The Two Week Arrangement (Penthouse Affair, #1) novel Chapter 3

Presley

You’re only as small as your dreams.

That’s what my mother said to me in the hours before cancer took her. That sentiment is the cornerstone I’ve based my life on ever since. I don’t do small. It’s not in my vocabulary. I dream big or not at all. I take risks, fight for what I want, and push myself to live life to the fullest.

It’s the only way I know how to honor my mother’s words. I also make sure my younger brother does the same. He’s just finished his first year at one of the country’s most prestigious ballet academies.

My mother would be proud of us both. My father, not so much. She would hate the man he’s become.

He never calls, and when we do talk, he speaks mostly in grunts and monosyllables. He’s about as supportive as an overcooked noodle. He threatened to back out of paying for my brother’s schooling if he majored in dance, and then made good on that promise when Michael came out as gay.

But I swore to Michael that we don’t need him, our father who I now view as little more than a sperm donor. Sure, I’ll have to work a little harder, dream a little bigger, to take care of both my brother and myself, but it’s nothing I can’t do.

Which leads me to today.

“Today’s the day, huh?” my best friend and roommate, Bianca, asks from her perch on the couch.

I gulp down one last sip of my now cold coffee and grimace as I swallow. “Yup. Today’s the day.”

“You’re not nervous, are you?” She levels me with a deadpan stare. “You’re the baddest bitch I know, Presley.”

I chuckle and roll my eyes. Bianca is good for my ego. Every time I brought home a paper with an A, every report card that boasted a perfect 4.0 grade point average, every scholarship I was awarded and internship I succeeded at, Bianca would only give me a knowing stare. It was her equivalent of saying see, I told you so.

But this internship is different. She knows that as well as I do. Rather than taking the safety net of a steady job when we graduated last month, I held out hope that I would win one of the coveted spots at Aspen Hotels.

And now that I have, the butterflies inside my stomach are kicking around like crazed ninjas.

At my pause, she rises and grips my shoulders, giving them a comforting squeeze. “Tell me you’re not worried.”

“About the internship? No.”

But I’m lying. I am a teensy bit worried. It’s only human, right? This is the biggest opportunity I’ve ever had, and I don’t want to blow it. And there’s the not-so-little issue of money. The internship is unpaid.