had a very bad taste in everyone’s mouth for the sheer reason that the pension and investment fund they’d assisted stealing from had involved a number of people based at the firm.
I didn’t know what to say after that other than to thank her for her time.
Needing to clear my head I took a walk around Millennium Park but when I got back to the apartment I found myself with a whole new problem.
Someone had broken in and took all that I had left that was of value.
I’d packed light to come to Chicago putting most of my things in storage back in Ohio, but I’d carried all my favorite things with me. My laptop, shoes, clothes, jewelry.
Whoever broke in took the laptop and all the good stuff , leaving me with what I’d brought for house wear. They even took some of my lingerie, leading me to believe that the thief was a woman.
I reported the theft to the police but they were unable to do anything other than take the report and blamed me for not securing the place because of the broken windows.
The craziness ran into the next day when I checked my bank balance and saw that all I had left was twenty bucks. I wondered if someone had hacked my account too because I should have had five hundred dollars in there.
When I checked at the bank I discovered that the money had gone to my car insurance, for the car that I’d sold a few months back and no longer had. I’d forgotten to cancel the annual auto renewal.
With everything that had happened with my father, and Tom and Becca, I’d forgotten to cancel the damned thing.
When I called the insurance company they said they would return the payment to me but it would take fourteen working days because of processing and all manner of shit I didn’t need.
So here I was with twenty bucks to my name.
Eilesh had called me several times but rather than pick up I texted back when I felt I could.
She called again five minutes ago but I couldn’t answer. I was too numb to talk to anybody.
I lowered to the bed and lay in it, feeling like I was waiting to die and feeling like a pathetic shell of my former self.
Somewhere along the line I’d lost myself and I was trying so hard to get back on track but it just wasn’t happening.
What was I going to do now?
This stupid thing with the insurance was going to set me back and I would have to end up borrowing money. I didn’t want to borrow anything.
I didn’t want anything from anyone, I just wanted to be me again. The woman who had everything under control. It was hard to go from being such a strong person who was independent and able to deal with whatever came at her, to this.
How had I taken so many steps backwards.
As tears spilled down my cheeks I closed my eyes.
It must have been the distress that made me fall asleep because it was only four in the afternoon.
