Tonight she would take a fresh look at the document, pull together a direction, and go. She just needed inspiration.
If losing her job wasn’t inspiration, she didn’t know what was.
She skimmed down the list. First there was the apprentice job at Fanny’s Floral on March 12. Had she known about her lily allergy, honestly, she’d definitely, probably, still be there today. But when the opportunity came to try the corporate life—wearing the pencil skirts, drinking from Starbucks cups at staff meetings—she switched to the paper company mid-April. It wasn’t long before she realized there was a difference between the corporate life in the movies and the corporate life in Gatlinburg, at Nationwide Paper, at a desk smaller than the ones from high school. Worse, the pencil skirts made her claustrophobic. Girls had to be out of their minds to voluntarily lock themselves into thigh corsets and make themselves completely vulnerable in the event of a bear attack. In Gatlinburg, you really had to think about these things.
On impulse she glanced toward the window, but all she saw was the dusky light reflecting off of her car. And the dog, of course, staring.
She scooted a foot to the right.
After the paper company she started taking the advice of the career counselor and wrote down what she’d learned she wanted or didn’t want from each experience. So, having learned the corporate life wasn’t for her, she jumped to the other side of the line. Hence the arcade supervisor job at Dollywood that started in May. And the lifeguard job at Dollywood’s Splash Country through the summer. And the valet attendant, cabin inspector, pool server, and brief spell as a wax-candle store manager. Those stints carried her up to Christmas, when she took a hiatus from Dollywood life to experience the magic of childhood as a seasonal elf for Big Buck’s Pros. Unfortunately, it only took two ten-hour shifts in jingly slippers to realize the attractive guy who’d hired her was probably not a real elf who was going to fall in love with her and take her to the North Pole on holidays. She never saw him again.
She felt that neck-tingling sense that somebody was watching her and lifted her head. The dog, positioned to see straight through the center of her window, panted and licked up some straying drool.
Chip was in her field of vision, too, this time. He nudged the dog to move and dug into the earth. Her gaze lingered as he shoveled three loads of dirt.
She cleared her throat.
Flicked her eyes back to the computer, read a few more lines, and looked up again. No more Chip. Dog still staring.
She scooted a foot to the left.
For several more minutes she read, jobs and descriptions trailing down page after page, head lifting sporadically to move her position left or right out of the dog’s line of sight, her eyes glancing on occasion to Chip. Just to see how the fence was coming along.
Had it started to rain?
She squinted. Yes, it was raining now, and the raindrops made Chip’s hair slick up and out like he was in a boy band. Which was ridiculous in a way, but also . . .
The raindrops dripped down his face, following the vein on the side of his neck before melting into his long-sleeved shirt.
No.
Ab-so-lute-ly not.
She stood to refill her mug as he started yanking out the orange wire.
She was not interested in that man.
She’d be out of her mind if she was interested in that man.
For that matter, it wasn’t even allowed to be interested in that irritating, infuriating, unavailable man.
And yet every few minutes for the next hour, she felt her body turning toward the front door.
At every indistinct noise she lifted her head, waiting for the knock on the door. Which was a tough row to hoe, as the house was a hundred years old and creaked every five seconds. But the world out the window had become a curtain of black, and the way he had moved earlier had suggested the project should be done in a matter of minutes, not hours . . .
Yes, any minute he’d be at her door, telling her he’d finished.
She looked back to the bottom of page 7 of The List, her eyes adjusting to the brightness of the screen in the dim lighting of the living room. Kennel assistant (just one word: rabies), nanny (just one word: kids), cookie-dough scooper (the job sounded incredible, but she gained ten