Ice To Meet You

SHI(f)T

"Please let this not be my last day here. I will give up being mean to Hannah, call my mom more often and even share my chocolates with Daniel. Please ride your unicorn, sprinkle some magic glitter and do something with your magic wand to make it all okay. Please make everything okay. Please..."

I beg, barter, cajole and even bribe a god I am not sure I entirely believe in. If he or she is listening to me, this is the moment to prove your existence to me. This is your moment of truth, do you hear me, god?

I force my legs to keep functioning and for my head to stop punishing me for binge drinking last night. I have learned my lesson. 

I will not, I repeat for clarity purposes, I will not ever in my life drink on a Sunday night.

Linda stops in front of the glass door and opens it, blowing a whiff of cold air directly on my face. She is fast, very fast. 

"Everybody in New York is fast and in a rush, pull yourself together!" inner voice sternly instructs me, although her yawning downplays the impact she was going for. Even she is sleepy and in need of espresso. 

I take a deep breath in. I know my shirt is oversized but I can't help but suck in my breath to look less fat as I enter the room.

"Amanda this is Mia, the applicant we spoke about," Linda says, and I can feel three sets of eyes staring right at me. The judgment is palpable. Jeez, at least try to be discreet about checking me out from head to toe. No one says anything to me. Should I say hello or wait for them to begin the pleasantries?  Extend my hand maybe?

"Please take a seat Mia and jump right in," the woman in a white suit with large black glasses instructs me. I think this is Amanda and she is in charge. 

"As you were saying Emily..." the woman who I think is Amanda continues and who the fuck is Emily? Nobody told me about her. 

"The smart condom can be a trend and drive the market crazy like the fit bit but do we really want to know if our sex life is longer or faster than our best friend's? Are we obsessed with competing against eachother and where is the line that tells us we've taken it too far?" The red-haired girl straightens her back and opens the black leather diary in front of her. Damn, she has her draft already written. 

"The condom can measure your sexual activity, the calories you've burnt, duration of sex,  and the velocity of your thrusts. We could do a feature on it, and I can contact the company to see if we can get them to sponsor the post and get a few quotes from the CEO." 

"Show me a draft before noon on Wednesday and get somebody from marketing to contact them for sponsorship. Charlotte what other stories are we working on?" The woman we are calling Amanda is authoritatively intimidating.

"We have 'Sex with an Ex' series that we are posting on Thursday as a throwback with multiple women and their stories. 'Textual chemistry may be the secret to sexual chemistry' should be done before lunch. After that, I am working on 'The real cost of birth control in Trump's era' and '5 reasons women love Peter Kavinsky, and it has nothing to do with how he looks.'"

"This is some real shit, what are you doing here Mia?" Inner voice asks me, and I honestly don't know. I clearly don't fit in here.

"I want to review the Peter Kavinsky article before we publish it," Amanda instructs without looking up from her laptop and typing frantically.

"Do you have any ideas that you would like to work on Mia?" Amanda asks me without looking at me, still typing. I wish that made her any less threatening or intimidating to me right now. 

Both Emily and Charlotte are looking at me with a look I don't understand. What am I missing here? I have this urgent need to pee that I ignore. My thigh won't stop shaking, and if I was a phone, I am pretty sure I would be on vibrate mode.

Amanda looks up from the laptop, her hands stop typing, and she fixes her laser gaze at me. Holy fuck, the need to pee is so much more urgent right now.

"In your cover letter, you said you wish we would cover more real topics that would make readers contemplate life. This is your moment to pitch me something that makes me contemplate life."

How do I tell her that drunk Mia pitched the cover letter and is full of shit?