Despite the rain and the early darkness of winter, Amber sits on her couch with a smile. Others may feel the weather is a bit depressing, but to her, it’s heaven. It’s a blanket excuse for having no plans and a somewhat passable excuse for canceling the few she accidentally agrees to. The warmth of being bundled up on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa and a cat on her lap, is her idea of a perfect evening. The only decision on her mind is whether to read the next book in the action romance series she’s currently speeding through, or taking a break and streaming a romantic comedy. Either way, the night is going to be perfect.
With a purr from her cat and the toss of the remote, her decision is made. The next volume of The Murderer’s Love series will be her night. She’s sure The Lonely Road of a Murderer’s Love, is going to be a good one. Not good in that it could win any awards, but good in that it can transport her to a new world. She can spend the night not as a twenty-six year old nurse with no life outside of the hospital, but instead following the smoking hot FBI agent, Matt Stunning, who doesn’t realize he’s falling in love with the murderer he’s trying to capture.
She knows these books aren’t real. They aren’t even well written. But that doesn’t matter, she eats them up like they’re tic-tacs. What does matter is that they always end in a good place. Sure there is some mystery, bad decisions are made, and bad things do happen to good people. But in the end, the hero always triumphs, the star-crossed lovers get together, and the bad guys always lose. Some people might find that boring and predictable, but not Amber. The fact that it will end well, doesn’t change the enjoyment of the process of getting there. All it does is guarantee that when she puts this book down, she will feel warm inside, with a smile on her face, rather than the heartbreak of a tragedy. No offense to Shakespeare, but Amber has always wondered, who really wants to add more tragedy and sadness to their lives? That stuff’s already built into life, so why not add the positives? The smiles, the warm endings, the happily ever afters, those are what make stories fun.
Opening the book to the front page is always exciting. Just thinking about all the possibilities of where this story could take her, already has her blood bubbling with anticipation. As she reads the first words, a knock comes on her front door. She looks up, but with the blanket snuggled around her, the cat on her lap, the cocoa in one hand and the book in the other, she has no intention of answering it. She has spent the last fourteen hours at the hospital. She has had one day off in the past three weeks. She is exhausted, her feet hurt, her hair is a mess, and she knows that no matter who is at the door, she is not interested…well unless it’s a pizza, but she didn’t order a pizza so the odds of one randomly showing up is minimal.
The knock comes again but this time it’s accompanied by voices.
“Amber. We know you’re in there.”
“Put the book down and let us in.”
Of course, she thinks. Anyone else and she would continue to ignore them, but these two, well they’ll just break in if she doesn’t let them in.
“Okay, okay. I’m coming.”
With a yawn, Mr. Meowstery, her cat, is set down along with the mug of cocoa. The knock comes again.
“We’re waiting.”
“Hold your horses,” she says, wrapping the blanket around her, as she makes her way to the door.
The apartment is small and minimalistic. The living room contains a couch, TV, coffee table, and a lone fern in the corner. A small kitchen and bathroom jut off in one direction and a small bedroom in the other. All of which are just as sparsely furnished. Amber has never felt the need to make the place homier since she’s barely ever home. When she is, her mind is usually so caught up in the mystery and excitement of some book, that her real life surroundings seem unimportant. It’s also why if her friends ever want to see her outside of work, they know they’ll have to actually come by her place.
The door opens and the two guests flood into her apartment. The first, a girl named Jess who’s roughly the same age and appearance as Amber, flaunts her feminine side with a sashay of her butt when she walks, immediately making her way to the kitchen and opening the fridge. The other, Jamal, a man weighing closer to 300 pounds than 200 and looking like a bowling pin that ate a bowling bowl, plops down on the couch.
“How is it you’re already hungry?” the man asks.
“Seriously? We shared a pizza almost two hours ago. A girl’s got to eat.”
“Shared? Ha!” he says before turning to Amber. “I got two slices of an extra-large.”
Amber remains standing by the door, still confused by the abrupt interruption of her relaxing night. Jess walks back into the living room, already scarfing down some sort of dark noodles from a Chinese food delivery box.
“How is it fair that this girl eats like a hippo but looks like a dolphin? Meanwhile, I eat like a chipmunk and look like a bear before hibernation.”
