Before I go back and tell you my story – a little background.
Me and Damon are about to meet with Danny the boss. Damon is the magazine’s number one outdoor photographer. We tried dating for a bit, after I started working at the magazine, but that went south for a myriad of reasons, which I won’t get into now, most notably because he had issues with keeping his pants on around other women. There’s nothing between us now, no hard feelings, we’re just coworkers.
Like I said, I was recently hired to be a photographer for the award winning City & Sky magazine and as you can imagine it’s a thrill to have landed such a prestigious job. It barely covers my rent and some Raman noodles, but at least I don’t have to work for my rich parents. I really want to prove to them that I can make it on my own.
My one worry about my gig with City & Sky is that one day, my luck will run out, and they’ll take me off the City desk. Damon is an outdoor fanatic, and asks for and gets all the outdoor assignments, because he fricken’ lives for the thrill of the hard to get shot. Not me. Not me at all.
In fact, I’m accident prone in the extreme and the last place I want to go is anywhere outside. Just ask my parents, or my best friend, Faith. Everyone knows, I’m only safe, if I’m protected by four solid walls and a roof.
I told Danny about my predilection for injuries, and he’s been great about giving me only the City beat jobs, most of which are thankfully indoors.
And, if I say so myself, I’ve been killing it, really taking the photoshoots the extra mile – and putting creativity and artistry into my work.
New ice cream sushi store? I’m there, and you’re going to see ice cream sushi retailing as never before.
Yonkers billionaire’s wife insist that they line their indoor swimming pool with solid gold? Let me grab my equipment.
Grand opening of an indoor anti-gravity massage parlor and nail salon in the financial district? Heck yeah, I’ll be right over.
Because that’s who I am. Jamaicka Grant, heir to the Grant fortune, trying to be a normal person – just saying no to allowance from mom and dad. That’s me, City & Sky’s celebrity poodle tutu photographer extraordinaire.
Well, that was me until this meeting with Danny the boss…
Danny the boss focused his fox like eyes on my Damon, my coworker. Damon sat beside me, legs crossed, arms behind his head, relaxed as if he was in the man’s basement, drinking beers and watching the game. Calm as mud, as if he had nothing to worry about.
Maybe he didn’t. I on the other hand, sat on the edge of my seat, which was a hard wooden chair that I had to rid of a stack of books before I could use it. I was freaking out, it was my day off, and I’d been summoned by text. I was pretty sure I was about to be fired.
“Damon,” Danny said, “you came to me with this travel piece about the Glacier Bluff, and I liked the idea. But it’s an expensive assignment, and I need more than glorified advertisement for the hotel. I need something with pizazz, with cover potential. So I had an idea while I was in the shower…”
Damon and I both leaned forward on the edge of our seats, for very different reasons.
“Danny, if you’re thinking of taking this piece away from me, I have to say that…”
Danny interrupted Damon with a snap of his fingers, his signal that it was time to shut up and listen. If you spoke after the finger snap, you could be sure that you wouldn’t be getting an assignment in the next issue.
“Damon, I like your idea. It’s a solid idea. You brought me the hotel. But the hotel is not enough. So I want to send Jamaicka. I want her to do a piece on what it’s like to be a city girl spending her vacation at an outdoor-focused resort. Damon, you are a sports guy. You like skiing and snowboarding and riding bulls and all that other cowboy crap. I’m not even sure that Jamaicka can ride a bike.”
“I can’t! I can’t ride a bike. Don’t make me ride a bike!” I stumbled. Danny shushed me.
“We need a cover story that sells something different, and just the same old puff piece about an eccentric hotel in a small-ass country isn’t going to sell magazines. But sending Calamity Jamaicka over there to the top of a mountain and telling her to jump? THAT will sell magazines.”
I felt my stomach roll over, and barely stopped myself from throwing up all over Danny’s desk. So I started to hyperventilate instead.
“You want me…to jump…off…a mountain? I can’t… I don’t… I fell down the stairs trying to catch the A train last week! If you want me to quit, I’ll quit. If you want to kill me, there are easier ways to do that too!”
“It’s true! I once saw her almost fall down a subway grate! The city did whole ad campaigns swearing that wasn’t even possible!”
I knew Damon was just trying to save his story, but it was true. Every phone call to my dad started with him saying, “Hey, Jamaicka! You’re still alive!” Danny might as well just run me over with his car on his way out of work today. It would save him the cost of sending me to a foreign country to end up maimed.
“Damon, I appreciate that you want this story. And you will get credit for bringing me this story, because I will find you an even better story. But this is my decision. So Jamaicka…you better start packing. Your flight leaves at 6 a.m.”
Danny was grinning at me like a fool, and Damon was glaring at me like I’d just stolen his dog. But no matter how much Damon hated me in that moment, he couldn’t have possibly understood how much I didn’t want this assignment. Maybe if I was lucky I’d get hit by a cab on the way to the airport and save us all the trouble. But the smile on Danny’s face as he handed me my travel packet made it clear there was no going back.
I was going to get this story, or I was going to die trying.
Literally. I was literally going to die.
Mia Caldwell has been fantasizing about stories of "Happily-Ever-After" since she was a little girl, and now that she's all grown up her "Happily-Ever-After" stories have taken a steamier turn! After graduating from college Mia still wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do with her life. Bored with her day job as an Administrative Assistant for a non-profit, she started writing stories on the side and sharing them with her friends. They gave her the push she needed to share them with you!
She lives in New York with two rascally cats named Link and Zelda, eats too much chocolate and Chinese take-out, and goes on way too many blind dates. She's still waiting for Mr. Right, but in the meantime she'll keep dreaming up the perfect man!
