Alessia

“You’re fired.”

If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have fallen down at that news. I’d asked to speak with our human resources director because my boss had made a heavy-handed pass at me last night after keeping me well past my shift when nobody else was left in the office. I’d expected to file a complaint and request a transfer because I didn’t feel comfortable working with him any longer. Not after he’d grabbed my ass and told me I could get some additional perks if I was willing to give him some benefits in return. I hadn’t trusted the anger that had flashed in his eyes before he’d masked it and tried explaining the whole thing away as a misunderstanding when I’d shot him down, but I didn’t think he’d get me fired me because of it.

“But—”

She held her hand up. “Don’t bother. This is already a done deal, and nothing you say is going to change the outcome. Nevada is an at-will employment state, and as such we can terminate any employee at any time for any reason. Based on your boss’s most recent evaluation of your performance, we’ve decided to let you go. Effective immediately.”

“I get that, but I think you should know what happened last—”

She shook her head and sighed. “Like I said, this is a done deal already. But you’re not without options. Since we’re letting you go because you’re not a good fit for the position, you’re entitled to file for unemployment benefits. The Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation will review your application and determine if you’re eligible.”

I jumped to my feet, beyond frustrated at her unwillingness to listen to what I had to say. “You don’t care about my side of the story! Aren’t you even the tiniest bit curious about why I asked to meet with you this morning? Don’t you find it oddly coincidental that Jared”—I spat his first name, the same one he’d told me I should use the night before...right before he’d hit on me—“decided to fire me on the same day that I asked to meet with you; a female member of the human resources staff?”

How the woman was promoted to a director-level position would forever remain a mystery to me since she rolled her eyes at my question. Then she pressed a button on her phone, and I went from surprised and disappointed to flat-out stunned when I heard the greeting from the person on the other end of the call.

“Security.”

Her icy blue eyes narrowed on me. “This is Helen Johnson in Human Resources. I have a former employee in my office who needs to be escorted from the building immediately.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I have someone on your floor who’ll be there shortly.”

“Thank you.” She pressed a button to disconnect the call, stood from her seat, and placed her palms on her desk as she stared at me. “Security will escort you to your cubicle to grab any personal items you’d like to take with you.” Her gaze lowered to the badge hanging from the lanyard around my neck. She held her right hand out towards me. “And I’ll need to take your badge.”

Contrary to what my now-former boss apparently thought, I wasn’t dumb. There wasn’t anything I could do to make Helen listen to me, so I ripped my lanyard over my head and tossed it at her. Then I swiveled on my heel, stormed out of her office, headed down the stairs to the right, and marched over to my cubicle. I yanked open the bottom drawer of my desk and pulled my purse out. After unzipping it, I tossed the picture of my sister that I kept near my monitor inside. I also grabbed my favorite pens out of the cup next to where the photo frame had been and shoved them into my purse too. As I opened the top desk drawer and pulled the stapler out, I heard a muffled chuckle behind me.

Twirling around, I found one of the security guys standing there. He yanked his gaze up from where it’d probably been glued to my ass to smile at me. “You’re only supposed to take your own stuff with you; not company property.” He slid his thumbs into the front pockets of his pants. “Then again, you’re pretty enough that I could be easily convinced that stapler is yours if you’d like to meet me for a drink tonight.”

I barely refrained from throwing the darn thing at his head instead of dropping it back in the drawer and slamming it shut. “Am I wearing a sign that says I’m the perfect woman to harass or something?” I muttered as I elbowed my way past him and marched towards the elevators. I tapped my toe against the floor while I waited for the doors to open. “A stapler,” I huffed when I stepped inside and pressed the button for the first floor. “At least my douchebag boss thought I was worth a heck of a lot more than a stupid stapler.”

“Huh?” the security guy asked. With his brow furrowed and his eyes all squinty, his confusion was obvious. But I wasn’t about to take the time to explain my anger and frustration to him. I didn’t hold much hope that I’d be able to make him understand, not when he was stupid enough to think that hitting on a woman he was escorting out of the building after she’d been fired was a good idea. Not to mention that his idea of flirting was limited to offering to let me steal a stapler, instead of being sympathetic over me losing my job.

“The bar has been set so low, I should snap up the next semi-attractive guy who’s even half-way nice to me and be happy for it,” I grumbled as I marched through the lobby and out the glass doors at the front of the building. My bad mood grew when my car sputtered before starting and almost died twice on the way back to the apartment complex where I lived with my mom and sister. “There goes my plan to trade you in for a new car. I’ll never be able to get a loan without a job.”

