Page 12 of Love Not Qualified

Chad Bitt

Quit.

What?

He couldn’t be serious about this. I just got this job a month ago and if they weren’t going to accept me tomorrow, I had to find another way to make money and I wasn’t ready for that kind of headache.

That’s why I was going to quit only when I was sure I’d work somewhere else.

Chad Bitt

Would you rather lose the opportunity or quit your current shitty job?

I sighed.

He had a point, but I also couldn’t afford to be jobless. I had to pay for my mom’s health care and if I got only half of the salary this month, I wasn’t going to be able to afford it. I didn’t have much left for me anyway and having half of the money would mean starving the whole month.

To some extent, I was already doing that, and cutting off my meals more would guarantee my death.

I couldn’t just quit my job, so I was going to ask my boss for a free day and if she wouldn’t agree, maybe she would be okay with letting me come to work a few hours later.

And if she wasn’t… well… I was going to quit.

Before my shift ended, I searched on the internet ‘how many days can a human survive without food’.

Around thirty or fifty days.

I’ve survived more.

FOUR

HAELYN

When my mother and I moved from the underprivileged depths of Compton to Los Angeles, I spent the first two weeks looking for a job. We didn’t have any money besides the two hundred dollars she had hidden from my father, but that was enough for a month’s rent.

At first, I ran from one side of the city to the other to find a job, which allowed me to see most of Los Angeles in a short time. Unfortunately, that also cost me my last moments with her.

Now I was on an unknown side of Los Angeles, the GPS on my phone directing me to a street full of life despite the early hours. Each sidewalk was packed with locals and tourists, bumping each other to get on the other side as if the day was rushing to pass.

My eyes swept over the tall brick buildings that seemed to end far into the clouds when a honk startled me. I flinched, looking to my left where a driver was angrily waving his hand at me.

My lips offered him a shaky smile. “Sorry,” I murmured, even though he couldn’t hear me.

While I fought the wind to remove strands of hair from my face, I continued my path on the crosswalk until I reached my destination.

I placed a foot on the small staircase in front of the entry of the glass building, my gaze rising once again.

How many people work inside a place like this? There had to be at least five hundred to fill it. What was I saying? Even a thousand wouldn’t be enough for how high the top of the Graves Automobile facility was.

“I want it back in thirty minutes,” I heard a female voice say, and my head snapped to my right where a doorman in uniform took a car key from a beautiful lady. The man opened the door for her with a nod, then the woman walked inside with the air of a model.

My phone pinged in my purse and I fished it out, looking at the screen where two messages were displayed.

Merielle

Good luck! I love you.

Chad Bitt

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