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

“Piper, get off the couch.”

Sofie stood over her with a baby balanced on one hip.

Piper opened one eye.

“Why?”

“Because I need to sit there.”

“There are chairs.”

“I need to feed the baby.”

“There are still chairs.”

“Piper.”

The tone did it.

Piper had been back home for a little over a month, ever since the final collapse of her relationship with Blaise, and Sofie's sympathy was beginning to encounter its natural limits.

Hungover, Piper looked at the remote in her hand.

Then at Sofie.

Then back at the remote.

Her brain required several additional seconds to load.

Sofie snatched it away.

“I cannot believe you got locked inside a bar.”

Piper groaned.

“On a Tuesday.”

“I said thanks for getting me.”

“You fell asleep in the bathroom!”

“I was resting.”

“The employees closed the building!”

“That part wasn't intentional.”

Sofie rolled her eyes.

As the mother of what increasingly resembled a small soccer team of children, Sofie had no interest in visiting downtown bars after midnight—particularly on weeknights and especially to retrieve her heartbroken older sister from a locked building.

But she'd gone.

Sofie always did.

She squeezed onto the edge of the couch.

“Look. You've got to move on.”

“I am moving on.”

“You're horizontal.”

“Emotionally.”

Sofie shifted the baby.

“Hawk was the one you couldn't make work. I get it.”

Piper stopped herself from side-eyeing her.

Sofie had been with exactly one man for essentially her entire adult life.

Benny worshipped Sofie.

Sofie worshipped Benny.

It was difficult to accept romantic advice from someone who had never had to crawl from the smoking wreckage of her own dating decisions.

Then Sofie added:

“It's not like you didn't know he was married.”

Piper's expression changed.

“That isn't exactly what happened.”

The truth about Hawk had come out in pieces.

Mostly because Blaise had made finding it his personal mission.

After Piper ran out of Sofie's wedding reception and left with Hawk, Blaise had apparently gone home and begun conducting opposition research.

Piper didn't know whether he'd been heartbroken, jealous or simply furious that she had embarrassed him after his surprise non-ring proposal.

Probably all three.

Whatever his motivation, Blaise dug.

And dug.

And dug.

Then he'd presented the results to Piper with the triumphant enthusiasm of a prosecutor

unveiling Exhibit A.

Hawk had been married twice since Piper first met him.

The first marriage had come together astonishingly fast after that first San Diego encounter.

There had been a child.

Later came a divorce.

Then wife number two.

Three more children.

The second marriage had also become intertwined with Hawk's professional life. His wife's wealthy, well-connected family had helped finance some of the opportunities that eventually grew into the construction-logistics company he ran now.

Hawk had worked hard.

That part was real.

But the story Piper had unconsciously written for him—the self-made former Marine who'd clawed his way from nothing into wealth and success—wasn't.

Real life was messier.

There had been investors.

Family money.

Connections.

Marriage.

Children.

Obligations.

Divorce.

A lot of years Piper hadn't been part of.

That had hurt more than she expected.

Not because Hawk owed her an accounting of every year they'd spent apart.

He didn't.

What hurt was finally understanding why he'd always seemed to become a slightly different person whenever he reappeared in her life.

She'd kept searching for the Hawk from San Diego.

The man who'd picked up a stranded girl at a convenience store and driven her home.

That Hawk had existed.

But only then.

Only there.

And Piper had existed differently too.

Blaise had enjoyed telling her all of this.

“You seriously didn't know?”

“No.”

“How could you not know?”

“I didn't Google him.”

“You didn't Google the guy you ran away from our engagement with?”

“It wasn't an engagement.”

“You said yes!”

“You didn't have a ring!”

“That isn't the point.”

“You hijacked my sister's wedding!”

“You left with another man!”

“And somehow that was still less embarrassing!”

That had ended the discussion.

It hadn't ended Blaise's attempts to salvage the relationship.

Somehow, after humiliating her with everything he'd found, he expected Piper to come home.

He seemed genuinely confused when she refused.

Piper had considered listing every reason she found him contemptible.

The unpaid bills.

The laziness.

The dismissiveness.

The way he'd spent years turning her concerns into jokes and then accused her of lacking a sense of humor when she stopped laughing.

Instead, she'd given him the simplest truth she had.

“I don't want to marry you.”

Blaise stared at her.

“And I don't want kids.”

“What?”

“I don't. I never have.”

“You'll change your mind.”

And there it was.

The perfect final sentence.

Piper picked up her suitcase.

“No. I won't.”

She would have lived in her car before going back.

Fortunately, Dena owned a couch.

Unfortunately, Dena's couch had now become Piper's natural habitat.

She was unemployed.

She was eating too much junk food.

She had recently been abandoned inside a drinking establishment.

And her food-delivery side hustle had become so unprofitable that Piper finally sat down with a calculator and discovered she was spending more on gasoline than she made delivering food.

She quit immediately.

There were limits.

Piper had called everyone she knew looking for work.

Old coworkers.

