It will all be worth it one day. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Sacrificing my social life for my career will pay off eventually. Once I’m settled into my plush corner office, I will find time to get a life if it kills me.
As I ride back to my hotel in a cab, I hear my mom’s voice in my head.
“Robyn, have you eaten? Are you getting enough rest? Have you lost weight?”
I take decent care of myself. I jog three miles every morning. I make healthy food choices. I get as much sleep as my job allows, which, okay, isn’t a ton. Surely I’ll live long enough to see the fruits of my labor. Despite my mother’s constant concerns.
But then there’s another voice in my head.
My dad’s.
Before an accident on the oil rig where he worked took him from us my senior year of high school, he had these little sayings. He loved Yogi Berra, used to quote him all the time. I didn’t know much about Yogi except that he played for the Yankees. But after my dad died, I online-searched him. Like my dad, he had this charmingly innocuous way of giving advice.
“You have to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, Pete. You might wind up someplace else.”
My dad also called me Pistol Pete because I was kind of a wild child when I was little. I blame the red hair. As I got older he dropped the Pistol and just called me Pete. I can’t even count the number of times I had to explain that when I had a friend over.
With my dad, well, Yogi’s advice constantly in mind, I set my goals for myself extremely high. In high school, I was the valedictorian on my way to college. In college I was president of Pi Beta Phi and made damn sure we won the award for the most community service. I worked my ass off to get the marketing internship with Midnight Bay and once they hired me full-time I set my sights on a promotion.
That’s my thing. I know where I’m going.
“There’s Robyn Breeland,” people say when I walk down the street. “That girl knows where she’s going.”
Okay, so maybe they don’t say it out loud, necessarily. It’s enough that I know.
Or at least, I usually do.
When the cabdriver pulls up to the Hyatt Regency, I don’t get out right away. I weigh my options.
Pancakes with Dallas or lying in bed staring at the ceiling all night wondering how long he sat at that diner alone.
Neither option is particularly appealing. But at least with one of them I might actually get some sleep tonight.
“Um, did we happen to pass a diner on our way here?”
“A diner?” The driver turns in his seat to face me. He’s attractive, younger than I first realized. His head is shaved and there are tattoos on his arms that look like military insignia but it’s too dark to be able to tell for sure.
“Um, yeah. A friend of mine said there was a diner near the amphitheater where you picked me up and I was thinking of meeting him there instead of calling it a night. Would that be okay?”
He shrugs. “It’s your dime, lady. But there are two diners between here and the amphitheater.”
Crap.
“Is one of them open all night by chance?”
“That’d be Rosa’s. You want me to take you?”
Do I? Should I?
My head says sure. My heart is too pissed at me to even weigh in right now. I pray for a sign. Usually I look for them in songs on the radio or street names. But tonight the radio is off, and I haven’t paid any attention to the street names. So I go with my gut instincts.
“Sure. That’d be great.”
I should’ve changed clothes.
It’s the only thought I can hold on to as the cabdriver drops me in front of Rosa’s Diner, a small fifties-themed place tucked between a run-down hardware store and an all-night pharmacy.
For God’s sakes, I still have my Kickin’ Up Crazy tour sponsor pass dangling from the Midnight Bay lanyard around my neck.
Nice, Robyn. Very sexy.