Connor (Boys & Toys Season 2 1)

“It’s Kansas,” I correct him belatedly to myself, then smile and watch them as I sip my drink. I’m gathering Brett doesn’t retain information easily.

Watching him open right up to that guy at the bar, I suddenly find myself wondering why I haven’t gotten up the nerve to tell Brett about my whole job-hunting dilemma. All week, I have been hopping around behind his back to go on job interviews, put in applications, and seek anyone who’s employing. I pretended my internship went late every day this week. I lied yesterday morning about why I got up two hours earlier than usual to head off, insisting I was being called in by my boss.

All this stress is doing something to me.

I should come clean—and soon.

10

It’s been one exhausting morning of ten-second interviews, applications, rejections, and several very irritable fingers pointing at “online applications only” signs. I’m already feeling like I’ve had a ten-hour day when I drag myself into Wales Weekly, take the long elevator ride up, and meet with Brenda and the others in the workroom.

“Where’s our coffee?” asks Jay haughtily when we are in the middle of a tedious assignment, his cool, gray eyes flicking among us. I swear, that guy has never slouched in his life. “We need a coffee boy to handle these menial tasks. Think they’ll let us borrow one of the rat interns from downstairs?”

An intern named Dave chuckles at that. “They have enough on their plate. You ever been to that floor? I stopped by on my way out last week, and it was nothing but mayhem.”

“You sound envious,” notes Jay dryly.

Dave stares at Jay, stammering. “I … N-No, I mean, I’m not …” He clears his throat, then stiffens his back. “I meant, I doubt they have someone to spare. For, uh, coffee runs.”

“Some people aren’t made for upper-level work and management,” Jay goes on as if he didn’t hear him, typing on his laptop. “Maybe you belong with the rats downstairs. Chasing stories. Sweating for word counts. Doing the dirty work.”

Dave looks like he’s halfway to a coronary as his face flickers past thirty different responses, then at last settles on none at all, bending over his own laptop as he frowns and types away.

Bree in the corner of the room catches my eye, then shakes her head and continues thumbing over files in a cabinet.

“How about you, Connor?” asks Jay suddenly.

I lift my eyes from an article I’m reading. “Uh, what?”

“You want to be one of the rats downstairs?”

I notice a few of the other interns are looking at me. Why do I get the feeling everyone is as darkly hungry for me to say the wrong thing as Jay is? Is this a common workplace thing, to be so desperate for your peers to crash and burn?

I give Jay a light smile. “Did you know the rat comes first in the Chinese zodiac? Those born in the year of the rat are thought to share its traits, such as creativity, honesty, and generosity.”

Eyes shift uncomfortably around the room.

Jay stares at me hard. After a frosty moment’s thought, he lets out a private chuckle. “I doubt a trait like ‘generosity’ ever served anyone important when you’re at our level … let alone a rat.”

His amused chuckle is met with a few others’, including Dave’s, who appears determined as ever to win over Jay’s approval.

I shrug, taking Jay’s snide comment as I would anyone else’s. “Of course, there’s one other trait of the rat I failed to mention …”

Jay’s lips twist with an unimpressed smirk at my words as he awaits the rest of my sentence.

I smile lightly. “Ambition.”

His eyes darken.

Then Brenda comes in, and our moment ends.

At the end of our day, Bree and I ride down the elevator together again. And after its dutiful stop on what we’ll endearingly call the “rats’ floor”, Bree leans into me and mutters, “Is there an animal in the Chinese zodiac to represent a conceited, self-important bag of dicks?”

The small pinch of victory I feel after leaving my internship is quickly quashed by a deathly cold splash of reality. A glance at my phone reveals four more instant job rejections, three “I’m sorry, we’re no longer hiring” emails, and a skillfully written text that says, in a nutshell, I’m overqualified.

I could have been saved a whole lot of time if the city itself would just grow a giant mouth and say no one is hiring at all, and if they are, I’m not wanted, needed, or fitting to even flip a burger.

I’m going to have to tell Brett tonight.

And hope he doesn’t kick me out.

After emerging from the depths of the subway, a random decision to take a different route home has me passing the fateful alley down which the neon eggplant-shaped sign for Aubergines flashes, catching my eye. Feeling like I could use a pick-me-up drink before facing my roommate, I head right down the alley and flash my ID at the bouncer.