Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t make a vat of ice cream big enough for me to drown my sorrows in, so I opt for a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie and grab a bottle of cheap wine before heading back to my studio apartment in the grungy Meat Packing District.

I insert my key and hip check the door open far enough to slide inside. Two weeks ago, I left the landlord a nice but firm note about my broken door, but I’m just one in a long list of tenants waiting for some kind of repair in a building that is two inspections shy of being condemned.

I’m barely in the door when my house phone starts to ring. I drop my bags and trip over the lifted edge of the stained carpet to get to it in time. I breathe heavy into the receiver. “Hello?”

The line crackles. “Miss Landers? This is Zoey from Venture Capital.”

My pulse skips. “Yes?”

“Mr. Dalton wanted me to thank you for your interest, but I’m afraid we’ve decided to go with another candidate.”

My heart sinks. “Oh, I see.”

Zoey’s voice lifts. “I know it’s not the answer you’d hoped for, but Mr. Dalton wanted you to know that he was impressed with your resume and is confident you’ll find employment at another firm.”

“Thank you,” I say, with as much enthusiasm as a prisoner on death row finding out their pardon from the governor didn’t come through.

My eyes brim with tears. Damn it. I was so sure I’d nailed that interview. Venture Capital isn’t Daylight Holdings, but it’s one of the top five hedge funds in the state. The other four turned me down. Correction. Three flat out rejected me, one offered me a position—as Mason Wood’s fucking personal assistant.

I pull a dirty wine glass out of the sink and rinse out last night’s Merlot, replacing it with a sweeter Cabernet-Sauvignon, and dig a spoon out of the cutlery drawer, inspecting for ants. Last week, I caught a cockroach lounging in my bathtub and screamed like I was being chased by Freddy Krueger.

With my wine and ice cream at hand, I flop down on the sofa bed I scrounged from Craigslist my first day in the city. My ass hits one of the springs and I flinch.

Was I stupid to turn down a position at Daylight Holdings?

Ummm….I think that has to be a confirmed “hell, yes” at this point.

My eyes flit between the paint peeling off the drywall to the water-stained popcorn ceiling. A framed picture of me and Mom on the bookshelf is my most prized possession. Everything else is replaceable, just junk.

In fact, I hate everything about this apartment—except that it’s mine.

A couple months’ worth of the rent paid for up front with money I scrimped and saved throughout college, pocketing whatever loose change didn’t go into textbooks or coffee. New York isn’t cheap, even in the less glamorous parts of the city.

I shovel a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth and let it melt on my tongue, allowing the chocolate to slide down my throat and soothe the burn of rejection. I chase it with a long sip of wine, and then another bite of fudge.

My mind inadvertently wanders back to Mason Wood, to his strong, chiseled jaw. I have an itch to run my fingers through the coarse texture of his beard, and trace the outline of his lips. A fluttering sensation crawls up my sternum. A guy like Mason Wood would never pay even an ounce of attention to me.

I’m an average looking girl with too many curves and not nearly enough experience or confidence to even qualify for a notch on his bedpost. I slug back a long pull of wine.

I throw my feet up on the coffee table and flex my toes. The jagged run in my nylons starts at my chipped toe nails and travels all the way up to my knee. Your get what you pay for, Liv. Current fashion status: dollar store chic. That same dollar store is also where I picked up my bigger utensils—spatula, soup ladle, tongs—tissue-thin toilet paper, and boxes of Mac and Cheese long past their expiry date.

Living the dream.

The trill of my phone pulls me out of self-pity.

I consider ignoring it, but I foolishly cling to the hope that Mr. Dalton has changed his mind, or that Mason Wood climbed off his high horse long enough to read my damn resume. But the voice on the other end of the line belongs to my half-sister, Renee, and despite my misery, my mood instantly improves.

“Liv, I got in!”

She is breathless, weightless, an eighteen-year-old high school graduate with barely a care in the world. The weight on my shoulders lifts, if only for a moment. “NYC?”

