Chapter 1

Chapter One

Emery

N othing says “Happy Thanksgiving” quite like catching your boyfriend stuffing someone else’s turkey. And by turkey, I mean his intern, Brittany, spread across his desk like a human buffet while expense reports were scattered across the floor.

Expense reports he’d claimed couldn’t wait until the next day.

The worst part? Her perfectly manicured nails, that I’d just complimented yesterday, were gripping the same mahogany desk where I’d eaten countless lunches with him, planning our future together like the complete idiot I apparently was.

I stood frozen in the doorway, plates of lovingly prepared Thanksgiving dinner growing heavier in my trembling arms with each excruciating second. The turkey I’d spent hours perfecting suddenly seemed as meaningless as our two-year relationship. Two years of shared dreams, inside jokes, and building what I thought was a future, all rendered as hollow as the carefully browned bird that was now going cold against my chest.

“Well, this is one way to ensure job satisfaction.” My voice barely hid the tremor. The words came out with a hollow bravado that didn’t match the way my eyes were stinging with tears.

My brain was screaming at me to run, to drop these stupid plates and get as far away as possible. But my feet were rooted to the spot, my eyes glued to the train wreck unfolding in front of me like some twisted holiday performance I couldn’t look away from.

Josh’s head snapped up, his perfectly styled hair now disheveled, his eyes wide with shock and something that looked like guilt. “Emery! This isn’t what it looks like!” He scrambled backwards, nearly falling over his expensive ergonomic office chair—the one I’d helped him pick out.

My fingers tightened on the plates I had somehow managed not to drop despite my arms shaking so badly I could hear the aluminum covering them crinkling.

“Really? Because it looks like you’re stuffing the intern’s turkey.” My attempt at sarcasm did little to mask the way my voice cracked on the last word.

The metaphor would have been funny if it weren’t for the actual turkey I’d prepared while Josh had been busy with... other activities.

Josh fumbled with pulling up his slacks as he came toward me, his face flushed and hair sticking up. “Let me explain.” He reached out with hands that had been somewhere I definitely didn’t want to think about.

I backed up into the hallway, nearly tripping over my own damn feet. “Explain what? How you’ve been screwing your intern behind my back? Or how you lied to me about working today?”

“This isn’t... I mean, it’s not...” He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that used to be endearing but now made him look pathetic.

“What it looks like?” I finished for him, letting out a laugh that probably sounded slightly unhinged. The plates in my hands felt like full-sized frozen turkeys. “Because it looks like you’re giving Brittany quite the performance review. Though I’m pretty sure that’s not what HR had in mind for employee evaluations.”

My attempt at workplace humor felt hollow, but it was either joke or cry, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break down.

His eyes darted to the side like a guilty puppy caught destroying an expensive shoe, completely unable to meet my gaze. “I know, I know. I’m sorry,” he mumbled, as if those empty words could somehow erase what I’d walked in on.

Brittany had the decency to look mortified as she grabbed her purse. “I should go...” She inched toward the door like she couldn’t escape fast enough.

“Oh no, please stay.” My voice dripped with false sweetness. “I’d hate to interrupt your... quarterly earnings report.”

Josh took a step toward me, his hands raised in that placating way men do when they know they’ve royally screwed up. “Emery, baby, let’s talk about this. I made a mistake.”

I looked down at the plates in my hands, then back at Josh’s pleading face. My fingers tightened around the ceramic edges as fury bubbled up inside me.

“You know what? I made a mistake too. I thought you were worth cooking a whole fucking turkey for.”

And with that, I hurled the plates at him with every ounce of strength I possessed, channeling years of wasted time into the throw.

They hit him square in the chest with a deeply satisfying splat, food exploding everywhere like some kind of twisted holiday Jackson Pollock, before falling to the floor with a thud.

Josh stood there, mouth agape, gravy and cranberry sauce dripping down his expensive dress shirt in slow, sticky rivulets. The cranberry sauce looked almost like blood against the white fabric, which was oddly appropriate given how much my heart was bleeding.

As I turned on my heel and stormed down the hall to the elevator, Josh called out after me. “Where are you going to go? You live with me!”

The fact that he was right about having nowhere to go made me walk faster, my heeled boots clicking against the tile floor like an angry metronome counting down the seconds until my inevitable breakdown.

I spun around as I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly, each press more violent than the last, as if that would make it arrive faster. “I’m going literally anywhere else. Oh, and Josh?”

I met his panicked gaze, savoring the way his face had gone from smugly apologetic to genuinely terrified.

“Your fly is still down. Not that anyone can see anything, since you know...” I held my fingers a few inches apart, making the universal gesture for ‘pathetically small.’

