LIGHT A FLAME

Chapter Three

“Who is next?” Joshua asked, pushing this kid’s CV back over to Ethan while checking his emails.

“No one, she was the only one,” Ethan told him, shrugging when Joshua threw a look at him. Was he kidding right now? “Josh, seriously, who’d you think was going to apply? Oxford graduates? It’s a badly paid internship, you could hire a high schooler to do it.”

“I might.”

Seriously, Joshua was trying really hard to contain himself right now, there were a thousand things going through his head, but he had learned to keep it together until it was appropriate to deal with them. “So, where’d you find this kid? Because there was no way she had simply thought of applying. And why’d you secretly want to interview her behind my back?”

“Because I knew this was going to happen, you’re so intimidating. We could’ve had a nice chat, your questions were setting her up for failure, they were partly irrelevant and you kept cutting her off.” Ethan honestly sounded upset and Joshua had to laugh, but not because he was so amused. “Fine, then let’s wait another month and see who applies. At least this Stefanie kid has some work ethic, I believed her when she said she’s a quick learner, she kinda has to be, with that many different jobs.”

“Where’d you find her?” Joshua repeated his question, finally looking at Ethan this time, who just rolled his eyes, looking away.

“She’s a friend of one of our authors. Amara Miller.” Well, that explained a LOT. “I met with her yesterday to discuss her new novel and I mentioned the internship to her and she suggested Bailey. They’re childhood friends or something, not that it matters.”

“Hmm… “ Joshua made, leaning back in the chair, staring at the wall. “Did you convince her to scratch these boring passages where she’s describing these murals? I almost fell asleep.”

“She said they are essential to the rest of the plot, so I told her we’d talk about it again in a few weeks. But about Bailey-“

“I never liked these page-long passages of describing stuff that Miller always does. And her last novel had way too many love triangles, it was excruciating to-“

“You’re thinking of somebody else. Miller never writes love triangles. If any kind of love interests at all. You complained about that too.” Oh, right. “But back to Bailey. I think we should give her a chance, it’s a bloody internship, it’s just a six-week contract. No one else is gonna apply during that time, and even if someone did apply, we could use a second intern. We could even use three.”

Joshua didn’t answer, he also wasn’t looking at Ethan, because he genuinely wanted to walk out of this room right now and scream. He remained calm though, intertwining his fingers on the table. “It’s going to make us look bad. We’ve always upheld some kind of standard, everyone who works here has some kind of qualification, not dog stylists or cemetery whatever workers, it’s- she lost her job, and no one wants to hire her now because she’s already been everywhere. She probably lives on Miller’s couch-“

At this point, Ethan cleared his throat, so Joshua knew he was right.

“-takes care of her ten cats or her children or whatever she has and- I don’t care to find out. I can’t do this, Ethan. I can’t.” He truly, honestly couldn’t. “I can’t just hire people because they’re friends with somebody else, it will make us lose credibility.”

“You. This is about you. Just say it how it is.” Ethan was making fun of him, and Joshua had to really give it his all so as to not clench his fist.

“I’m the CEO, ultimately it all reflects badly on the firm.” What did Ethan even want? Stefanie Bailey had ZERO qualifications. Zero.

“You didn’t even rub your title in Bailey’s face.” Now Ethan was joking and Joshua was about to implode.

“It says it on my damn name tag, Ethan. So we also don’t know if she cannot read or simply has no interest in doing so, great.” It was just getting better.

“Joshua, it’s an internship, not a-“

“Yeah, it is. A paid internship, because we NEED somebody to help out, not to uselessly stand around. If I hire Bailey, I might as well hire anybody off of the streets, somebody who’d take the job if it paid half. Bailey probably might as well. But that’s NOT what we do here. We don’t just hand out jobs because we might feel bad for people or because they know somebody else, we’re not a charity. This is a business, life is unfair, Bailey has no qualifications, her CV is a mess, and she had three spelling mistakes just in the-“

“Josh-“

“-first part, she was clearly lying during the interview, she’s probably never read a book in her life and I- no. That’s my final decision. You might have to stay longer today because we’re not hiring an intern, so get back to work.” And with that, Joshua packed his things, and he knew Ethan was upset, but he didn’t give two shits.

