And then, unexpectedly, she began to cry.
It wasn’t her usual, theatrical weeping. This was a ragged, ugly, silent weeping.
The atmosphere in the room shifted. The comedic absurdity evaporated.
“I just…” Brooke gasped, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I just wanted one grand thing to finally work out for me. Just once.”
Nobody joked. Not Kyle in the kitchen. Not Mom, who was wringing her hands near the hallway. Not even me.
Underneath the demand for a hundred-thousand-dollar starting salary, beneath the delusions of executive grandeur, and past the pathetic name-dropping of celebrity makeup artists… Brooke was terrified.
She was forty-one years old.
She attempted to skip directly to the finish line—the part of the journey where everyone respects your authority and admires your success—because she was paralyzed by the humiliation of having to spend the next five years being a clumsy, inadequate beginner.