My feet dragged as I climbed up the steps to our apartment. I felt like the day couldn’t get any worse, and then I saw the red piece of paper taped to the door and realized how wrong I was. “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!”

I ripped the eviction notice off and crumpled it in my hand as I thumped my head against the solid surface. When I heard the locks turning, I jerked back and waited for the door to open. Ariana, my sister, looked surprised to find me on the other side. “What’re you doing home so early?”

“I got fired because my jerk of a boss made a pass at me and couldn’t handle working with me when I said no.” After I stormed past her, I dropped my purse onto the kitchen counter. Then I tossed the balled up eviction notice at her. “And as if that wasn’t bad enough, apparently Mom’s been doing God knows what with the rent money I’ve been giving her because she sure as heck hasn’t been giving it to the landlord.”

She smoothed out the red paper and read the notice, her eyes filling with tears. “What’re we going to do, Alessia?”

Ariana and I were Irish twins, born only eleven months apart. She was older than me, but our roles had reversed when our dad walked out on us six years ago. I’d been a freshman in high school and Ariana had been a sophomore. It’d hit her harder than me; or at least more than I’d allowed anyone to know. Someone had to step up to the plate and make sure stuff got taken care of, and it quickly became clear to me that it wouldn’t be her or our mom. It’d left only me to pick up the slack, and without another option that’s what I did.

Even though I was only fifteen, I got a part-time job to help my mom cover the necessities like food, rent, and utilities. It cut into the time I had for studying and after school activities, but I still managed to pull in mostly B’s throughout high school. After graduation, I found a full-time job as a waitress and worked late nights while taking classes during the day at College of Southern Nevada to earn my Associate’s Degree. I’d planned to go the full four-years for my Bachelor’s but when I got the job offer to work as a personal assistant a few months ago, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. So I switched to working days and taking only a couple of classed online for a semester while I adjusted to the new schedule.

Where I was the good girl trying to make things easier for our mom, Ariana was the bad sister who didn’t care about anything other than having fun. She went off the rails shortly after our dad left, and she hadn’t found her way back from it yet—blowing through all the money she earned at her cocktail waitress job by partying after each and every shift and not coming home until I was either heading out the door or already on my way to work.

“When’s the last time you saw Mom?” I asked, dropping down on the old, ugly brown couch in the living room. Since I got the new job, I hadn’t seen much of either of them because I was working days while they were working nights.

Ariana joined me, resting her head against my shoulder as she leaned back on the lumpy cushions. “A week? Maybe more?”

“Has she been acting weird?”

“Weird as in are there any signs that she’s gambling again?” Ariana asked, tilting her head back and offering me an apologetic smile. “Yeah, probably. Now that you mention it, I guess so. She hasn’t been around much the last couple of months, and she’s asked me for cash the rare times we’ve been home at the same time.”

“Crap,” I groaned. My eyes filled with tears, and I closed them in the hope that I’d be able to stop myself from breaking down. Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. “I really wish you’d told me sooner, before we were so many months past due on rent for the landlord to start the eviction process.”

“It’s not my fault she fucked us over,” Ariana growled as she jerked away from me.

“I know it isn’t.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it that way. Of course it isn’t your fault. If anything, it’s mine because I was dumb enough to take her up on her offer to help with stuff like making the rent and utilities payments when I changed jobs. I should have known better and just figured out a way to get it all done during my lunch break or something.”

“Hey!” She jammed a pointy elbow into my side. “Don’t beat yourself up about this. It isn’t your fault, either. There’s only one person to blame, and that’s Mom. She’s the one who fucked up here; not us.”

“Fat lot of good blaming her does us. If she’s been gambling with the rent money I’ve been giving her”—my eyes filled with tears again at the thought of the money I’d left for her just yesterday so she’d have it for the rent payment due in a couple of days—“then there’s no getting it back.”

“So what you’re basically saying is we’re screwed with no hope of digging ourselves out of the hole Mom put us in? Because we both know damn well that’s exactly what she did with the money. We’re going to lose the apartment and have to figure out someplace else to live. I, for one, vote we leave Mom out of it and find a place without her. We’re adults, dammit. It’s time we moved out on our own anyway.”

She was all fired up, and like usual I was the one who had to burst her bubble. “With what money, Ariana? Do you have thousands of dollars tucked away that I don’t know about? Because I don’t. I barely have anything left in my account between what I’ve been giving mom for living expenses, the most recent repair to a car that desperately needs to be replaced, and the tuition I already paid for my summer classes.”

I felt even more like crap when she slumped against me. “Any idea how long we have before they kick us out of here?”

“Based on what the notice said, we have five days to either pay up or move out.”

