And money was always tight, the budget always stretched thin. Tessa made a good salary but Peter only got paid when one of his news stories actually sold. Not to mention the fact that the cost of living in San Francisco was exorbitant, the rent on their tiny, cramped apartment more than twice what they’d been paying for a much larger place in Tucson.
As Tessa entered the building that housed the corporate offices for the Gregson Hotel Group’s American headquarters, she hoped that Peter would arrive home with good news about his job. When they had moved to San Francisco two years ago, it had been for Peter’s new job as a freelance reporter for an international news agency based in the city. His assigned territory was Asia, requiring him to make frequent and lengthy trips to such places as Vietnam, Malaysia, China, and Thailand. He was hoping to find a better position that didn’t require nearly as much travel in addition to offering a regular salary, and had recently begun sending out resumes and doing some networking among the contacts he’d developed.
The past couple of years had been hard on Tessa, left alone and lonely for such frequent periods of time. Peter was all she had – he wasn’t just her husband but her best friend, her family, her everything. And when he was away for weeks at a time she struggled constantly with her fears, her loneliness, her sadness. The fear that she would descend into darkness like her mother had done for so many years plagued her often, and she was determined that she wouldn’t suffer the same fate. But it was hard to be alone, and she had to wage a constant battle with her emotions to keep positive and happy, to stay busy and not dwell on her sadness.
Tessa liked her job, finding the work both challenging and rewarding, though of course she would have preferred being a PA for one of the executives. Not only was the salary considerably higher but the position carried more prestige and responsibility, with some of the PA’s even traveling with their managers on occasion. But she also knew she would need a college degree before she could even think of applying for a job like that, and going back to school at this time just wasn’t in the cards. Her super-tight budget would never allow for college tuition and books. And, ironically, even though she and Peter lived in a cramped apartment in a questionable neighborhood; couldn’t afford to own a car; and ate a lot of cereal, ramen noodles, and peanut butter sandwiches to stretch their dollars, they made too much money for her to qualify for most grants or scholarships. It was a cruel sort of Catch-22.
As Tessa put away her jacket and purse and booted up her computer, she thought it was likely all for the best that she couldn’t afford to go to college. She’d admittedly never been a brain or the best student, getting by with mostly B’s and C’s during high school. Of course, there had been some real extenuating circumstances behind that – a mentally ill mother, moving around and changing schools multiple times, always teetering on the edge of poverty.
At least she’d done very well with the computer and business classes she had taken at community college back in Tucson. The certificate she’d earned from their Office Technology program had enabled her to get a job at the Gregson Resort in Tucson, and the eventual transfer to the American headquarters here two years ago.
But this would likely be as far as she could reasonably expect to advance in the company without that college degree, so Tessa had made up her mind some time ago to simply do the very best job she possibly could. She took a lot of pride in her work, and worked very hard to be an exemplary employee. She was never late, never left early, never took more than her allotted time for lunch. She’d dragged herself into the office on more than one occasion with a cold or the flu, doggedly refusing to call in sick. And unlike most of her co-workers, she didn’t waste time during the work day gossiping, checking her personal email, sending texts or making phone calls. She was well aware that everyone who worked on the Management Support Team were watched like a hawk by Andrew Doherty, the Managing Director’s sharp-tongued, eagle-eyed PA.
In the time she’d worked here, Tessa couldn’t recall even one occasion when Andrew had so much as cracked a smile. He was all business all the time, and he didn’t miss even a single detail. Tessa had seen him chastise her co-workers for all manner of minor errors or oversights, everything from a misspelled word on a contract to ordering the wrong sandwich for a lunch meeting to an executive’s dissatisfaction with the flight that had been booked for a recent business trip. Andrew never raised his voice or used bad language or issued threats, but it was more than obvious by his icy, formal demeanor when he was displeased. So Tessa worked very, very hard to make certain she wasn’t on the receiving end of one of his famously scathing dressing-downs.