Page 18 of Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail

I’ll order you a Riesling!

Astrid?

ASS.

She sighed, her thumbs poised over the keyboard. Exhaustion? Iris would never let her get away with that. Period cramps... no, she could almost feel Iris shoving a few ibuprofen into her hands.

Migraine. That could work. She’d never had one before, but if any day was going to bring on searing pain behind her eyes, it was today.

I think I’ve got my first migraine, she typed out before she could overthink it.

Oh no!Claire immediately replied.

So it went badly?Delilah said, because of course she saw through Astrid like a sheet of cellophane.

It was fine, Astrid said.I just need some quiet and a dark room.

Boring, Iris said.

Ris, Jesus, Claire texted back.

Sorry, Iris said.Need anything?

Astrid quickly tapped out a sereneNo thank youand then turned her phone off before they could text her back. She wasn’t completely lying. Her headwaspounding and her dark living room, complete with its brain-quieting neutral tones, seemed to beckon her like heaven’s pearly gates.

After changing into a tank top and a pair of yoga pants, she poured herself a glass of white wine and settled on her couch, exhaling as her body sank into the cushions. The day settled with her, everything that happened spilling into her chest, thick and uncomfortable. She replayed the events over and over again, from Jordan’s horrified expression this morning as Astrid lit into her outside the coffee shop to the woman’s clear disdain for Astrid’s work.

She lingered there for too long—Jordan’s rolling eyes, her pursed mouth at Astrid’s design, the way her lean but toned biceps flexed when she folded her arms across her chest.

Astrid shook her head, hoping to clear Jordan out of her thoughts, but everything Astrid should have done differently flipped through her brain like a gag reel, failure after failure. Her chest tightened even more, that familiar panicky feeling she first experienced as a ten-year-old trying to get her grief-stricken mother to smile.

Trying, and failing.

She rolled her shoulders back. Lifted her chin. She just needed to focus. She dug her laptop out of her bag and opened it up, the lightfrom the screen filling the room like an unwelcome ghost. She clicked into her email, ready to answer all the messages that surely had poured in throughout the day while she’d pored over her Everwood designs.

She blinked at the lone new email in her inbox.

One.

And it was from her mother.

Business hadn’t been great lately. She could admit that—or, she could admit it to the quiet of her own mind—but this was getting dire. She was used to at least twenty emails a day, contractors asking about her next project, potential clients inquiring about their drab living rooms, current clients linking Pinterest mood boards and sending photos of some antique candleholder they spotted at the flea market in Sotheby.

She slumped back onto the cushions, panic and something else clouding into her chest. She exhaled, closed her eyes. Relief. That’s what it was. Which couldn’t be right, because she loved work. Thrived on it. These days, aside from her blissfully in-love best friends, work was all she had.

She sat up and fixed her posture, determined to spend the night hunting for potential projects she could pitch, when she spotted her mother’s email again. The subject line read “Interesting.”

Dread quickly replaced every other emotion.

She took another sip of wine—no, two—just to steel herself. Maybe it was a possible job. Maybe it was a link to a dress her mother thought would look good on Astrid. Maybe...

She opened the message, ready to get this over with. The message said nothing, but it did contain a single blue-underlined link. She clicked on it and a photo bloomed onto the screen, so large and in such high definition, Astrid’s entire body shot back in alarm.

“Jesus,” she said to her empty house as she stared at a white man with perfect teeth, golden hair, and a crisp blue button-down. He wasstanding next to a blond white woman who had clearly undergone just as much expensive orthodontia in her youth. Her hair shone in soft waves around her pristinely made-up face, blue eyes like a summer sky. Astrid couldn’t tell where her ex-fiancé was, exactly—a restaurant, perhaps, or maybe a vineyard—but the familiar rock on the woman’s left hand was crystal clear.

This time last year, that same diamond had sparkled on Astrid’s own hand.

The photo sat at the top of an article in the Lifestyle section of theSeattle Times, a collection of text beneath it.