My feet dragged on the pavement as I made my way home from Flannigan's. I'd meant to call Tom after my interview but I hadn't had the heart to, so I didn't and walked to Peter's instead.

There wasn't anything new to tell Tom anyways, I reasoned to gnawing guilt.

The interview had been the same as all the others. It started with a polite greeting, a brief review of my CV, and then a slew of questions that slowly dissolved from the professional into the personal...

I had been so nervous during the first interview that I hadn't caught on quick enough. The hiring manager had started by asking about the recent appearance of my name in the papers. She framed it to sound like she was concerned over the potential effects of my recent publicity on the magazine's branding.

In the moment, I felt the need to defend myself and assure her, as Tom had assured me, that it was only a temporary interest by the press. But after leaving the magazine's offices and heading toward Tom's, the unease I had felt earlier only intensified...

It was mortifying to admit to Cynthia what had happened, but she was the only person I knew with experience in PR (and managing the complexities of being a member of the royal family).

I knew I couldn't tell Tom, and Cynthia begrudgingly agreed with me, admitting that if her brother found out he'd likely make a worse scene than at the bar.

Contrasting to her edgy looks, Cynthia was kind and incredibly patient with me. She gave me a list of red flags to keep an eye and ear out for and a few lines I could say to gracefully exit any intrusive questioning.

Her advice was spot on, and, unfortunately, I had need to use it in every one of my interviews—including the one earlier this morning.

It was exhausting to work so hard to find a job and having nothing pan out, but more than that it was utterly demoralizing preparing for interviews all the while knowing their predictable, exploitive end.

But what else was I to do? I had my share of the rent to pay and bills piling up, and with my meager savings already beginning to dwindle... well, I was desperate for work.

When I finally stumbled into the bookshop, Peter must have noticed my crestfallen expression because he immediately offered me a cup of tea and job. I accepted the former and carefully declined the latter, knowing full well that sales were again down and the shop's income was barely covering Peter's salary alone.

I was sure I'd find something sooner or later, I told him with a tired smile.

And I sincerely hoped I wasn't lying to my old friend... or to myself.

* * *

I stayed with Peter for the rest of the morning and late into the afternoon. We shared several rounds of tea, and Peter expounded on the many merits of literary scholarship. It was a lecture I had heard many times, and one I was grateful to hear again as his long-winded preaching quelled the storm of self-doubt whirling in my mind.

When I first began working at The Print, it had been difficult to overcome my sense of being a fraud. Sure I had done internships as a copy editor in uni, but I wasn't a writer and I certainly wasn't an expert in all things literature—and yet I had been hired by an established arts and literature magazine to write critical reviews!

For months I would return home from work and fret to Trisha, terrified that one day an HR manager would come to my desk and tell me there had been a horrible mistake. Trisha had immediately labeled my feelings as 'imposter syndrome' and just as quickly dismissed them as invalid.

Still, it wasn't until I received my first query from an agent trying to sell an author's book that I began to feel somewhat accomplished. Even as I compounded experience and job titles, there were days my doubts lingered, if not consciously voiced in my mind then their quiet whispers echoing in my heart.

Following my resignation, the whispers amplified to jeering taunts, and with each rejection letter and each horrific interview, they grew increasingly uncontrollable till I felt myself practically drowning in them.

Trisha was unsympathetic as ever. Her excitement over Tom 'gallantly' shoving Marcus off of me (and then her added thrill over his revealed pedigree) did eventually gave way to righteous indignation when I told her of Rufus's ultimatum. She declared his (and through him the magazine's) actions to be reprehensible, immoral, and quite likely unlawful. My feelings of self-doubt inspired by said actions, however, were deemed completely irrational and, therefore, pointless to dwell upon.

Or in her eloquent words 'fucking ridiculous' and 'offensively delusional.'

Ever since the start of our friendship as first years in uni, Trisha always held an image of me that was far more spectacular than the reflection I glanced in the mirror. Second to my mum, she had always been my biggest cheerleader. And because she rarely could find a fault to cite me, she just as rarely had the patience to unburden my insecurities.

I confessed my first few disastrous interviews to her, but, finding no solace, I eventually stopped.

Tom, of course, I could not confide my anxieties in as he would immediately take them up as his own and add them to what I was sure to be a growing sense of guilt. I tried to hide the negative repercussions our relationship going public had on my day-to-day life but try as I might, I knew he wasn't blind to it and that he did all he could to alleviate it. Besides, he was going through difficulties with the foundation and I didn't want to pile on.

If I told Peter, he would insist I return to Flannigan's for work, and if I told my mum... well I worried what she might think of Tom and our relationship. It wasn't his fault I couldn't find work, and I didn't want him or anyone else to think otherwise.

So I walked home alone, silently voicing every worry and fear I would confide to one of them if only I could.

Rufus wouldn't have risked losing me over a bloody gossip story if I was a decent writer, even if he could've squeezed two or three viral articles out of it.

I wasn't enough at my job—not nearly good enough or important enough—and his ultimatum was evidence of that fact.

What if The Print hiring me really had been a horrible mistake? An accident Rufus finally found a way to capitalize on?

What if they had never meant to hire me in the first place—or worse: what if they had and were so disappointed in my work that they leaped at an excuse to be rid of me?

Would any other publication ever take a similar risk on me again? Would I deserve it if they did?

Tom's smiling face startled me out of my increasingly tortuous ruminating. He looked positively gleeful, his arms outstretched widely as a suited woman—her face hidden by a shining curtain of perfectly straight golden hair—leaned into his open embrace.

I stopped in front the newsstand, openly gawking at my boyfriend's picture on the cover of a glossy magazine. The words beneath him were large and blocky, promising the most intimate details of his affair with this new woman, whoever she was.

Tears stung my eyes as my fingers shakily reached out to them.

"Can I 'elp ya, miss?"

I sniffed back the growing moisture and shook my head as my free hand grabbed for my wallet buried somewhere in the depths of my purse.