Burning Desire

Chapter 30

Instead of my alarm waking me, it was Ruby. She'd decided my bed sounded better than hers, and she'd slept beside me until sunrise when she started climbing all over me and slapping me in the face with her paws. It was fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep in that short amount of time, so I went ahead and got up.

I started a new morning routine, feeding Ruby and letting her out to run around the yard and do her business before I made coffee. When I went to shower, she'd started whining at the bathroom door until I let her in. She ended up falling asleep beside the toilet halfway through my shower.

I was a few minutes late getting out of the house. I had to wait for Lindsey to get there. She'd agreed to babysit Ruby for me while I was at work since I couldn't trust her alone in the house yet.

Geez, I'd forgotten how much work went into having a pet.

When I arrived at the office, it was bustling with activity. Selena was already in my office, spinning in the chair, waiting for me to come in. Mandy was in a meeting in the boardroom when I walked by. Joseph was on a conference call with the New York Times regarding the mishap with Nicole.

Everyone was running around, high strung on energy. It was a big day, after all. The New York Times dinner was later that evening, and we'd soon be finding out who made the cut in the contest. I was nervous just thinking about it, crossing my fingers that one of the two articles with my name on it had been good enough.

"Hey, what's going on?" I asked Selena when I entered my office.

"You'll never guess what I found out this morning!" she nearly screamed in excitement, bouncing in the chair, making her curls bounce on her shoulders.

"What?"

"I overheard Mandy and Andrea talking, and Mandy said she already knows that a couple writers from Satisfaction got into the top five in the contest, and she's going to give the Featured Story promotion to whichever writer ranked highest!"

Selena looked like she was about to have a heart attack if she got any more enthusiastic. Clearly, she'd had too much espresso in her morning commute coffee.

"Calm down before you make the building shake with your high-pitched squeals," I giggled and turned on my computer.

I realized Alex's article was still lying on my desk from yesterday and I had yet to give him my opinion on it.

"Sel, have you seen Alex yet? I didn't see him in his cubicle when I came in."

She shook her head. "I guess he's running late today. But anyway, that's all I wanted to tell you. I've got to get to work on an article for the next online issue. I'm way behind this week!"

Selena practically skipped out of my office and as soon as she left, her words started to sink in.

Mandy was giving the promotion to the highest ranked writer? What if I didn't rank highest? What if I didn't rank at all? I'd been trying so hard to impress the hell out of Mandy since I'd found out about the position opening. For a while, I'd been borderline convinced that I'd get the job. I wanted that job so bad. I wanted to get to write about whatever the hell I wanted, rather than love and sex all the time. I wanted to write about important social issues, and help raise awareness, and make progress in our community. I wanted to be the writer with the biggest section in the magazine. I'd worked so fucking hard for it... Had all my hard work been for nothing?

I continued to second guess myself and let my frustration build over not knowing. I started thinking about all the other subjects I could've submitted an article on to the Times. There were so many other topics that might've been more intriguing to the judges. Why had I chosen something like ballet? Did the Times even give a hoot about articles on the arts in this context? I was sure they'd probably chosen a political piece for the top spot. Why had I written a political piece? Why had I-