Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
He turned back to her.
“I was a total bitch, and it’s totally worth using a curse word. I’m sorry. I’m thinking I need a change in direction, that meaning career, because I obviously can’t hack this, and if I can’t hack this, no way I’m going to get where I want to go in journalism. And it’s been bothering me, because I’m not rolling in the dough in a way I can take a year’s sabbatical full of martini lunches with my girlfriends while I write the next Great American Novel before I try to find another position again. And it’s freaking me out.”
“Just ask for a different beat,” he recommended.
Her brows inched together. “Sorry?”
“Tell your editor you need a break from the kids and ask for a different beat. You need something fresh. I can tell you’re good at what you do, you care about it, you clearly got a passion for it. It’d suck, you gave it up because you had a tough story that tweaked you, for whatever reason it tweaked you. Move away from that beat. You got something fresh to sink your teeth into, you’ll be fine. Even Dan Rather sat at a desk after being a correspondent for years. Everyone needs change, and now’s that time for you.”
Her expression was open, and no other way to describe it, glowing by the time he got done talking.
“So you’re a young budding biker guru,” she said on another smile and more teasing.
“No, I’m just not neck deep in it so I see it clearer,” he replied, not smiling and wanting to get the fuck out of there, because her smiling, teasing, glowing meant he needed to get the fuck out of there.
She must have sensed his desire because her smile faded, he wasn’t thrilled to watch it go, but he didn’t say dick.
“Your wisdom I feel made my apology get lost, so I’ll repeat it. I was a bitch, Dutch, and seriously, I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I guess I was just at my end, and you caught that.”
“I’m a biker, something you got issues with ’cause you got a stick up your ass about shit you don’t know, issues for you, and undoubtedly with your sister having fun with one. A biker who walked up to you, so you felt open to smack me with your shit because I don’t matter. I’m just a biker. That is what happened and that’s what you’re apologizing for.”
At his words, she was the one who looked like she’d been smacked. Her head jerked with it, the whole thing.
Jesus, shit.
“Right, well, okay, guess I deserved that,” she whispered. “But thanks, truly. And good luck with Carlyle. I hope you break through.”
She yanked up the handle on her bag and had started rolling it away when he called her name.
“Georgiana.”
She turned back and gave him no shot to apologize.
She said, “You know, you were right. This was a one-time thing, thankfully short, and now over. But really, good luck with Carlyle and…whatever else you do with your life.”
He didn’t call out again as she jabbed a code into a box, shoved through the front doors and went right to the elevators.
When she disappeared in one without even glancing his way was when he rounded his truck and got back in.
She’d been a bitch, and she’d apologized.
He’d been a dick, and it was left at that.
And as much as that burned in his chest, and fuck, but it burned and he had no idea why it burned so hot and so deep, leaving it like that…
He was going to leave it like that.
Whatever else you do with your life.
Yeah, there it was.
Whatever else he did with his life.
Which was nothing.
He was doing nothing with his life.
He had no drive.
He had no goals.
He had no mission.
He had no passion.
He had dick.
On that thought, he started up his truck and headed for the Chaos Compound.
There was beer there. Tequila. Brothers.
He wasn’t big on getting drunk.
But for once he was feeling like tying one on.
* * * *
Dutch did as he planned.
He didn’t get puke-and-act-like-an-asshole drunk, but he’d gotten to the point he’d had to crash in his room at the Compound instead of getting in his truck and going home.
But after he woke up the next day, brushed his teeth, splashed water on his face and got dressed, he went home.
To his laptop.
Which he opened while the coffee was brewing.
And he pulled up The Worldist website.
Then he read an article about student loans that had Georgiana Traylor’s byline.
He found he was right.
She was good at her job.
Because the article was succinct, but thorough, he was keen to read the next installment that was coming the next day, and the father didn’t come off as a total jackhole.
He came off, subtly, as a complete bastard.