(Claire’s POV)
Friday morning crept in with a kind of silence that pressed against my skin. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t have an alarm forcing me out of bed, no corporate emails waiting to crush my spirit before I’d even brushed my teeth. I lay there staring at the ceiling, sheets tangled around my bare legs, wondering if unemployment was supposed to feel like freedom.
It didn’t.
It felt like being shoved out of a moving car and left in the middle of nowhere with no map.
I turned my head toward the nightstand. My phone screen lit up at the slightest touch, the feed I had been scrolling through the night before still open. That bold line from the influencer echoed in my head like a taunt: “Meet the right man and you’ll never work another day in your life.”
I didn’t want
