Every single job posting I scrolled by was another blow to my confidence. I wasn’t qualified for anything, not even most serving jobs.

I readjusted myself on Penny’s couch, tucking my legs under my body to sit cross-legged and pulling the laptop over my knees. As I read through the description of a posting for a barista position, I pulled my dark hair over one shoulder and began aimlessly braiding my curls.

“Must be a self-starter. Must have reliable transportation. Must like working early shifts. Must have a minimum of two years experience in a restaurant environment.” I groaned and tossed my braid back over my shoulder. “Two years? To make coffee and put a scone on a plate? Give a girl a chance, for crying out loud!”

I heard the shower turn off down the hall off the living room. Penny’s voice carried down the hall as she sang a familiar Disney parody while she dried off.

I wished I had my shit figured out like she did. She was working at a bank as a teller, but everything was in place for her to work toward moving into being a financial advisor. She was wicked smart when it came to money, and her advice had been extremely helpful over the last month and a half. She was beautiful and charming, and I felt like dead weight sleeping on her couch every night.

I reminded myself every day that it was only temporary. Just until I could land a job and get enough money to find my own apartment and set out on my own. This was simply the price I had to pay for wasting too much time going down a path I didn’t want.

My parents, bless their souls, had pushed me into law school two years ago after they couldn’t handle my dillydallying—their words, not mine—any longer. At the time, I’d just finished up my first year working for a family in Honolulu as their nanny. They had two little girls who I adored, and I’d loved my time there with them. I cooked and cleaned, took the kids to and from school and their recreational activities, and attended all family events. Had my parents not forced me into law school, I would probably still be there living in the garden shed the father had converted into a charming little bedroom in the backyard.

But I didn’t stand my ground. I let my parents bulldoze me, and I was in law school that September. I lasted two years before dropping out due to misery and self-loathing. I was being untrue to myself. The corporate and business life was not what my soul craved. I needed freedom and fun and energy. I needed passion and love and fierce commitment to what set my soul on fire.

That was not law school.

My parents didn’t take the news well. My mother, a newly retired orthodontist, nearly had a brain aneurysm when I sat across the dining room table from her and told her I’d dropped out. My father tried to appease her to no avail.

The next morning, they kicked me out. I packed up what I could and called Penny, sobbing, and she told me to bring my shit over to her house. When I arrived, she had a buffet of snacks set out on the living room table, a bottle of wine, nearly a dozen blankets, and a rom-com ready to start on her big flat-screen TV. She’d hugged me while I cried and asked me to stay with her until I was on my feet.

I hadn’t been able to say no, and there was nowhere else for me to go.

That was a month and a half ago.

I clicked on another job opening at a cigar lounge not far from Penny’s apartment as she came out of the bathroom. She padded down the hall and plopped down on the couch across from me. She was wearing booty shorts and a loose tank top, and her blond hair was tied up in her floral-patterned towel. Penny was a hopeless romantic and the definition of femininity. If it was pink or had flowers on it, she needed it. Simple as that.

“Any luck?” Penny asked, cocking her head to the side.

I glanced up at her over the top of my laptop and shook my head. “Nothing yet. Although this one sounds more promising than all the others. It’s a cigar lounge. The Stokes. Have you heard of it?”

Penny nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty classy. I bet you’d make killer tips with that body of yours.”

I bit my lip. “I don’t think that’s the direction I want to go.”

“Oh, please.” Penny rolled her eyes. “Just send an application. The worst that can happen is you go down there and don’t like it. So what? You can walk away at any time. You don’t owe employers anything. You’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you. You gotta change your mindset, girl.”

As with everything, Penny was right. “All right. I’ll apply. I have a couple others I’m going to shoot my resumé to as well.”

“Awesome.” Penny grinned, hopping off the couch. “I’m going to finish getting ready for work. Good luck!”

Penny left for the bank at nine o’clock. After two hours passed, I was still sending in applications. I’d applied to the cigar lounge, two coffee shops, three restaurants, and a couple of retail stores. The pay was minimum, but I had to start somewhere. I’d been unemployed for too long, and my emergency fund I’d started putting money in while I lived in Honolulu was beginning to dwindle.

Later that afternoon, as I sat down to dig into a tuna sandwich, my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I answered the phone cheerfully, hoping it was one of the employers calling back about an application. “Hello?”

A male voice answered. “Hi there, is this Evelyn East?”

“Speaking.”

“Evelyn. Hi. My name is Bruce, and I’m a comanager at The Stokes. I just received your resumé, and we’re looking to fill the position pretty quickly. Is there any chance I could get you in here tomorrow for an interview?”

My heart started hammering, and my palms grew sweaty. “Yes, tomorrow works perfectly. I live close by and can be there at whatever time works best for you, Bruce.”

“Great. How about three o’clock?”

“I’ll be there,” I said, grinning like a fool by myself in Penny’s living room. “Would you like me to bring a copy of my resumé along for reference?”

“Nah, it’s all right. We have the electronic file. And I have a good feeling about you.”

