Page 4 of Up in Smoke (The Bunkhouse #3)

MESA

I never should have installed Wi-Fi at my cottage. The virtual meeting requests are really starting to fuck with the vibes.

My shoulders drop as the Zoom invite pings like a bad omen. Knowing it pertains to an important email I received earlier this week, I don’t have the luxury of declining this one.

It’s my own fault. If I wanted to be left alone, I shouldn’t have helped create an app that ended up selling for eight figures, with stocks and a percentage of sales for the next five years. Even after stepping away from the finished product, the work never ends. Not really .

I was raised to believe that a combination of higher education and good old-fashioned hard work would help set me up for life.

My mom was the one who encouraged that rigorous approach, and while staring my career options in the face at the ripe age of eighteen, I’d have sooner jumped headfirst into a woodchipper than disappoint her.

I grew up admiring her success and independence.

With time, I believed that it would all work out in the end for me too if I trusted her advice.

As a result, my precious twenties included a nauseating amount of student loans and screen-induced headaches.

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. But a life of climbing ladders forever isn’t for everybody.

The more time I spent in that realm, the more I disliked it and began dreaming of something entirely different.

A soft existence—something in the country where open window curtains blow in the breeze, and my connection to nature is right out my back door—is more my speed. That, and eventually finding a low-stress job that doesn’t require me to slap on a blazer and a pair of slacks every morning.

Leaving my profession and moving out of the city should have been a clean break.

But the familiar chime as I join the Zoom call reminds me that getting out of the death trap of toxic careerism is not as straightforward or simple as I thought it would be.

The three-way call pops up on my computer screen a moment later.

“Glad you could join us,” Hazel, my former boss and business partner, teases.

She’s the horticulture department head at the junior college where I taught for four years. We hit it off soon after meeting, and I jumped at the chance to ask for her collaboration when the idea for the app first crossed my mind.

Despite my aversion to work meetings, I greet her and Sophia with a smile. “It’s good to see you too, girls. Hazel, your new office looks so big and bright! I love it.”

“Oh, thank you! I moved in over spring break last week,” she says, turning to scan the massive bookshelf next to a bay window behind her. “Pretty great, right? Your place looks adorable. Are you enjoying it there?”

I nod, relishing the fact that my background consists of a wooden arched door, wide open and showing off a lush backyard. “It smells like fresh air here, and no one is telling me what to do or asking me out to lunch to exchange salary brags.”

“That’s fantastic,” Hazel responds with a string of laughs. “You’re not holding a bottle of bubbly, so I’m assuming you haven’t looked at your checking account yet today.”

My head tilts, and I draw my brows together. It doesn’t take long for me to reach for my phone and pull up my banking app to find a perplexing balance. This cannot be right.

“Did it go through?” Hazel asks. “They sent ours this morning.”

I stare down at my phone, blinking several times as if my eyes aren’t adjusting correctly and I’m reading the number wrong. If this is the advance on the new material our app purchasers are expecting from us, it’s far more than the amount we initially agreed upon.

I flit my gaze from the phone to the video conference call, not bothering to hide my shock. Hazel is sharing a split screen with our other collaborator, Sophia, and they’re both wearing grins as wide as their faces.

They’re excited about the lump of dough in our accounts, and I wish I shared the same emotion. Money doesn’t motivate me because there’s always a catch. I just don’t know what it is yet.

“I got it,” I confirm. “But this is?—”

“A lot of money!” Sophia squeals with delight.

I blow out a heavy breath and raise my brows. “Yeah, that would be an understatement. Be right back while I change my LinkedIn profile to say officially retired .”

We sold the app last year. Hazel handled the bulk of the scientific research, Sophia took on the monster of development and art, and I curated the curriculum that tied our whole idea together.

Nine and a half years of exhausting dedication to the grind brought us more success and money than we ever thought was possible.

As it turns out, an app that makes it fun for kids to learn how to safely grow their own food and track the daily care of their sustainable gardens was wildly popular among test groups.

Investors came out in droves. I care more about kids in food deserts learning to grow their own nutritious ingredients than a quick buck.

