Vegas Baby

Prologue

~Nicole~

I’m sorry for the difficult situation you’ve ended up in, but I don’t quite see what you want me to do about it.

I looked at the letter with bloodshot eyes, my hands shaking a bit. With rage or with hurt, I didn’t know.

You’re a grown woman, so I’m sure you can figure out a solution. Until then, I need to focus on my own career. I wish you the absolute best, but I think we should keep our distance until this blows over.

I couldn’t believe it. But then again, I was always everyone’s second choice. From the day I was born, those who were supposed to care about me the most had been tossing me aside; their second-rate obligation.

Well that was fine. I would survive on my ow- No. I would flourish. That would show them.

Crumpling the letter up, I got on the bus with suitcase in hand, and I never looked back.

Chapter One

~Nicole~

“Thank you so much for answering all of our questions, we’ll give you a call soon to let you know what we’ve decided.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing and offering my hand. “I very much look forward to hearing from you.” Except they weren’t going to call me. I knew it, my interviewer knew it, and I was sure the woman at the front desk knew it.

“No problem. If you want to step outside, the receptionist will show you out.”

“Of course.” I gave them a polite smile, trying not to let my expression falter until I was back outside at the relative safety of the bus stop.

I had been doing great, answering all their questions sincerely and I had the relevant experience, but the entire interview I could tell that something was off. Most likely they had already hired their quota and were just interviewing me as a backup if someone didn’t show up.

Dammit!

I’d been trolling around Vegas for two weeks and I didn’t even have a place to live yet. And I couldn’t find a place to live without a job. Sure, maybe I could have planned my departure from my hometown a little better, but I didn’t see why that was interfering with people wanting to hire me. People moved, didn’t they? All the time!

Well, I could always be wrong. Maybe they would call me in two days and give me the job offer. But I doubted it. After so many interviews, I had managed to get a sense of when I was gelling with the interviewer or not.

I sighed and checked my watch. I still had one more meeting before I could run away to my hostel for the night. If there was one thing I was grateful for in this entire situation, it was cheap boarding in the city.

But money was running out and I couldn’t stay there forever. I needed a job and I needed it ASAP. Sure, I was saving tons by having a track phone and only riding public transportation, but I needed more money in and less money out.

I just had to cross my fingers and hope that the next interview would be the one.

I looked at my phone again. I could still just barely connect to the café’s wifi that was at the corner of the street. Pulling up the bus schedule, I had about a half an hour wait until my ride came.

Well, that was no problem. After living in the frigid Northeast for so long, I was happy to just sit out and soak up some sun.

But not without proper protection, of course. I pulled out some sunscreen from my purse and slathered my shoulders, my knees and my shins, which were all of my general burn zones. Unfortunately, I did have to leave my face bare, as I had been allergic to sunscreen there since I was a wee little girl.

It was not a pleasant experience discovering it, believe you me, but I had quickly learned to never put anything with an SPF on my face again.

Instead, I relied on big, floppy hats, which I promptly pulled out of my bag after replacing the sunscreen. Looking around, I found a nice tree to sit under on one of the medians in the parking lot and went about people and traffic watching.

Vegas certainly was different from home, but that was what I was looking for, wasn’t it? Something so far away and so different that nobody could know who I was or the baggage following along behind me.

When I had first arrived, I had imagined neon everything. And while I hadn’t been entirely wrong, the farther away from the strip one traveled, the more everything just started to look tired and desert-like.

Not that that was a bad thing. The tiredness told a story. Ones of gambling and mobs and dreams both conquered and dashed. This was the kind of place someone could fall in love with or be crushed by. I just hoped that I was the former.