He had too much work to do to worry about the girl or Ethan or… anybody. Ridiculous, Joshua hadn’t gotten life handed to him on a silver platter either, no one who was working here had, and he wouldn’t just hand anything to this random Bailey either.

***

I didn’t really have a lot of time to have an emotional breakdown because I had to pick up Jenna from pre-school in a bit and also buy some stuff Amara had asked me to. Amara also always gave me money for it all, and I was starting to feel like their incompetent teenage daughter who would never be able to move out and stand on her own feet. And the worst part was, I was a few months older than my best friend as well.

The thing was when we had been teenagers, I had thought Amara and I might end up on the same path. We had similar interests, similar grades, and the same friend group, and we were both Omegas. Although Amara had never acted like that traditional picture some people were still painting of that term, and I wasn’t so sure about myself. When Amara had met Gabriel though, and they had bonded, not even 5 months after that, I had quickly come to realize that our futures held different things.

When Amara had gotten pregnant on accident by age 19, and again on purpose two years after Nina had been born, she had still somehow managed to get a degree AND write a couple of novels and maintain her hobbies as well as a whole relationship, love life, and family life while I had been… failing, at everything, to put it bluntly. And I had also lost that one year where I had thought I would become a famous singer and- well, so that hadn’t worked out.

Of course, I was happy for my friends, that their lives were going so well, exactly after plan, that their kids were sweet, that they had the perfect relationship, they were bonded, they loved their jobs and whatnot, but it just made me see what I had already missed out on, and that I would probably never be able to catch up and have that kind of life too.

And now I was 25, had 382910 jobs on my CV, no relationship, not even a HOME, and I also couldn’t even do well in a job interview.

I wasn’t crying anymore in the store because I had decided that everyone had probably expected me to fail anyway. Amara had texted me earlier asking how it had gone and I was still ignoring that message, but that was beside the point.

I kept the receipt after buying everything even though I knew Amara wouldn’t even look at it, but I was somehow paranoid that my friend would think I would steal from her. Not that I ever had or would, but it all just… it all just felt super weird, and I would soon be going insane, pretty sure.

Amara or Gabriel had informed both their daughter’s teachers that I would sometimes be picking them up from school, so now I at least didn’t have to feel like a creep just sitting there in Jenna’s school, waiting for her to come to find her like she always did. There were also the same mothers there as last time, probably bitching about me, according to the glances they were throwing at me the entire time.

“Auntie Stefanie!” Seeing Jenna’s happy face upon seeing that it was me who was picking her up from school was honestly the only good thing I could find about today. Or this entire week.

“Hi, kiddo. Do you have all your things?” She was already dressed and everything, waving a piece of paper in front of my face.

“Yes! Look what I made! I made it all by myself.” The little girl told me proudly, beaming when I pretended to be really impressed by… well, whatever was on that paper.

“Wow, that’s so good! You’re going to become a painter for sure, I can already tell. Should we put it in your backpack so it won’t get dirty before we get home?” I suggested, and Jenna nodded a few too many times, jumping up and down from excitement.

She watched me carefully putting the drawing in her bumblebee backpack before slinging it over my own shoulder, extending my arm so she’d know to take my hand when they were leaving the building.

“How was school? Did you have a lot of fun?” She LOVED pre-school, so that question ended in a waterfall of words and jumping from one topic to the next, and I settled for just listening, acting surprised once in a while, and asking more questions to keep her going.

There was no need for us to go home immediately. Amara had told me that she wouldn’t at all be mad if I let Jenna get out some energy after school, and get her a snack as well because dinner would be late today. Gabriel would pick up Nina later after work, so I decided me and Jenna may as well have gone to the park so I wouldn’t have to think about this job interview for now.