Former supervisors.

Local business owners.

Friends.

Friends of friends.

People she barely remembered but whose phone numbers had somehow survived fourteen years of contact transfers.

A handful of local businesses said they would love to hire her.

Unfortunately, most couldn't afford another full-time employee.

Some needed somebody for ten hours a week.

Others needed temporary help with a project.

Someone else needed a receptionist for three weeks while an employee recovered from surgery.

Another needed inventory help twice a year.

Piper couldn't assemble a living from pieces that small.

At dinner one evening, Benny mentioned the same problem existed in construction.

“We're always short somebody,” he said. “But not always the same somebody.”

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody gets hurt. Somebody needs fewer hours. Somebody else needs more. One crew needs a drywall guy for four days. Another needs two laborers for a week. But we're too small for anybody to keep extras sitting around.”

“So what happens?”

“People drive.”

“How far?”

“Sometimes hours.”

“That eats their pay.”

“Exactly.”

Piper had thought about that conversation more than once.

Now Sofie squeezed herself farther onto the couch.

“So,” she asked, “what are you doing today?”

“Nothing.”

“Anything productive?”

“No.”

“Any interviews?”

Piper sighed.

“I haven't had one callback all month.”

Sofie's expression softened.

“And things weren't going great with Blaise anyway,” Piper continued. “If they had been, I would've dumped him way sooner.”

One of Sofie's three-year-olds sat cross-legged on the floor watching television.

Without looking away from the screen, he announced:

“Blaise says you're a bitch.”

Sofie gasped.

“Hey!”

The child looked up.

“We do not say that word.”

“Blaise does.”

“I know. Blaise shouldn't.”

Piper barely reacted.

Apparently her reputation had now reached the preschool demographic.

Sofie pointed toward the hallway.

“Go find your brother.”

The child wandered away.

Piper sighed.

“What's crazy is I've done every job in this town.”

Sofie nodded.

“Basically.”

“Food service. Retail. Events. Office work. Manufacturing. Temp work. Delivery. Corporate.”

“You've made a career out of no-future jobs.”

Piper stared at her.

Sofie winced.

“That came out wrong.”

“A little.”

“I mean the jobs didn't have futures. You do.”

“Thank you for the clarification.”

“Think about it. Half those companies were already dying. The other jobs were seasonal or temporary. Then corporate burned you out.”

Piper listened.

“And the temp agencies around here want permanent placements or people who've specialized in one thing forever.”

“So?”

“So you're not that.”

“Again, excellent pep talk.”

“You're a jack-of-all-trades.”

Piper stopped.

Sofie shrugged.

“Seasonal, part-time, contract, weird hours, strange workplaces—you've done all of it. You don't fit anywhere cleanly.”

Piper pressed both palms against her temples.

Partly because Sofie was right.

Mostly because her hangover was trying to kill her.

There was a temp agency in town.

It was small.

Rigid.

Most of its placements fell into a handful of predictable categories.

Piper had used agencies before.

She knew the drill.

But her own financial needs had changed repeatedly throughout adulthood.

Sometimes she'd needed forty hours.

Sometimes twenty.

Sometimes weekend work.

Sometimes she needed a second job.

Sometimes she'd been in school.

Sometimes she could handle corporate life.

Sometimes corporate life made her fantasize about living in a forest and communicating exclusively with squirrels.

Workers changed.

Businesses changed.

Schedules changed.

Why did employment still assume everybody's life stayed the same?

Piper sat up.

Sofie noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn't a nothing face.”

Piper's headache suddenly seemed less important.

“What if there were a temp agency for people like me?”

Sofie frowned.

“Unemployed alcoholics?”

“Thank you.”

“Sorry.”

“People who don't want permanent placement.”

“Oh.”

“Short contracts. Seasonal stuff. Fill-in work. Gig labor. Businesses that need someone for three days instead of three years.”

Sofie stared.

Piper kept going.

“Benny literally said construction companies need that.”

“Yeah.”

“And Cheryl at the florist needs extra people around holidays.”

“Yeah.”

“And Dr. McCleary needed somebody for six weeks when his receptionist broke her ankle.”

Sofie nodded slowly.

Piper sat completely upright now.

“And I know all these people.”

There it was.

The thing she'd spent her entire adult life believing was wrong with her résumé.

Too many jobs.

Too many industries.

Too many temporary positions.

Too much starting over.

Maybe it wasn't a weakness.

Maybe it was market research.

The idea did not immediately become a business.

First, it became paperwork.

A horrifying amount of paperwork.

Piper researched licensing.

Insurance.

Bonding.

Payroll.

Taxes.

Worker classification.

Contracts.

State requirements.

Then she discovered the price.

That temporarily ended the dream.

She didn't have startup capital.

She barely had regular capital.

Dena found her one evening at the kitchen table surrounded by forms.

“How much?”

Piper looked up.

“How much what?”

“How much do you need?”

“More than I have.”

“That wasn't my question.”

Piper told her.

Dena thought for a moment.