My smile stretched my face even more, and my cheeks started aching. “I can’t wait to come in and chat with you. Thank you for calling back so quickly.”

“Thanks, Evelyn. Have a good rest of your day.”

I hung up the phone feeling giddy. I had a good feeling about Bruce too. I slapped my laptop closed, hopped up off the couch, and then proceeded to clean Penny’s entire apartment. -I’d been keeping it spick-and-span since I moved in, feeling like it was my duty to go above and beyond to show her how grateful I was for having a free place to stay while I sorted my life out.

I did the dishes and scrubbed the floors. I vacuumed while blasting music and dancing like an idiot and dusted every surface in the place.

Then around four o’clock, I started dinner.

Penny got home from work at exactly six o’clock. She came in through the front door as I pulled the lasagna out of the oven. She stopped, beamed at me, and inhaled deeply. “That smells heavenly.”

“It’s celebration lasagna,” I said as I put it down on top of the oven.

Penny shrugged her purse off her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at me. “Are we celebrating a potential new job opportunity?”

I grinned and nodded. “Yes. The cigar lounge called me in for an interview tomorrow afternoon. He said he had a good feeling about me. And to be honest, I felt pretty good about him too. He seems nice and professional.”

Penny clapped her hands together. “Fantastic! What are you going to wear?”

I blinked at her. “Uh. I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t really have any interview appropriate clothing with me.” I glanced at the three giant suitcases lined up behind her sofa. I was living out of those. It had gotten old after the first week.

“That doesn’t matter.” Penny waved her hand at me. “We can raid my closet. I have plenty of business casual and sexy items.”

“Sexy?”

Penny nodded and walked over to the lasagna. She smelled it again and sighed contently. “Yeah. It’s a cigar lounge, Evie. They’re going to want you to show a little leg. Or boob. Or both.”

I winced.

Penny rubbed my shoulder. “Don’t worry. It can be done tastefully. Trust me. Let’s eat the shit out of this lasagna, and then I’ll help you throw an outfit together. I already have a couple ideas.”

“Oh, dear,” I mumbled.

“I’ll take care of you. Trust me.” Penny grabbed plates from the cupboard and cut into the lasagna. Then, we both sat down at the kitchen table and pigged out. I wasn’t the sort of girl to toot her own horn, but I was gifted in the kitchen. Penny seemed to think so too. She closed her eyes as she chewed and pointed at the pasta on her plate with her fork. “There is no one in the world who makes lasagna as good as you do.”

“Thank you.” I grinned.

After dinner, Penny raided her closet and made me strip down to my bra and panties. We went through countless outfits, and each time, she said it needed “just a little bit more.” I had no clue what that meant, so I let her keep going, pulling more skirts and tops and shoes from the depths of her closet.

Everything she had me try on was out of my comfort zone. I was the sort of girl who liked flat shoes, preferably sandals, loose tops, and jeans. I favored comfort over fashion and practicality over sexy. Penny was the opposite. The outfits she wore to the bank were always far too tight for my tastes and finished off with a heel made for stabbing someone in the throat. She looked like a goddess, though, and she assured me that combining my more laid-back style with a bit of her sexy tastes would be perfect for this job.

At the end of the process, I found myself standing in front of the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door admiring myself. She’d put me in a skintight black skirt that cut off at the middle of my thighs. My legs looked long and lean with the heels she had paired with it. They were black and strappy and not something I would have ever picked up off a shelf to try on, let alone buy. But they weren’t as uncomfortable as I thought, and I liked the effect they had on my legs. The shirt was black and tight too. The collar went up to my jaw, but it was see-through lace, revealing skin in a more tasteful way.

I ran my hands down my thighs. “I really like this, Penny. Thank you.”

Penny was sitting on her bed, leaning back on her hands. “You look hot as fuck, girl. Seriously. If he doesn’t hire you, he’s going to want to fuck you.”

“Penny,” I said, scowling at her. “That’s not going to make me any less nervous. I don’t want that sort of attention when I’m trying to get a job.”

“Don’t worry about it. You said he sounded professional. Chances are it will be fine. But you’ll definitely make an impression. A good one.”

“Awesome,” I said, smiling again.

“There’s only one thing missing.” Penny pushed herself up and went to the shelving unit in her attached bathroom. She came back with a basket full of nail polishes. “If your toes are showing, we’re going to have to do something about that old polish. It’s ghastly.”

“Hey,” I said defensively as I looked down at my toes. I hadn’t had a pedicure since I was still in law school, and even then, it hadn’t been all that recent. Four months or so, probably. All my toes were naked except for my big toe, which was sporting a stripe of dark blue at the halfway mark. I looked up at Penny. “You’re right.”

“Of course, I am. Come on, let’s throw on a movie, have some wine, and paint our toes. I think you should go with a Ferrari red. What do you think?”

I groaned. If left up to me, I would go with something a little more unassuming. Like a soft pink or another shade of blue. Penny was always trying to stand out where I wanted to blend in. But this was her rodeo, and she was already shaking the red polish in one hand as we walked down the hall.

The decision, it seemed, was already made.