Renee snickers. “Obviously.” Her squeal reverberates through the line, and a ghost of a smile curls my lip up. I imagine her standing in her pink bedroom, jewel-crested phone clutched in her fist, and a wide smile plastered across her porcelain face. A smile that is identical to my father’s—and nothing like Mom’s. “I’m coming to New York. Can you believe it?” she squeals.

Her enthusiasm is infectious. “You sure The Big Apple can handle you?” I laugh.

Beneath the joke lays a thin thread of truth. Because while I am quiet and studious like my mother, Renee is a firecracker on the Fourth of July. I’m drawn to her in spite of—or perhaps because of—our differences, even though I have more than enough reason not to like her.

Renee is the only positive thing that came out of my father’s affair eighteen years ago. And while my resentment for him and his now-wife hangs off me like a lingering ghost, I feel nothing but unabashed love for my half-sister. “Tell me you got the scholarship.”

Her voice raises a pitch. “They loved my design, Liv. Loved it.”

I’m not surprised. Renee has been stitching clothes together since Dad bought her a sewing machine for her thirteenth birthday. What started as a hobby became a passion, and though most of her clothes are a bit more risqué than I’d wear, I can appreciate the aesthetics. “Will you live in the dorms?”

“That’s still up in the air,” she says, quietly.

In the awkward silence that follows, I imagine what’s on my sister’s mind. Our father doesn’t have money for college—not for books, expenses, or a roof over his own daughter’s head while she’s at school. Renee waitresses at a burger joint for extra cash, but it’s barely enough for tuition. My throat swells. The plan was for me to cover her school costs once I landed a good job. Not an option yet, so I deflect to my back-up.

“My apartment is small,” I say with caution, and scan the cramped apartment that is over stuffed with junk. It’s not much bigger than a bachelor, with a galley kitchen, one bedroom, a tiny bathroom and a balcony that fits exactly one chair and overlooks a back alley teeming with garbage and discarded drug needles. “And it’s probably dangerous.”

I can feel her grinning through the phone. “I’d like to see someone try and mess with the two of us.” I open my mouth with another protest, but she hits me where it hurts. “I can help with rent. Groceries.” Another pause and then, “I bet you don’t have more than a loaf of bread and a stick of butter in that place.”

“Wrong,” I say, smiling. “Right now, I am eating the last spoonful out of a very decadent tub of Ben & Jerry’s.”

“Chocolate fudge.”

“Mmm hmmm.”

Her tone turns serious. “What’s happened today?”

Damn it. Without thinking, I’ve let down my guard, and my sister swoops in with her sibling intuition in prime form. I’m sure Mr. Mason Wood would have something snarky to say about that too. “Nothing I want to rehash.” I swallow the last drop of wine in the glass and lean back on the couch. The cushions part to reveal three popcorn kernels wedged between them, stale and speckled with mold. An offering to the creatures that come out when I pretend to be asleep.

“If I were there, we wouldn’t be drinking that vinegar you call wine,” she says.

My gaze lands on the bottle, too far from reach. Which is probably a good thing. “Hey, I worked hard for every penny of this five-dollar bottle.”

“We’d be drinking champagne.”

“Two-dollar prosecco?”

She laughs. “You love the bubbles.”

My voice sobers. “My apartment isn’t the Ritz, Renee.”

“But it has you,” she says. “And that’s what matters.”

“Well, I can’t have you living on the street,” I say, trying to keep the conversation light. But the truth is, it’s hard to act like everything is okay when I feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under me. The stack of bills on the edge of the coffee table pulses like a lighthouse beacon, a red siren of warning. I’m in trouble.

“And I guess you’re not bad company,” I say, masking my despair with a light chuckle.

Personal drama aside, I’m looking forward to having someone else around. My last real relationship ended abruptly after nine months of me pining for a stability that naively included an eventual fairytale Happily Ever After, complete with white picket fence. Add to the mix the fact that Dad and I aren’t speaking except through cryptic, often sarcastic, messages via Renee. And Mom, well, she hates driving and public transport—no way she’d make the trip from the Jersey suburbs. Not like I want her to see my dire apartment anyway.

“When should I expect you?”

Renee giggles. “Tomorrow?”

There’s a flutter of happiness in my belly, and then a genuine smile stretches across my cheeks. “Why am I not surprised?”