I had at least texted Amara back before, telling her I thought it had gone alright but that I was prepared for everything, so now I was TERRIFIED of my phone going off, and though it made no sense at all, I had put it on silent. I just… I couldn’t deal with this right now, not when I was with a 4-year-old in the park.

“I wanna go on the swings,” Jenna told me when we had sat down on one of the benches at the playground and I was making her eat some of the snacks I had bought her before. Of course only what Amara had told me she liked, and though I knew I would never ask, I would’ve never dared to feed her anything else.

“In a bit okay? When you’re finished with that.” She seemed like she would protest, but she continued chewing, watching the other kids playing with big eyes. “Do you have any homework?”

“No.” The little girl shook her head a few times, her feet dangling over the bench as if she was about to jump up and run off any second. “Nina always has lots of homework, but I don’t. She said when I’m bigger I will. I wish I had homework too.”

“Well, maybe we can think of something ourselves when we get home, huh? Like last time?” I had just let her draw some numbers and letters or attempted to, to keep her busy while I had been helping Nina with her homework. Or watched her more like.

“Yes! That was a lot of fun. I can’t wait until I’m older and then I can do homework every day.” I smiled at her excitement, but at the same time, I wondered how long it would take for her to lose that positive attitude. “Auntie Stefanie?”

“Yes?” I asked, making sure to hand her some more grapes.

“Are you gonna stay with us forever now?” Jenna had asked this before, but she had asked Gabriel and he had done an amazing job at explaining why I was living with them for now, but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of that because it was already 3 weeks in the past. And I was still here.

“No, it’s just for a little bit.” I told her, hoping she wouldn’t keep on asking, but of course the “Why?” and the sad face came in an instant. “I, um- you know how your Mama and Dada are going to work?”

“What?” Okay, wrong approach.

“I was living with- a friend, and we got into a fight and then I had to leave, so now I don’t have a place to sleep, so your parents said I could stay with you guys for a bit. Until I find a place where I can live.” I was trying to use easy words, and I was also lying a bit because my ex-roommate definitely was NOT my friend and it was my own fault I had had to leave. But Jenna was 4.

“Oh. Are you still fighting with your friend?” She sounded very concerned about that and I had to take a breath.

“Um, he’s not my friend anymore,” I told her so as to not make it more complicated.

“Oh… there was this girl in my class and I had a fight with her too and now we’re not friends. She’s stupid. ” One second-

“Jenna, I don’t think you should call people stupid, okay? That’s not a nice word.” I tried to be firm, but I really wasn’t great at disciplining children. And Jenna wasn’t my child, after all, I wasn’t even either of the girl’s legal guardians. Not because Amara and Gabriel hadn’t asked, simply because… well, because of situations like the one I was in right now.

“Okay… sorry. But she is not nice. I hate her.”

“That’s also not a very nice thing to say.” I tried, contemplating whether to tell Amara or Gabriel about this later, but… I had other problems.

Jenna just shrugged, seemingly not sorry at all. “She broke my favorite pencil and then she threw all of my books in the garbage. And she didn’t even say sorry.”

I would have hated this girl as well, but obviously, I couldn’t tell her that. “What did you say to her?”

“That I hate her. And then she cried.” Jenna actually sounded proud of it and I just watched her eating the last grape for a moment, trying to think of something to say, but I just… I just never did. “Can I go play now?”

“Okay, but stay in my sight, alright?” The little girl barely had time to agree because she was in such a hurry to run over to the swings, only a few meters away from them.

I decided to think about whether to tell Amara and Gabriel about this once we were back home and once I had heard back about this job interview. I did build up some courage and checked my phone once Jenna had run off, but there was nothing on it, so I quickly put it away again so I could focus on not losing my best friends’ child on a playground at 11 in the morning.