Dark Redemption - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,30

sleeping with anyone else right now, so a party like the one at The Redemption doesn't quite make sense since that's the whole point why anyone would go there."

She crosses her arms and flounces down onto the couch. I sit down next to her. I try to take her hand in mine but she pulls away.

"This weekend is supposed to be about us," she says. "We're supposed to have fun. You're not supposed to catch up with an old boyfriend or whatever the hell he is to you and just drop me."

"I know. I'm not dropping you. I'm here with you."

"Yeah, but you're not. You want to be wherever he is."

"No, I want to be here with you. I want to go to the beach, I want to have a good time. I want to read some magazines and a beach read, sunbathe a little too long,” I say. “I want to do all of that with you. That's why we're here, right?"

She bites the inside of her cheek looking up at me, annoyed, pissed off.

"I'm really sorry," I say after a long pause.

I feel like I have apologized way too much, but it's still somehow not getting through. I want to make this right. She's my friend and my roommate, but nothing I say seems to put her at ease.

"Well, I want to go The Redemption," she announces.

"And you should."

"By myself?"

"You never needed me to go with you before."

"But it's nice when you have a buddy, you know? It's not so scary."

"I know, but you're going to have fun. There's going to be some nice guys there and you know, maybe some girls, too."

She shakes her head again. "Just come with me," she begs.

"Come on, let's go to the beach.” I try to change the topic of conversation, but it's all to no avail. Even though for a moment I thought that we would reach that point where we could make up, suddenly, everything changes.

A darkness washes over her.

She looks annoyed, pissed off, and the fight begins once again. If this was a two bedroom, I'd go to my room and slam the door but there's no privacy here. The bedroom is as much hers as it is mine.

Luckily, she beats me to it.

She grabs her bag. "I'm going to go to the beach by myself," she says, pointing her finger in my face.

"Why? Why are you doing this? Let's have fun today."

"No, no, I don't want you coming with me if you're just doing it as charity. Why don't you call Dante and spend the day with him?"

She walks out of the cottage, slamming the door behind her.

I sit back down in the living room trying to figure out what just happened. How did this conversation go so askew?

What did I do?

I mean, yeah, I have been neglecting her so far and this was supposed to be a girls’ trip, but how was I supposed to know that I'd run into Dante? She, of all people, knows how I feel about him.

Allison knows everything that we've been through.

I grab my phone out of a need to be somewhere else, scroll through some social media, and then check my email.

More bad news.

I applied for a job at NewsWatch and a generic thank you but no thank you message came back from Human Resources.

I had my hopes up for this job. Allison was certain that I would get it. She even gave me a recommendation. She works in marketing, so not directly in the department for which I had applied. But she has been there for a few years and has even risen through the ranks and she was so certain that I would get it. We had already even talked about commuting to work together, grabbing lunch together, and have all of this fun at work.

And now with a big fat NO staring in my face, I don't know exactly what I’ll do.

A sense of despair washes over me. I know that this is just one resume and one cover letter, but I was very hopeful that they would at least invite me in for an interview.

They didn't.

I have been looking for work since the beginning of the summer after Mom started to feel significantly better. I have been invited in for only one interview, and then no one called me back.

The thing about the news industry is that they're just so many people that are willing to work non-paying internships to get ahead. It makes sense for them,