Back to Square One (Brandon Bay Babes)

Kit Davidson’s life was in a rut.
 
She wasn’t just at a fork in the road; she had a whole cutlery drawer in her way.
 
For a girl who always felt like she faded into the background; imagine her surprise to have one gorgeous ex-boss, her dreamy high school crush and her suddenly hunky childhood best friend all vying for her affections.
 
Losing her roommate, her job and her confidence and going home to Brandon Bay seemed like the worst idea in the world.
 
But where better to exorcise all her ghosts, start over and reinvent herself than by going ‘back to square one’.
 

Copyright
© 2013 by Noni Calbane

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Published, 2013

Kit Davidson read the email again. By the tenth time it was becoming blurry and, hope though she may, it still said the same thing.

Funny, how in movies people constantly talked about getting the dreaded pink slip; these days it didn’t even rate a colour, let alone a literal piece of paper.
 
Maybe she should print it out, so at least she would have something tangible to actually cry over and tearstain.
 

But then again, waterlogging a computer with her tears and short-circuiting the system would just serve McIntyre and Jones right.
 
She’d given them the best years of her short working life and all she had to show for it was, what her vivid imagination perceived to be, the beginnings of an ulcer and a small severance payout that would keep her in Ben & Jerry’s, oh, for about a month if her calculations were correct.

For someone who was so far below the radar and completely invisible to all but the nice little man who delivered the mail to her inbox,
 
she found it surprising that they’d remembered her enough to actually fire her.

Pulling out a file storage box, Kit started emptying the drawers of her personal effects.
 
There was nothing much to take home.
 
A box of tissues, her iPod, and the pen her mother gave her when she moved to the city and the big time.
 

Oh crap!
 
Telling her mother was going to be the pits.
 
How would she react?
 
Who the hell knew?
 

Gladys Davidson was a total enigma to Kit.
 
They were polar opposites and she had struggled dealing with her mother her whole life.
 
Who could deal with person who used idioms and proverbs as a conversational way of speaking!
 

On second thought, she knew exactly what her mother would say.
 
She’d tell her you that “if it’s not one thing, it’s another” and to “take the good with the bad” and “every cloud has a silver lining”

Unquestionably, the most memorable conversation she’d had with her mother was the infamous sex talk at thirteen, where the phrases that “he won’t buy the cow if he gets the milk for free” and “it takes two to tango” came into play.
 
When Kit had responded back that she should “stop beating around the bush” and “cut to the chase”, her mother behaved as though she had no idea what she was talking about, and left her bedroom stating that Kit may very well “go to hell in a hand basket”.
 
Then and there, Kit decided that her mother was “not playing with a full deck”, and therefore excluded her from all future important decision making discussions.

No.
 
Telling her mother could wait; an eternity, if possible.
 
The “want” ads should be her priority.
 
That and working out what to do about her apartment.
 

Of course, her roommate leaving her in the lurch perfectly coincided with her position being terminated.
 
It was the story of her life; whatever way her bread was buttered it would always inevitably fall face down.
 
Her roommate’s decision to up and leave to pursue her dream of pole dancing in Vegas (who the hell actually has that as a life goal), made it imperative that she either, A. let the place go; or B. find a new roommate, and fast.
 
She would miss her roommate, Bambi.
 
She was kind of sweet in a vacuous and childlike way.
 
She was also sheer proof that naming a child could end in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 

Sniffing loudly, Kit took a tissue and blew her nose.
 
Her life certainly seemed to be going down the toilet at not half-flush, but airplane sucking speed.

When four-forty-five rolled around, Kit grabbed her purse and plastic bag of belongings (she’d decided the box was overkill, she really didn’t have that much stuff), and made her way to the elevators.
  
There was no need to stay till five.
 
McIntyre and Jones, Publishers; had gotten their pound of flesh from her, and they weren’t getting an ounce more, even if she could easily spare it.
 

Pressing the down button she watched the numbers blink as the elevator descended from the upper office floors.
 
Others in the company passed her without a word. Was she the only one who’d been let go? Screw them, she thought, screw them all.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the nice little man who brought her mail each day coming down the hallway.
 
Kit took a deep breath and pasted the biggest smile she could manage under the circumstances on her face.

“Hi Jim.” she said brightly.

“Hi” he replied with a slightly odd look.

Kit purposely ignored it.
 
“It’s my last day.”
 
When he didn’t respond, she continued, “Just wanted to say, it’s been great working with you.”

“Yeah.
 
Same to you.” he stated perfunctorily.

The elevator chimed its arrival.
 
“Well, that’s me.” she smiled.
 
“Bye Jim.”

“Bye Kate.” he said, going on his way.

“It’s Kit.” she said glumly, entering the elevator.
 
Could it get any worse?

When the elevator doors closed, Kit retreated to the corner with her eyes shut tight. The way her luck was going, it would be amazing if it didn’t plunge to the basement.
 
No, that was too messy and newsworthy for someone as inconsequential as her.
 

With her luck, it was much more likely to get stuck mid-floor, and have no-one miss her.
 
And twenty years from now, they would find her dried up remains with only the pen from her mother to identify her.
 
Her mother would say that, although Kit had been “the apple of her eye”, that she wasn’t surprised that she’d “kicked the bucket”, and that it served her right for coming to the city to live “high on the hog”.

Kit felt the doors open and she opened one eye to see whether they’d hit the mezzanine yet.
 
Nope, floor ten.

A dark blue suit entered, and as elevator law dictated, faced front and center awaiting his departure point.
 
I wonder why everyone does that, Kit thought.
 
She’d love to, for once, get in an elevator and stand with her back to the doors, and freak everyone out.
 
Yeah, in her next life she’d definitely do that.

Kit sighed loudly.
 
Way too loudly.
 
Apparently she was invisible, but not mute; because the suit turned around.