“Five days,” she gulped. “That’s not a lot of time. Want to call Mom and see if she’ll pick up?”

“Sure,” I sighed. It wasn’t going to do us any good, but we should at least give her a heads up that we knew what she’d been up to and how we’d found out. Ariana pulled her cell out of her pocket, unlocked it, and put it on speaker phone as she made the call. We both groaned when it went to voicemail after ringing only once.

“Hey, Mom. It’s Alessia and Ariana. Your daughters. The ones you just sent to voicemail because you don’t want to have to tell us that you messed up and gambled away all our rent money.” I heaved a deep sigh and forced myself to calm down a little so I didn’t scream into her voicemail because that would only make her want to avoid us even more. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, Mom. That maybe there was a misunderstanding of some kind and you’d be able to give us a different reason for why the rent hasn’t been paid in months, even though I’ve been giving you the money to pay for it. I was hoping you’d tell us not to worry and you’d go into the rental office tomorrow and clear it all up. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Instead, you’re too afraid to even talk to us on the phone and try to help us figure out a way to fix this so we don’t end up homeless in five days. I don’t know what to say to that.”

And it wouldn’t have mattered if I did since I’d run out of time to leave anything else and the call was cut off by her cell service.

“I do dammit,” Ariana piped in, twisting her body away from me, pulling the phone closer as she jabbed at the screen a second time. The call went straight to voicemail once again, and it pissed her off even more. “Alessia is too nice to know what else to say to you, but I’m not. Don’t bother coming home anytime soon. You can come grab your stuff after we move out. We’ve put up with a lot of shit from you through the years, always forgiving you because at least you didn’t walk out on us the way Dad did. But you know what? Not anymore. The shit you just pulled is even worse than what he did. You didn’t just walk away. You stole from Alessia and left us up shit’s creek without a paddle, fully expecting that she’d figure out a way to clean up your mess just like she’s been doing ever since high school. Well, that’s not gonna happen this time because I’m going to make sure she starts living her life for herself. It’s about damn time Alessia acts her age instead of yours.”

She tossed her phone on the cushion next to her when the voicemail cut off again and turned back towards me. “Whoa,” I breathed. “Thanks for the backup, big sis. But now is the worst time ever for me to decide to get a life. We only have five days to find a new place to call home or come up with the thousands of dollars we’d need to stay here. I don’t have any time to waste.”

She put her palm over my mouth to stop the flow of words as my tone crept higher and higher. “What can we do today to fix this?”

I glared at her until she pulled her hand away. “Figure out how much cash we can get our hands on. Drop out of my class, ask for a refund, and hope like heck they’ll give it to me fast. Look for somewhere cheap we can move to. Box up whatever we want to take with us,” I rattled off.

“I don’t have anything saved up, but I can ask around and see if I can pick up a couple extra shifts this week. I can also see if any of the girls have suggestions for places where we could move to.”

“That’d be good.” More like amazing. As pissed as I was at our mom, I couldn’t help but smile at my sister because she was stepping up to the plate to try to figure this out with me. No muss. No fuss. Just help.

“While you’re taking care of your school stuff today, I’ll go out to get us some boxes.”

My smile grew bigger. “Even better. Thank you.”

“But then tonight, you’re going out with me.”

And there went my smile. “Wait. What?”

“I have today off, and I doubt I’ll be able to pick up an extra shift that quickly.”

“Okay,” I drawled, crossing my arms over my chest while I waited for her to finish her explanation.

“And I was serious when I told Mom it was past time for you to act like the twenty-one-year-old that you are. So tonight, you’re going to let me dress you up and take you out.”

“We don’t have money to waste on crap like that,” I huffed.

“I didn’t say anything about spending money tonight,” she laughed. “We’re close enough to the same size that you can wear something from my closet. I have enough make-up and hair products to open my own salon. We’ll go to a club where I know the bouncers so we won’t have to pay a cover. And we’re both hot enough that we’ll have plenty of guys who’re willing to buy us drinks so we won’t need to worry about that either.”

“Ariana,” I groaned, but I was pretty sure it came out more as a whine.

“C’mon. You always used work or school as an excuse anytime I tried to talk you into going out with me before. Are you, or are you not, dropping your classes today?”

“Yes, I am,” I answered while glaring at her.

“Do you have to wake up in the morning and head to work?”

“No,” I grumbled.

She didn’t seem at all bothered by my glare. “Then what could it hurt for you to live a little, Alessia? Let loose, just for one night. Please. We both need this.”

“Fine,” I huffed. One night wasn’t too much to ask for, considering I’d run out of excuses.