3 Chapter 3

Hayden and I had met in kindergarten, Mrs. Hefler's class. I was the crazy kid doing whatever came to mind, and Hayden had a more reserved personality. We'd sat together, and from the moment she told me her name, I decided she would be my best friend. And so it began.

Throughout elementary school, junior high, and high school, we were inseparable. Others came and went from our circle, but through it all, the two of us had remained together. Somehow, we complemented each other, but I couldn't say how it worked then or now. It just did.

When we left high school, we'd mistakenly gone to separate colleges. We'd survived one year before I transferred to UGA to reunite with my best friend. But Hayden had changed in that year, a lot. She had blossomed without me around, socially and physically.

Suddenly, on an enormous campus, Hayden was the "it" thing, and everyone knew her name. It appeared she'd grown four or five inches, but that couldn't have been possible. Her long blond hair had always been beautiful but somehow seemed shinier and more luxurious than ever before. And her boobs...damn, she had a rocking fucking body by the time we started our sophomore year.

I was nothing to turn your nose up at, but while I had a sweeter look, my best friend had turned into a bombshell. I, too, was tall and well proportioned, but I had cut my long hair into a short bob that curled along my chin. I had hit a relatively quiet stage in my life, preferring books to socializing. Couple that with now being on a new campus in a new state, and instead of our being the partners in crime we'd always been, I was now her shadow from back home.

Junior year was the complete opposite. Sometime over the summer between second and third year, I took on a quirky, creative flair, and my carefree attitude had rooted itself firmly in my psyche. My hair had grown out some, and I had dyed my blond locks black; my curves were more defined; and I went from the quiet girl who followed Hayden around to having my own group of friends. My new click was heavily artistic, whereas Hayden's was heavily athletic. Needless to say, our crowds never merged, but it didn't keep us from mingling and staying close.

Senior year, Hayden and I had an apartment off campus, bringing us full circle. Having had time to spread our wings by the end of our fourth year, we had both come into our own, settled into who we still were today, and we were once again, inseparable. That was...until graduation.

Hayden had taken a great job back home as a junior account executive with the largest advertising company in the Southeast, and I went to graduate school in New York. My passion for the arts had fueled my decision to continue my education with no real direction of what I wanted to be when I grew up. All I knew was I loved literature of any genre and any period. Words on a page made my heart soar. And, they still did. There was something magical about the ability to rearrange the same twenty-six letters to create thousands of words on hundreds of pages to entertain and enlighten readers. It was like being a magician, using the English language as a medium.

At the end of my two-year stint, I was more lost than the day I had started. I loved graduate school life or maybe the diversity it offered. The competitive nature of my fellow students pushed me to be better than I was, and I had zero desire to leave. If the option to be a professional student had existed, I would have found a way to capitalize on it. Alas, that fantasy would never come to fruition, so I wrapped up my education, left New York, and went home to South Carolina.

Twenty-five years old, with a useless master's degree-I didn't want to teach-I had moved in with Hayden and taken the first job offered to me. It covered the bills, but damn, it stifled my spirit and crushed my creativity.

Hayden had missed out on the years that had cultivated my imagination. Those twenty-four months at Sarah Lawrence changed everything about who I was and who I became. Or maybe they simply released the person who'd been trying to escape the confines of a societal norm. There, I had been free to be me, whoever that might have been, without condemnation, amongst the brilliantly minded, ingenious, innovators who would become my generation's liberal thinkers. We had still talked all the time, but when I came home, I was different at the core.

The monotony of a mundane job did nothing for me, and after a couple years of punching a clock and working for the man, I couldn't do it anymore.

I had misled Hayden a tad. I hadn't made the decision that morning. I'd been thinking about it since the day I started. I'd wasted too much time.

Five years.

Five long years I could never get back, doing the eight-to-five grind. So maybe outwardly it seemed like a drastic decision, ill-thought-out, but in reality, it had been coming for one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-six days and over ten thousand work hours. The funny thing was, my boss said he'd been waiting on me to leave for four and a half of the five years I had served.

That's right, served.

Because it was a sentence.

Creative minds weren't meant for cubicles. Look at the pioneering companies in the world: Apple, Google, Microsoft-you won't find fabric-covered, four-foot-high portable walls. There was light and space and dogs-things creative people needed to thrive.

So today, I had harnessed my own office and therefore my employment. I had the freedom to work when and where I wanted and in whatever capacity I saw fit. I might achieve failure of epic proportions, but it would be on my terms. No matter what else happened in life, I'd be able to say I had chased my dreams. I hadn't woken up this morning and decided to be a writer.

It's who I was.

It always had been.

Hayden just didn't know that side of me.

Yet.