“His hair fell softly to his eyes as he spoke. His voice was soothing and relaxing, reminiscent of the voices used in those meditation apps. He put me at ease and I wonder if he does this with others. He mentioned that he has no idea who Matt Lipinski is and yet I believe that it's one of his identities. How many does he have?”

Of course, not all of these facts and observations will be included in the story if it's ever published by Coast.

For now, I’m just jotting them down for myself.

“After what happened with Alex, after walking in on him having sex with his boss and finding out that he has been seeing her longer than he has been seeing me, my world has been upside down. Maybe that's why I became so intoxicated with Liam. I wanted to be with someone who is the opposite of Alex. I needed to take my mind off my heartache and the pain. That's what rebounds are, right?”

I dictate everything that happened at his home. My impressions of walking into the place, seeing him for the first time riding a horse, and my surprise at who he was.

I include whatever details I remember.

The kitchen was open concept and there were no cabinets.

The plates and dishes were all handmade and neatly piled on open shelves.

The floor-to-ceiling window walls gave expansive views of the desert.

The fact that I did not stay there long enough to see the setting sun.

I don't even hesitate to describe what it was like to kiss him. These notes are just for me.

I don't know why I even want to remember. I have never been much of a journal keeper until I started to use the dictation app on my phone to record my thoughts.

It has only been a few months, but somehow it has organized my thinking and made my stories so much more succinct, detailed, and true.

What about the D. B. Carter story?

Corrin, my boss and the woman who hates me more than anything in the world, expects me to have a proposal for her on Monday morning.

D. B. Carter is a reclusive, best-selling author who no one knows anything about and yet I'm supposed to find out something about him in seventy-two hours or at least enough for a proposal for a story.

I found a lot more.

I have a whole story actually.

The only problem is that I can’t write it.

The story is not an exposé on some corporation that's polluting our rivers or oceans. It's not an investigation of a corrupt political figure.

It's a piece about an author who is a hermit and wants his identity protected. I was supposed to find him and get him to agree to the story.

I did the first part, but not the second. Now, I have to figure out if I'm willing to tell her the truth about what happened or just tell her that I wasn't able to find anything at all.

In either case, the story can’t be written if he's not willing to go on the record about anything.

Reporters can't report anything that the source says is off the record. This is the basic rule of journalism.

At least, ethical journalism.

I guess I can write the story of how I found out who he was, but what will be the point of that?

Who is Liam…

Oh, wait, I don't even know his last name.

So much for me being a good reporter, huh?

I guess I could ask Alex, but why would it matter?

The story for Coast Magazine is supposed to be about who D. B. Carter really is. It requires an interview about him telling me about his writing, his publishing process, and anything else about his career that his fans and other readers in the world would be interested in.

Yet as soon as we saw each other and he recognized me as the woman from the engagement party, he told me that whatever we talked about would be off the record.

That's the way that it has to be.

I get home later that night, spent and exhausted. My apartment is a mess with dresses all over the bed and closet. I don't bother cleaning anything up and head straight to the bathroom.

I need to wash everything that happened over the last few days off and get to sleep. After a quick shower where I just let the water run through my hair without actually washing it, I get out and get straight into bed.

When I wake up the following day, it's the afternoon.

Somehow, I had slept over sixteen hours.

I stare at the popcorn ceiling in my studio apartment and listen to the neighbors downstairs fight over their relationship, just like they normally do before they make up and have sex. They have two kids who play out front and like our other neighbor’s cats as much as I do.

My parents hate that I live in this apartment so much that they have never even stepped foot in it. They don't want to know anything about it except when I am planning on moving.

I can't afford to move.

Of course, I could take their money just like my sisters do and relocate to a better neighborhood with better neighbors, but what would be the fun in that?

No, really. I like being independent.

I like living on my own and on my own money.

I know that my parents are millionaires, but that was after years of hard work on my father's part, working so many hours throughout my childhood that I barely saw him at all.

He's an attorney and he probably missed ninety percent of my school events.

I don't mind, at least not anymore.

I understand. I'm a workaholic myself.

Unfortunately, journalism doesn't pay as much as law, especially big corporate law with wealthy clients.

That’s probably why my father still wants me to become an attorney.

But I'm a journalist.

I’d love to work for The Los Angeles Times, but for now I write lifestyle pieces for Coast Magazine.

I've talked to a few reporters for bigger papers and was shocked to find out how little they got paid. So, in that regard, I'm happy that I have the position that I have.

For how long I will have it, I'm not so sure.

I spend the rest of the afternoon at home, cleaning up my apartment and trying to figure out what I'm going to tell my boss tomorrow at the meeting.

Corrin is a few years older than I am and there was a time when we were friendly. Her uncle owns Coast Magazine and she is my direct superior, deciding which stories get printed and which ones get shut down.

We've never really talked about it because she refuses to admit that she treats me any differently from any other employee, but we had a falling out when we all went to a bar one day.

Corrin chatted up Alex first, but when she went to the bathroom, he bought me a drink.

After that, Alex and I spent the whole evening together and became inseparable.

That's when Corrin started to hate me.

This whole thing is so petty and stupid. It fulfills the worst of female stereotypes like the fact that two women can't work together if they are separated by jealousy over a man.

Well, she can have him.

I didn't mean to take him from her, he was never really taken, but I guess she had dibs.

Now I wish that I never even talked to him.

My life would be so much simpler.

3

Emma

The following morning, I dress in one of my favorite work outfits – a blue blazer with a white blouse and a pencil skirt.

I accessorize the outfit with the most comfortable pair of black pumps along with a thick gold bracelet and a delicate gold chain.

I get to work half an hour later and spend the time meditating quietly in my cubicle.