“Angelica,” I exclaimed, setting my charm on maximum overdrive and the world’s biggest, brightest, fakest smile on my face, “you have such wonderful, fascinating friends! I ran into Nathan on my way to the powder room and he gave me a personal tour. How incredible must it be to be surrounded by so many important and influential people and exciting events all the time? How do you even keep up? I never could.”

Her irritation melted away at my flattery like a hot knife through butter. Nathan’s advice notwithstanding, Angelica seemed surprisingly easy to manage. She seemed totally harmless. Vapid, obnoxious, and spoiled, but not evil. I fawned slavishly over her for about fifteen solid minutes and we were best friends again. By the time I had a chance to look around for Nathan, however, he’d vanished.

“Zoey,” Angelica’s assistant Tara whispered urgently to me as we were all gathered during the final countdown, “have you seen Marcus?”

I craned my neck to look back at Tara. The members of Angelica’s entourage were all seated in the first two rows of the VIP section on the viewing platform. Tara, of course, was relegated to the back row.

Marcus? I had to rack my brain to even remember who that was. My mind was thoroughly addled by my impulsive decision to jump Nathan’s bones and the mind-numbing conversation I’d just had with Angelica.

Oh right, I reminded myself, Marcus was Angelica’s man du jour. He was tall, dark, handsome, and as far as I could tell, completely mute. I imagined that was how Angelica liked her men. All the better to listen to her mindless prattle.

I shook my head at Tara, who bit her lip.

“Angelica hasn’t noticed he’s missing yet,” Tara continued quietly, “but she will. He disappeared a long time ago.”

I shrugged. Keeping Angelica’s man candy from wandering into traffic wasn’t my job. It technically wasn’t Tara’s, either, but she looked extremely distressed.

“He probably just went to the bathroom,” I told her soothingly, “don’t worry.”

She nodded, still biting her lip. The poor girl clearly lived in absolute fear of Angelica. I wished I had something with which to placate her, but I neither knew nor really cared where Marcus was.

Tara and I were the same age (twenty-four), we both hailed from Florida, and I suspected we were both daughters of the ever-shrinking middle of the middle class. But we were completely different beyond those few salient details. She’d not yet discovered the key to dealing with Angelica, but she was still working for her despite the near-constant stream of personal abuse.

I wondered if Tara had been working for Angelica before Mr. Hunt died, and if that had changed things with Angelica, and made a mental note to ask later. Right then there were more pressing considerations. The final countdown had started.

“Do you think it will blow up?” One of Angelica’s ‘friends’ asked her. The woman was tall, blonde, and famous on Instagram, but not famous enough that I knew who she was.

“Maybe,” Angelica answered, sounding unconcerned, or perhaps, slightly hopeful.

“We should get another selfie just in case,” the friend replied, and the two turned and made a pouty face with the rocket in the background.

I wanted to vomit.

What the hell was I doing with my life? Nathan, who was only a decade older than me, was building rockets. Angelica, only five years my senior, had married a billionaire, outlived him, and now lived in the lap of luxury. Of all the people sitting in the VIP section that day, I was the least accomplished, other than Tara. They were all at least Instagram-famous. Even Marcus was supposedly some fabulously amazing tennis player.

Meanwhile, I’m apparently just fucking hot, rich, astronauts now. Although I don’t judge people for having casual hookups, it wasn’t something I’d done before. Ever. All my other sexual experiences had occurred in committed, if ill-fated, long-term relationships. I was half surprised that my seduction had worked, and I was even more surprised by how much I’d enjoyed it.

Still, shame and regret flooded me now that the fun was over, and it took every ounce of self-control that I possessed not to dissolve into self-pity and cry right there on the launch platform. Nathan, of course, had disappeared back to his important job of running a billion-dollar Astronautics firm. He’d probably already forgotten my name. He probably had three girls like me a week. I’d read the recent gossip on him last night online. The man was spotted on numerous first dates with sexy, female companions, but very few second dates. He was hardly ever spotted with the same model or socialite more than twice.

It was true that I had come into his office looking for a story, and I’d left with one. From the moment I started tailgating employees with badges through the locked doors, to the second I’d climaxed, the whole experience had been exciting and fun. I’d initially planned on poking around in Nathan’s office for a real story. I had assumed he wouldn’t be there and when he was, I settled for the next best thing that I was secretly hoping for: sex. But now all I could think about was just how pathetically disposable I was to people like Nathan and Angelica. Nathan Breyer was a genius, and he fucked like a rock star. It really was too bad that I wouldn’t even be a footnote in his story.

At least when I was a real, working journalist, I’d had pride in my work. I firmly believe that journalism is the fourth estate in government. Good reporters are required in any society that believes in free speech and democracy. At their best, journalists speak truth to power and keep governments, corporations, and public figures honest.

But good reporters don’t write gossip for nasty rags like JuicyNews. They don’t spend three days of their life writing fluff profiles on bimbos like Angelica Hunt, whose greatest claims to fame are being the daughter of a sitting US senator and fucking her way into an oil fortune. I wanted to feel pride in my work.

No matter what, I promised myself as I watched the enormous countdown clock edging closer to the moment the rocket would launch, this would be my last assignment for JuicyNews. It didn’t matter what I had to do, I didn’t want to end up like Tara: beaten down, perpetually nervous, and settling for less than she was worth.

The crowd screamed the final countdown from ten with a rapturous frenzy. I’d been to the ball drop in Times Square before on New Year’s Eve, and it didn’t hold a candle to this countdown. When the fuel ignited and the roar of it reached our ears a moment later, it sounded like a thousand jet engines. The rocket lifted up off the platform like it weighed nothing, smoothly climbing up into the clear midafternoon sky. When it was obvious that the rocket wasn’t going to explode on the platform, a second deafening wave of cheering and applause broke out.

It rose quickly, much more quickly than I would have thought. Although I was only at this launch because Angelica was here, this was an experience I would not soon forget. Higher and higher, the rocket ascended, becoming smaller until it was just a tiny point of light against the blue sky, then nothing.