“Why do all your metaphors have to do with animals?” Jess asks.
“Uh hello? It’s what I do.”
“That was actually a simile,” Amber corrects, not sure why though. Language has always been something that fascinates her. Probably because she reads so much. But others never enjoy being corrected on grammar. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that out pretty quickly.
Despite the interruption of her comfy night of nothing but a book, she does love her friends and doesn’t want to annoy them into leaving, like she’s done to so many before them. Most people don’t seem to enjoy the girl who never wants to go out, never wants to party, and definitely never wants to get hit on by some frat bro in a bar who’s just looking to score. But Jess and Jamal have never given up on her. They simply bring the party to her, even if it’s just the three of them.
Jess is a nurse who works with Amber at the hospital. They started the same week and through all the botched I.V. drips and horrifying sponge baths, became best friends. Jamal on the other hand works as a vet tech at a nearby veterinary hospital. He does basically the same job they do, but with furry friends and surprisingly fewer bathroom accidents. Amber and Jess met him while moonlighting a few weekends at the free vet clinic. They both need the money to pay off student debts and nothing will teach you to place an I.V. drip correctly on the first try, like doing it to a thoroughly pissed off cat. Jamal ended up spending most of the first night, bandaging Amber and Jess more than the animals.
Luckily the two ignore Amber’s comment about the simile and move on. They’ve always been great about moving past her…eccentrics.
“Hold on! It’s Friday night and you’re wearing…ugh, I can’t even say it.”
Amber pulls the blanket wrapped around her shoulders tighter at Jamal’s comment. No, no, no, she thinks. It’s bad enough she refused to go out again, but they can’t see what she’s wearing. With one hand still rocking the Chinese food, Jess yanks the blanket away and they both gasp.
“A Snuggy?”
Jess’s disgust is evident, and Jamal’s face makes his opinion on the matter very clear. With tangled blonde hair, no makeup, bags under her eyes, and wearing a Snuggy on Friday night, Amber knows she must look like the embodiment of a girl that’s given up. It’s not exactly that she’s given up, it’s that she never really started. She’s been a bookworm her whole life. No sports, no parties, and almost no dating of any kind has been her life from high school till now. She can’t say that she’s not interested in that life, it’s just that she’s never been much of a participator. She’s always been more of a viewer-from-a-safe-distance sort of girl.
“This! This is exactly why we’re here.”
Jess sits on the couch beside Jamal, openly judging.
“My clothing choices? It’s not like anyone’s ever going to see me wearing this.”
“We see you, right now, and girl…it burns.”
The tone and attitude in Jamal’s comment almost makes Amber laugh. She has always enjoyed Jamal’s bouncing back and forth between embracing the gay stereotypes and challenging them completely. One moment he’ll do the classic head bob and speak with such sass that everyone in the world would know he’s gay. The next, he’ll knock a guy out for an inappropriate comment toward one of the girls, then chug his beer standing over the man to assert his dominance. As far as Amber’s concerned, he’s really the best of both worlds.
“We’re serious. You’re twenty-six, smoking hot, and you haven’t been on a date in what? Six months?”
The real number’s probably more like nine or ten, but Amber isn’t going to correct her this time.
“And that date was awful,” Amber replies.
“He took you to a sit down restaurant. Any place where the menu isn’t on the wall behind an acne covered teen standing at a cash register, is a success in my book.”
“It was a Chuck E. Cheese.”
Jamal snort laughs and Amber feels herself smile at the memory. If she’s being honest with herself, it was still pizza, and that’s better than some of the other dates she’s been on. As nurses, their work hours are crazy, leaving them with little time to meet anyone. The few guys the three of them do meet, are usually not the type you proudly bring home to mom and dad.
The other two seem to embrace the bad dates and enjoy the one night stands, but Amber has never found a guy that can entertain her as much as a book. The only mystery these guys possess is whether or not they still live with their parents. A round of shots or another game of beer pong is not her idea of an exciting night out. Her books, on the other hand, give her everything she needs.
“How much vacation time do you have saved up?” Jess asks, looking far too inquisitive for Amber’s liking.
