How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,64

off, and Shark appeared at my shoulder. “We have some trouble,” he said.

I put my phone in my pocket, looking around. “What trouble?”

“I make two guys ready to fight, nine o’clock.”

Shark liked to use words like make. I glanced over, and he was right. A long-haired punk and a short-haired punk, facing off. Nothing had happened yet, but the people around them were fading back, giving them room in self-defense. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Oh, man. I do not have the energy for this tonight.”

“Get the energy, Mr. Football,” Shark said. “We’ve got maybe five minutes. It’ll take both of us to throw them out.” He looked at my face. “You don’t want to, you can go get another job.”

“No.” I needed the money. I’d started actual EMT training a week ago, and it would empty my savings to finish the course work until I could get a job.

I’d suggested an EMT career as a convenient lie at the wedding, but afterward the idea wouldn’t leave my brain. I’d already had most of the training, though I’d have to get properly certified to work. And I had the crazy thought that I might like it. And be good at it. Like I could do something that made a difference to people, even in a small way.

So far, I’d been right. I liked it. But it was exhausting, being in class most of the day and working at night. Too exhausting to deal with this shit.

But I needed the money.

“Take the short-haired one,” I said to Shark. “I’ll circle around behind the long-haired one.” We sauntered casually through the crowd and got ready.

It was a good plan, but it still went to shit. Short hair pushed long hair, long hair pushed back, someone shouted, and the crowd started to move. Shark got short hair in a lock and hauled him toward the side exit, while I grabbed long hair and prodded him toward the back.

Shark’s guy got nasty, kicking him in the shins; mine wove drunkenly, in a way I found so alarming I hustled him faster. When I opened the back door I actually put a foot on his ass and shot him straight out into the back parking lot. He went like a bullet until he reached the chain-link fence, leaned over, and puked.

And suddenly, it wasn’t the money. It wasn’t the job. None of it mattered. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that was worth this.

I stared at the sky, which was full of crisp autumn stars, and made a decision.

“I quit,” I said.

Twenty-Eight

Megan

“You’re going to have to start charging me for this,” Holly said, “now that you’re officially a pro.”

We were in her apartment for our Friday night photo session. I was crouching behind a tailor’s dummy that was wearing one of Holly’s creations, an assortment of pins pinched between my lips. I pulled them out and said, “You make me sound like a hooker.”

She laughed, adjusting the settings on the camera as I arranged a fold of fabric and pinned it in place. “A stylist hooker.”

“That’s me.” After getting home from my fateful trip to Cape Cod, I’d done some thinking about my life. It led me to calling up the photographer I’d worked for, Janine, and asking if she’d give me another chance as her stylist. It had taken some convincing, a little begging, and an offer to update her website for free—I hadn’t exactly been polite when I quit—but it happened that she had just gotten a big catalog contract and was short-handed, so she agreed to give me a trial run. I’d taken a leap of faith, quit Drug-Rite, and gone into it with commitment and willingness to learn. I’d even started slowly letting go of my website clients so I could focus. So far, it felt like the right decision.

I loved the work. I loved being in studio every day, always on my feet, solving the next problem, getting the next shot. No two days were alike. The hours were crazy, and the work was freelance, but I thrived on it. I felt at home with the constant unexpectedness, the stream of new people and new experiences. My dad had been right. I liked styling, and I was good at it. I never wanted to look at a website—or a Drug-Rite cash—again.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said to Holly, looking critically at how the dress hung on the dummy and rearranging a fold I didn’t like. “I can still