BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY

Three steps inside the cluttered room stacked with old magazines, ours and our competitors’, and my breakfast—coffee with two sugars, and strawberry jam on whole-wheat toast—turned into a stone inside my stomach.Without even looking up from the folder in her hand, Brenda signaled to the chair across hers.“Vicki, sit down.”I sat silently, a thousand things leaping to my tongue: I can do better; I can do more; let me do more, two articles a week rather than one. Even: I will work for free until we can find our feet.I couldn’t afford to work for free. I had to pay my rent, I was still paying off my college loan, and I had a mother I loved with a health condition and no insurance. But I also loved my job. I didn’t want to be let go. I had never wanted to be anything else other than what I was now, at this moment, as my fate rested in her hands.So it was with dread and an impending sense of loss that I sat there and waited for Brenda to finally lower that folder and look at me. And I

The top floor was littered with reporters at their desks. The floors were wood, the editorial offices peppered with bright colors and satin cushions, always full of the buzz of phones and people chattering. Instead of the business suits I imagined wearing to work, I wrote in an oversize, trendy T-shirt-with-an-attitude and a pair of socks that had the words I Believed on the toes. It was a crazy magazine, as crazy as some of the stories and columns we put out—and I loved it.But bloggers were putting us out of work, and our circulation grew tinier by the second. Edge Magazines needed something cutting-edge, and I was desperate to prove to my boss that I could bring it to her.“Chloe!” I called my roommate when I strolled into our two-bedroom flat.“We’re over here!” I heard Chloe call.She was in her bedroom, with Anne. They were my best friends. Anne was a redhead, freckled, pink, and sweet, unlike the dark, sultry Chloe.We were like Neapolitan ice cream. In height, Chloe and I were

As if reading my mind, Chloe tried to pep me up. “Come on, clothes don’t make the girl. Hey, at least you’re not naked.”I had tried to twist my hair this way and that, and no, my appearance hardly improved. I was passionately hating on the entire situation while riding in the back of the cab, sitting sideways because I suspected that, when Chloe washed her hands after me, she got some paint on my back. Just seconds ago I felt it sticking to the cab vinyl, and now I was hating on this situation so bad, my stomach hurt. I asked the driver to drop the passenger mirror, and I stared at my face.“Ohmigod,” I said.And there I was. My long blonde hair twisted into messy pigtails, a slash of paint on the side of my neck, stark like blood against my pale skin. “Ohmigod,” I moaned.This was the woman the renowned James Godfrey is going to see?And, if I thought in the back of the cab that I really loathed this situation, I had no idea how much more I would hate it when I got to the Tech10 cor