Hours later, Melody sat in a pew at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the cardboard box of her belongings clutched in her lap, the gold-plated Clio statuette sticking out of the top, mocking her. Yeah, Hot Stuff, not so spectacular now, huh? Whenever she needed a respite from the crazy business of day-to-day Manhattan, she came to St. Pat’s. Even when the cathedral was packed with tourists, as it was this afternoon, there was still a reverential hush that soothed her. After Michael fired her she hadn’t known what to do or where else to go, so she’d stumbled in and once seated, she hadn’t been able to make herself get up. She was going to be okay. She was a survivor. She would get a job with one of Tribalgate’s competitors and go head to head with her former employer and she would kick their asses. Temporary setback. Okay, so she was turning thirty at the end of the summer without having achieved her lifelong goal of becoming a creative director at a prestigious Madison Avenue ad agency, but oh well. She would make new goals. Yeah, uh-huh, sure. She’d been a high school cheerleader, but she wasn’t buying the rah-rah rallying cry going on inside her head. She had credentials, but it wasn’t as if ad executive jobs were low hanging fruit. She notched her chin up, but the pain in her heart was sharper than ever. Fired. She’d been fired. Never in her life had she been fired. She worked hard and achieved everything she ever dreamed of—valedictorian of Cupid High, Homecoming Queen, head cheerleader, and 4.0 GPA at NYU. Why then did she feel like a complete and total failure? Why? Because she had failed.
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