The Rockstar Who Loves Me

Song 8 ♫ Don't Like Your Work

"I don't like your work," Mom said as she drove me to said place.

I was a blob beside her on the passenger's seat, the vestiges of me vaguely human-shaped after surviving the first day of the anniversary event.

"Neither do I." I slurred every word as though I were hungover. "Retail is brutal."

"Retail or your boss?" she asked, her lips pinching as though the last word had left a bad taste in her mouth. "He make you work eighteen hours yesterday, after working all weekend and what he do? Drinks coffee on his office all day and goes home early."

"In," I corrected. "It's in his office."

"En la oficina de mierda esa."

That was another way to put it, yes.

"He overwork you, not giving you green card and on top of that you date him?" She reached out and smacked me on the shoulder. "Es que eres bruta?"

"Dated, past tense." I rubbed the spot that no doubt had the shape of her hand. "I've told you the verb tense in English is very important."

"How the youth say, whatever."

By this point she was pulling into the mall's parking lot. I'd driven myself yesterday but after the eighteen-hour strong marathon it was, I trusted myself behind the wheel less than if I'd drank a whole bottle of wine by myself.

So, today she would be my personal chauffeur. It would be so much fun.

It was hard to listen to her when she was right, which was often—all the time, but I'd never admit that aloud. If I followed everything Mom said to a T, my life wouldn't be the mess it was.

But it would also not be my life. One trait I took from her was the desire to not do as others bid and follow my own set of rules.

She had been right when she said dating Bryce wouldn't be wise, and I hadn't listened. I'd been blinded by his smiles and the fancy dinners he took me to, to realize that as a boyfriend he would be the same as he was as a boss. Someone who would string me along with empty promises and not give me what I deserved.

While I'd freed myself from him as a boyfriend, as a boss he continued overworking the shit out of me, dangling the green card sponsorship in front of me he never actually followed through with.

And yeah, he did spend most of the day yesterday on the phone in his office, sipping expensive coffee from an espresso machine only he had access to.

Meanwhile, my limbs had turned into soggy noodles and my head was heavy as though filled with lead. The combination almost sent me toppling over when I stepped out of the car.

Mom joined me, grabbing my bag in one arm and her daughter in the other. "I'm never so tired after cleaning toilets for a living."

I sighed. "Maybe I should consider a career change."

"And I'm twenty years older." She scoffed. "I wish you didn't turn Gabriel down."

Great, it was back to that topic again.

Gabriel was my uncle. Out of my entire extended family, he was the only one with money—serious money. He used to be an oil mogul in Venezuela before criminals kidnapped his wife and daughter and killed the former. Nowadays, he was all about wind energy in Canada and he'd offered me a job there.

There were a couple of problems with that, though. One was I couldn't stand the cold. The other one was he'd already sponsored my Miss Venezuela run and I failed to make anything out of that.