“More than I know what to do with, not that I can afford to use it. Why?”
Her two friends turn to each other, the grins on their faces growing.
“And how long has it been since you went on vacation?”
Jamal’s question only furthers Amber’s suspicion.
“A while.”
“Try years. You even worked Christmas day last year,” Jess adds, as if Amber could ever forget the whole Santa, elf, stabbing fiasco.
“Someone has to. I don’t want one of the nurses with kids to have to do it when I easily can.”
“Noble as always, but we’re talking about you taking some time to enjoy yourself.”
“Oh come on. You know the debt I’m in with my student loans. I can’t afford to take time off for some vacation.”
Their grins only grow, and Amber can feel a knot in her stomach growing with it.
“What? What’s going on?”
“What would you say if we told you that we found a way for you to take that long overdue vacation, while making some really good money on the side.”
“Then I would say, while it sounds fun, drug smuggling is against the law. Plus I don’t approve of drugs.”
“Close,” Jamal says with a smile that worries Amber, “But not exactly.”
“Close? I was joking. Anything that’s close to drug smuggling is not something I would be interested in.”
“Close only in that it will be fun and make you a lot of money.”
“If it’s so fun and worth so much then why aren’t one of you doing it?”
“It’s a nursing job,” Jamal says, clearly disappointed.
“And believe me, I would do this in a heartbeat,” Jess adds.
“So why don’t you take it? I’m comfortable here with my work and my books and my crazy friends who barge in and make fun of my clothes.”
“The job’s two weeks with a millionaire in paradise. Somehow I don’t think Kyle will be too happy about that.”
Kyle is Jess’s new boyfriend. They’ve only been dating for a couple months and the guy acts like he owns her. Amber and Jamal agree he’s one of the hottest guys they’ve ever seen, but he’s also the biggest tool they’ve ever met. His IQ is that of a twelve year old seeing boobs for the first time and he hovers over Jess like a dog guarding a dropped slice of pizza. In short, Jess knows he needs to go, but she can’t seem to part with the fun side of the relationship just yet.
“Well this is exactly the excuse to dump that prick,” Amber says with an accusing eyebrow raise.
“That’s what I said,” Jamal agrees.
“He’s getting better.”
“No he’s not.”
“I know, but he’s so pretty. I didn’t even know men could have an eight-pack. They’re called six-packs for a reason…this guy has two more packs!”
Jamal seems to soften at the thought of Kyle shirtless and Amber only rolls her eyes.
“Look I can’t go,” Jess adds. “You can, and you need the money. Plus, they’ve already offered you the job.”
“What! I don’t even know what the job is.”
“A travel nurse. You simply go on vacation with the man, administer his nursing needs, pills, blood pressure, etcetera, and the whole trip is paid for. Not to mention, a fat paycheck at the end.”
“And how, might I ask, did I get this amazing job offer?”
The look of pride on their faces is clear as they both yell, “We applied for you!”
Jamal holds up his phone showing the application and Amber snatches it out of his hands. The technical information is all correct. Where she went to school, her current job at the hospital, and so on, but that’s not what caught her eye. What she is staring at is the picture attached. It’s not the drab image on her hospital badge, it’s a picture of her two years ago in Mexico wearing a bikini!
“Are you kidding me! You applied with an image of me in a bikini?”
“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” Jamal says. “That’s what I was always taught.”
“You’re applying to be a travel nurse. They should get to see what you’ll look like while on the job,” Jess adds.
“IF I were to take the job, I wouldn’t be wearing a bikini. That’s so unprofessional!”
“Well, they seem to disagree.”
“And girl, you look hot as fire in this picture.” Jamal’s sass and attitude reveal themselves once again.
“Oh my god! I’m holding a margarita.”
“That shows you’re fun, plus you have a book in the other hand, they counteract. Look, your resume shows your experience in nursing. The picture shows who you are. They want to see both,” Jess says, getting a bit more serious now.
“That is not who I am.”
Both Jess and Jamal stop, looking at Amber again in her Snuggy with her bird’s nest hair.
Jess reaches for the cocoa Amber set down earlier and takes a sip while plopping her feet up on the coffee table. “Well maybe not, but it’s who you should be.”