The elevator dinged, and I practically dove inside, my hands shaking so badly I almost missed the buttons twice. Finally, the doors slid shut with a soft whoosh that felt like the closing credits.

As I rode the elevator down, watching the floor numbers tick by with agonizing slowness, the reality of what had just happened started to set in.

It wasn’t until I reached my car that everything hit me. My two-year relationship was over, and I’d thrown an entire turkey dinner at him like some kind of deranged Food Network reject.

And on top of that, I’d effectively quit my job, because there was no way in hell I could work with that cheating asshole after this. The thought of having to see his stupid face every day, knowing what he’d done, made my stomach turn more violently than that time I got food poisoning from gas station sushi.

Slumping against my steering wheel, I did what any rational twenty-eight-year-old woman would do in this situation. I laughed until I cried, or cried until I laughed, I’m not really sure which came first.

My life was officially a dumpster fire.

I had exactly $843 in my bank account, a garage full of Christmas decorations I’d planned to put up this weekend, and no idea where I was going to sleep tonight.

The problem with rock bottom is that it comes with questionably stained carpet and a bathroom that looks like it was last cleaned when *NSYNC was still together. Three days into my new life at the Extended Stay I’d learned several valuable life lessons.

Lesson one: Making ramen in a coffee pot is technically possible but inadvisable. The coffee-flavored noodles I’d created last night would haunt my taste buds until the day I died. And probably beyond.

“At least it’s not boring,” I muttered to myself, watching today’s attempt at cuisine spin ominously in the microwave. The ancient appliance made concerning grinding noises that suggested it might be possessed by the ghost of bad decisions past.

Time for my daily dose of caffeine and sugar.

The door to my room stuck slightly as I tried to open it, requiring a special hip-check-and-twist maneuver I’d perfected over the weekend. I needed ice, and the machine was conveniently located right next to my new best friend, Gary, the night manager, who had a conspiracy theory for every occasion.

“The government’s putting mind control chips in the ice machines,” Gary informed me solemnly as I approached, his uniform somehow both too big and too small at the same time.

I nodded sagely, having learned that agreeing was the fastest way to get ice. “That explains why I suddenly wanted to do my taxes after getting ice yesterday.”

Once my cup was full, I headed back to my room, and settled onto the bed that squeaked like it was auditioning for a horror movie soundtrack. My phone buzzed with another text from Josh—number forty-seven since The Great Turkey Incident, but who was counting? Delete.

Lesson two: Hotel wifi password requirements are more stringent than the FBI’s. After three failed attempts at “Extended123,” I’d finally succeeded with “Extended1234” because apparently, even budget motels need military-grade security where the password changed every day.

A crash from next door reminded me of lesson three: The walls were thin enough to hear my neighbor’s life story whether I wanted to or not. Mrs. Henderson in 214 was going through a divorce, loved reality TV, and had what seemed like hourly phone conversations with her cat sitter about her beloved Mr. Whiskers’ eating habits.

“He ate three treats?!” her voice carried through the wall. I nodded along, invested in Mr. Whiskers’ dietary achievements despite never having met the cat.

The microwave dinged, and I retrieved my ramen with all the enthusiasm of someone getting a root canal. “Bon appétit,” I told my reflection in the streaky mirror. “This is what we call character building.”

My phone buzzed again, this time with a job rejection email that was surely a delayed auto response seeing as it was a Sunday night. Apparently, my “qualifications were impressive” but they were “going in another direction.” Probably the direction of someone who hadn’t dramatically quit their last job by pelting their cheating boyfriend with poultry.

“You know what?” I addressed my ramen, watching the noodles swim listlessly in their MSG-laden broth like my career prospects. “We’re going to turn this around. Tomorrow, we’re going to put boots to the pavement, march into every business within a ten-mile radius, and charm someone into hiring me.”

A knock at my door interrupted my pep talk to processed noodles. It was Gary, holding what appeared to be a tinfoil hat.

“Protection,” he said, thrusting it toward me. “From the ice machine rays.”

I accepted it graciously, because when life hands you a tinfoil hat, you put it on and hope it goes with your outfit. “Thanks, Gary. This really pulls my entire ensemble together.”

Once the door was locked, I caught my reflection again—now featuring discount aluminum headwear—and couldn’t help but laugh. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be living in a motel, wearing a tinfoil hat, and having deep conversations with instant noodles, I’d have thought they were crazy.

But here I was, and somehow, I wasn’t completely falling apart. Sure, my life currently resembled a rejected sitcom pilot, but I was surviving. And that was enough for now.