Terrible Advice From a Career Temp- Chapter Nine: Become a Professional Solutionist

“Piper, get off the couch,” Sofie said, her voice sharp with irritation as she shifted her youngest child higher on her hip. Piper had been back home for a little over a month now, ever since her latest breakup, and Sofie was running out of patience. She needed a place to sit so she could feed the baby, and Piper was sprawled across the cushions like she had every intention of dying there. Hungover, Piper blinked up at her sister, then down at the remote in her hand, her brain taking a few extra seconds to catch up. Before she could respond, Sofie smacked the remote out of her grasp.

“I can’t believe you were locked in—locked in—of a bar,” Sofie said, disgusted. “On a Tuesday.” Piper groaned. “Thanks for getting me.” Sofie rolled her eyes. As the mother of what felt like a small soccer team of school-aged children, she had zero interest in the downtown bar scene after dark—especially not to retrieve her heartbroken older sister on a weeknight. Still, she’d gone. She always did.

“Look,” Sofie said, finally lowering herself onto the edge of the couch, “you’ve gotta move on. Hawk was the one you couldn’t make work. I get that.” Piper had to stop herself from side-eyeing her. Sofie had been with exactly one man her entire adult life. Benny worshipped her, and she worshipped him right back. It was hard to take relationship advice from someone who’d never had to crawl out of the wreckage.

“It’s not like you didn’t know he was married,” Sofie added casually.

The words stung. Piper hadn’t known—not really. She hadn’t known Hawk had been married twice since their first trip together in San Diego all those years ago. That omission had been the searing, even if she hadn’t understood it at the time. It explained why she’d never quite been able to connect with him afterward, no matter how much she’d tried to convince herself it was fine.

It had been uglier than fine when Brody laid it all out for her. After Piper ran from him at Sofie’s wedding, Brody had taken it upon himself to do a deep dive into Hawk’s life—her so-called romantic revival. Hawk had married his first wife barely a month after sleeping with Piper. They’d had one child together. Then he’d left her for wife number two, with whom he’d had three more children. It was the second wife’s family—wealthy, connected, and dominating—that had bankrolled Hawk’s business ventures. Hawk wasn’t self-made. Not even close. He was never in a position to leave his wife, unless he wanted to be as poor as Piper was, if not worse off altogether.

Brody had delighted in telling her every detail, calling her an idiot for not knowing. The truth was that Piper never bothered to care. She never felt like Hawk was the same person she had that spark with. Now she knew why. What surprised Piper most was that, after all that, Brody still tried to keep the relationship going, as if humiliating her had somehow earned him loyalty. She would’ve lived in her car before groveling back to him. She’d planned to list every reason she found him contemptible, but instead she told him something simpler and truer: that she never wanted to marry or have children. That part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

Since then, she’d been sleeping on her mother’s couch, unemployed, and eating too much junk food. She’d quit her food-delivery side hustle after realizing she was spending more on gas than she was making in tips. Piper had hit up every person she could network with, including the small local business owners. Of them, a handful of business owners wanted to put her on but had too few staff to take on bigger projects, and as much as she wanted to help, she was still only one person. One night at dinner, Benny had chimed in that it was the same problem in the construction world. When someone was injured, had to cut back their hours, or needed more hours, it was difficult to find that specific type of work in such a small region. Many had to leave town, which cut into their take-home pay too much to be worth it.

Sofie squeezed in beside her. “So,” she asked, “what are you doing today?” Piper shrugged. “Nothing. I haven’t had a single interview or callback all month. And honestly, things weren’t going great with Brody either, or I would’ve dumped him way sooner.” Sofie’s three-year-old, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, looked up and announced, “Brody says you’re a bitch.” Sofie gasped and shushed him immediately.

Piper barely flinched. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. Apparently, even the toddlers were repeating it now.

“What’s crazy,” Piper said, “is that I’ve done every job in this town. Every single one.”

Sofie nodded. “You’ve made a career out of no-future jobs.” She paused, then softened. “I mean—you have a future. It’s just that those companies were already dying, or the jobs were never meant to last. And now all the temp agencies only want permanent placements or people who’ve mastered one thing. You’re a jack of all trades.” She shrugged. “Seasonal, part-time, contract—you’ve got that down. You just don’t fit anywhere cleanly.”

Piper pressed her palms into her temples, trying to calm the pounding behind her eyes. Sofie was right. There was a temp agency in town, but it was rigid and small, offering the same narrow placements to very niche situations. Piper’s financial needs changed with her life—burned out when she went corporate, barely scraping by when she gigged. There had to be something in between.

That was when the idea finally settled. Her own temp agency. Short-term placements. Flexible schedules. Contracts that actually reflected how people lived now. Piper already had the contacts. She understood both sides—the workers who needed breathing room and the businesses that needed help without commitment.

The problem was money. State regulations required bonding, insurance, and startup capital, which she didn’t have. Not on her own. But her mother did something Piper hadn’t expected. She co-signed. The local bank manager knew their family. He listened as Piper laid out her plan—her work history, her contacts, her stopping points, and why this time was different. It wasn’t a big loan. Just enough to cover licensing, insurance, and a bare-bones office.

It wasn’t Hawk’s, Brody's, or her dad's money. It wasn’t anyone rescuing her.

It was a risk her mother believed was worth taking.

And for the first time in weeks, Piper felt like she was standing on her own feet again.

The office was barely an office. Two mismatched desks sat at crooked angles in a converted storage room behind a chiropractor’s practice that Dena had known of. One desk wobbled if you leaned too hard on it. The other smelled faintly of cigarettes from the 90s and Aquanet. Piper taped a handwritten sign to the door that read:

Don't Quit Your Day Job Staffing– TEMPORARY Work Solutions for Gig Laborers

Sofie squinted at it. “You sure about the name?”

“It’s aspirational,” Piper said, adjusting the crooked chair. “Like me.”