But once I learned that more families could use the app if we sold it to a large company with a better interface, I didn’t protest.

Once it sold, our contract with the buyer sealed the deal with a big enough payout for me to purchase the place where I live now and prepare to leave the teaching job I never fell in love with like I thought I would.

When my time as a professor finally came to an end, I moved to Westridge full-time.

It’s only been two months of blissful quiet out here on my little piece of land.

I was hoping for more uninterrupted time than that. Say, fifty years or so.

The sale of the app went off without a hitch, but there was one major contingency—it required the original creators to rejoin the project if the app performed well and the demand for a second wave of content was high. Paid work, in advance, of course.

We’d agreed.

“Based on the email I forwarded to you on Monday, you’re going to have to wait for retirement, babe,” Hazel points out. “We have a whole new batch of courses to build.”

I’d seen the proposal she’s referring to. The app has performed so well that they need to fulfill the requests of families who have enjoyed it and want more . Before this meeting, my week had already been drenched in preparation because I knew what was ahead.

“Why is the advance so much more money than I thought it would be?” I ask.

Hazel’s lips press into a thin line. “They sweetened the deal because we’re going to be on a short timeline.”

“We can do it, can’t we?” Sophia chimes in with rare enthusiasm. She’s usually the cynical one in our meetings. “You work fast, Hazel. And Mesa, you finally left your job and don’t have much on your plate, right?”

I pull up the calendar on my phone. An uneventful spring and summer were what I’d hoped to have. Other than my biweekly visits to the city, being single and jobless made it seem possible. Until now.

“I’m pretty open,” I answer with an edge of reluctance. I enjoyed our passion project which turned into a smashing success. I’d be lying if I said I wanted to dive back into the stresses of doing it all over again, though. “When’s the deadline, exactly?”

Hazel doesn’t speak at first, instead clearing her throat and brushing her bangs away from her face. I place a hand on the vintage lace tablecloth in front of me and lean forward.

“Hazel . . . "

She whispers something, and I could have sworn she said, “August.” Hearing a real deadline has me regretting ever becoming a sellout and signing the contract in the first place.

The legal obligation to design the courses for content expansion is airtight.

I’m going to have to put a pause on my little dream of peaceful solace and do this instead.

I stepped away from a life that revolves around work, money, and status for a reason. To put it simply, it’s just not the life for me. The thought of returning to that, even for just a few years, starts a headache behind my eyes.

Then I remember the kids and families that our app has helped. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to care about the app’s mission and core values as much as Hazel, Sophia, and I do. The work we’ll be doing means something, and that’s enough to keep my chin up.

Sophia squints and tilts her head. “What was that?”

“I said they plan to launch the update in August,” Hazel blurts out in one breath.

“We’ll have to start immediately.” I reach to the side, plucking a blackberry from a Pyrex bowl and tossing it into my mouth with a shrug. “A year and a half is crazy. It took me two just to write and trial the curriculum the first time around. I could probably push to make it work, though.”

“ This August,” she corrects nervously.

My movements still, and I nearly choke on the fruit in my mouth. We’re in mid-March and haven’t even discussed a plan of action. There’s no way. Sophia slaps a hand over her mouth, seemingly agreeing with my inner thoughts.

“It’s impossible, I know. I tried to reason with them, but we aren’t in control of those things anymore. They expect us to hold up our end of the deal. On their terms.”

A car door slams shut in my front yard, but I ignore it. When my friend Savannah walks in a minute later wearing a lilac cotton dress, strappy heels, and ginormous sunglasses, I still can’t bring myself to speak.

“Did someone say terms?” Savannah says, gliding across my hardwood floor.

She’s a lawyer in town. She also happens to be one of two people I’ve befriended since moving to Westridge, and it’s not uncommon for her to show up at my house with a canvas tote full of expensive wine and our favorite charcuterie items.

“Shoot. Ladies,” Hazel says, after checking the time on her watch and gathering a stack of papers from her desk. “I have class in five minutes. Let’s discuss this after the weekend, shall we?”

“This will not work,” Sophia whines. There she is. “We’re going to get sued.”