Page 5 of Vitamin Sea

Chloe had blushed furiously. She managed a small smile back and then had buried her head back in the menu, studying it as intently as if she was preparing to write the bar. A waitress soon came over and took her order—an espresso martini—which she sipped while she waited for her friends.

Lala, her closest friend in the entire world, was a sales executive for a tech company and worked just a few blocks away.

She was a forceful personality and excelled at her job.

In fact, Chloe wouldn’t be surprised if Lala someday ended up running the whole corporation.

Alejandra and Opal, the other two friends she was waiting for, were a dental hygienist, and an associate lawyer, respectively.

Alejandra had a perfect set of pearly whites, which served as great advertisement for her services, and Opal was a reasoned and seasoned corporate lawyer who was working her way up the Bay Street ladder.

The four of them had been friends since their undergraduate university days, and their friendship had only grown as they found themselves living and working in the city.

Of course, with busy lives and schedules, they saw each other less often than they did during their four years at university, but they still found time for a tri-weekly meetup.

Chloe’s work assignments—read: multi-day all-expenses-paid vacations that she, incredibly, was salaried to write about—often allowed for a plus-one.

It was something that Lala joined when she was able to, but Chloe had also brought along her parents, a close cousin, and once, when she had been able to swing it, Alejandra.

She worked long hours at two dental clinics just to make ends meet, and Chloe knew her friend would never have been able to afford a trip like that on her own.

Not that Chloe was swimming in cash either.

Her pay wasn’t anywhere near top tier, but she really couldn’t complain.

Her job allowed her to see the world without spending a dime.

And not in a hostel-hopping, back-pack traveling kind of way that most people did in their twenties.

No, no—she stayed at luxury hotels and resorts and got to experience the cities, towns, beaches, and bushes the way the ultra-wealthy did.

In Nunavut she had gone on a polar bear trek where she slept under the stars, saw the northern lights, and participated in traditional Inuit ceremonies.

In Johannesburg, she stayed at the newly renovated Four Seasons, spent a day at their spa, ate exquisite cuisine, and saw lions, giraffes, and zebras on a safari.

In the South of France, she slept in a castle, went on wine and cheese tours, and stuffed her face with as much French bread as she could stomach.

After she had gotten together with Liam, he had joined her on a few of her assignments.

Their first trip together, after they had been dating for over a year, was to London, where they were reopening the newly renovated The Langham, London.

They had spent four luxurious nights at the hotel, which had included a black-tie reopening soiree, butler service, the spa, heavenly pastries, fine dining, and all the sights, sounds, and experiences that London had to offer.

Well, all the sights, sounds, and experiences that they could reasonably squeeze into three days.

They started officially cohabitating shortly afterwards, with Chloe moving into Liam’s place—her 500-square-foot condo was hardly big enough to house two people.

Liam, on the other hand, had a two-bedroom condo right in the downtown core.

Not that moving in together had meant much anyway given they basically already lived together.

Which was for reasons both personal and practical.

Personal because they loved each other and practical because the location of Chloe’s condo meant that it took her, on average, forty-five minutes to get to work.

When she stayed at Liam’s place, that extra forty-five minutes in the morning were spent either getting some extra shuteye or savouring her coffee.

She had been shocked at how quickly the two of them had gotten together, she and Liam. Prior to meeting him, she had mostly found dating to be a revolving door of commitment-phobes, men wanting to ‘keep their options open’, bitter people laden with baggage, and desperate clingers.

Which was why it had come as such a surprise that Liam was even single.

He checked none of the aforementioned boxes and there was nary a red flag in sight.

As Liam told it, much like Chloe he had broken up with his long-term girlfriend the year before and, since then, had only been on a handful of dates.

Long hours spent at the office as he worked on closing deals and climbing his way up the cutthroat banking ladder meant that he didn’t have much time to meet anyone, let alone go on any dates.

It was just as well then, perhaps, that the two of them hit it off that fateful night at Hy’s.

Over three espresso martinis (Chloe’s) and several vodka sodas for Liam, they discovered that they worked in the same building but on different floors.

They also discovered a shared love of travel; Liam had been intrigued by her career.

“You get paid to go on vacations?” he had sounded incredulous.

“Yes,” Chloe took a sip of her martini and put it down before elaborating. “Not handsomely, but it pays the bills. And I get to travel and have experiences most people only dream of.”

A live, three-piece band started strumming the intro to a popular rock song and the volume in the restaurant increased.

“And they’re not vacations,” Chloe said with mock indignation. “They’re assignments.”

Liam laughed.

“Sheesh, I wish my work involved luxuriating on yachts in the Mediterranean,” he shook his head with a smile, recalling the story Chloe had just told him about her latest assignment on the Amalfi Coast

She was used to getting that response when she told people what she did for work.

And she did consider herself lucky. Very lucky.

But she didn’t put her position down to only luck.

There was a lot of hard work that had gone into it.

She had gone to school for journalism and was editor in chief for two on-campus magazines while attending the University of Toronto.

After graduation she had interned for two magazines— Strut and Elle Canada.

The internships, unpaid of course—money was scarce in the writing industry—had been supplemented by a waitressing gig at a restaurant near her home.

In between her three-job juggling act, she found time to write freelance pieces for various magazines, which paid peanuts, but gave her more work for her portfolio.

She had been dismayed, but not altogether surprised, to find that after the internships ended, neither magazine had any job openings.

Neither did any of the other print or online publications she researched.

Newspapers, lifestyle magazines, beauty magazines, parenting magazines, technology magazines—none of them had job openings.

At least not any job openings for an entry-level copy editor’s position.

Because of this, three months after her internships had ended, she was waitressing full-time while picking up whatever freelance work she could find on the side. Then, Mylene, Chloe’s manager at Strut , had called to let her know that they were hiring.

Along with all the other applicants, she submitted her resumé, cover letter, and portfolio, and had been called in for an interview.

To Chloe, it felt like her first foray into the adult world.

Sure, she had gone to school, lived alone, and done freelancing and internship work, but interviewing for her dream career at a magazine she loved felt like she was hitting a milestone.

She was unsure of herself after the interview, but had received a phone call the following day from Mylene.

“Congrats, Chloe!” she said enthusiastically. “I’m so happy you’ll be joining us. You were such a great intern, and I just know that you’re going to do great things at Strut. ”

Chloe, Strut ’s newly minted copy editor, had sported a perma-smile for days afterwards and had taken it as a feather in her cap when Mylene told her that Dasha had been the one to float Chloe as a potential candidate for the position.

It came as a shock to her that Dasha even knew she existed.

When she had interned at Strut , her job had consisted mostly of answering phones, scheduling appointments, picking up merchandise, packaging items and mailing them back to suppliers, designers, and PR agencies.

She knew that Dasha had approved two pieces she had written for the online version of the magazine.

But she also knew that all pieces were approved by Dasha, so she hadn’t thought anything of it.

Apparently, though, Chloe’s work had left an impression on the no-nonsense blonde.

It led to her forming a close connection with Dasha that had only strengthened as Chloe rose through the ranks and settled into different editorial positions.

Strut was a widely circulated magazine with a large readership throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

It was primarily a fashion magazine but also had a beauty and travel section—which was the one that Chloe was now in charge of—and always featured hard-hitting articles that delved into everything from human rights abuses—one piece had investigated a luxe fashion house’s line of sweaters that were sold for more than $6,000 but whose Indigenous farmers who supplied the wool were compensated pennies—to overconsumption and fast fashion.

Each issue also, of course, included a travel feature written by none other than Chloe Ryder herself.