Then said:

“I'll co-sign.”

Piper laughed.

Dena didn't.

“Mom.”

“I mean it.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because if this goes under, you're responsible.”

“I understand what co-signing means.”

“You're supposed to tell me this is another bad idea.”

“I've seen your bad ideas.”

Piper frowned.

“Thank you.”

“This isn't one of them.”

That steadied her.

A few days later, Piper sat across from the manager of their local bank.

He knew Dena.

He knew Benny.

He vaguely knew Piper, mostly from having seen her in approximately twelve different uniforms over the years.

Piper laid everything out.

Her work history.

Her contacts.

The gaps she kept seeing.

Small businesses that needed temporary workers but couldn't justify permanent employees.

Workers who needed flexibility without sacrificing half their wages commuting elsewhere.

Her own spectacularly inconsistent résumé.

For once, she didn't apologize for it.

She used it as evidence.

The loan wasn't huge.

It didn't need to be.

Enough for insurance.

Bonding.

Licensing.

Basic equipment.

A tiny office.

The manager approved it with Dena as co-signer.

When they stepped outside, Piper stood on the sidewalk staring at the paperwork.

Dena nudged her.

“You okay?”

“Terrified.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Means you understand what you just did.”

Piper laughed.

For years, she'd imagined success arriving through somebody else.

Her father's money.

Lindo's apartment.

Hawk's car.

A corporate employer.

Blaise's promises.

This wasn't that.

It wasn't Hawk's money.

It wasn't Blaise's.

It wasn't her father's.

Her mother hadn't handed her a business.

Dena had simply looked at Piper's idea and agreed to share some of the risk.

That felt different.

Someone believed Piper could build something.

More importantly, Piper believed it too.

The office was barely an office.

Technically, it was a converted storage room behind a chiropractor's practice.

Dena knew the owner.

That was how Piper got the rent cheap.

There were two desks.

Neither matched.

One wobbled if anyone leaned on it.

The other smelled faintly of cigarettes, old paperwork and Aqua Net.

Piper suspected it had last been fashionable during the first Bush administration.

There was one filing cabinet.

A printer.

Two office chairs.

One window approximately the size of a frozen dinner.

Piper loved it.

Sofie stood in the doorway holding a box of office supplies.

Piper taped a handwritten sign to the door.

Sofie read it.

DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB STAFFING

Underneath, in smaller letters:

TEMPORARY WORK SOLUTIONS FOR GIG LABORERS & LOCAL BUSINESSES

Sofie stared.

“You're sure about the name?”

“Absolutely.”

“It sounds like you're telling people not to use your company.”

“It's memorable.”

“It sounds sarcastic.”

“Also memorable.”

Sofie set down the box.

“What happens when you can afford a real sign?”

“I'll have them put the sarcasm in professional lettering.”

Piper adjusted one of the chairs.

It immediately rolled sideways.

She caught herself on the desk.

The desk wobbled.

The printer woke up for no apparent reason and began making noises.

Sofie looked around.

“This is your empire?”

Piper straightened.

“Headquarters.”

“It's behind a chiropractor.”

“Strategic health-care adjacency.”

“It smells weird.”

“Legacy ambiance.”

“You have zero employees.”

“Low overhead.”

Sofie laughed.

Then she hugged her.

Piper looked around after she left.

Five years ago, she would have thought success looked different.

A corporate office.

A high salary.

A husband.

Maybe Hawk.

Especially Hawk.

She'd seen him once since the wedding.

Just once.

They'd gotten coffee.

No dramatic declarations.

No running away together.

Just two adults finally talking about the years when they hadn't known how.

Hawk told her about his marriages.

His children.

His drinking.

The business.

The mistakes he'd made building it.

He didn't pretend his success had happened alone. He admitted he'd had help, connections, and opportunities Piper never had.

He also told her he'd stopped drinking.

He was rebuilding relationships with his children.

He'd gone to counseling.

He was trying, finally, to become someone he could live with.

Piper believed him.

That was almost the hardest part.

Because sitting across from him sober, settled, and finally comfortable in his own skin, she caught a glimpse of the man she'd always believed he could become.

Hawk was the one who got away.

She knew that now.

Maybe she always would.

But getting away wasn't necessarily a tragedy.

Sometimes two people could love each other and still meet at all the wrong times.

When Piper had needed him, Hawk had been lost.

When Hawk finally found his footing, Piper had spent years learning to stand on her own.

And now his life wasn't simple.

He had children.

Responsibilities.

A business.

History.

An ex-wife with financial ties to that business.

A whole complicated world Piper couldn't simply step into because the chemistry between them had survived.

Piper had her own complicated world too.

They hadn't kissed when they said goodbye.

They didn't make promises.

Hawk hugged her.

She hugged him back.

And for once, neither tried to turn affection into a plan.

Maybe somewhere in another version of their lives, they had gotten the timing right.

Piper hoped those two idiots appreciated it.

In this version, she was okay.

More than okay.

She had loved Hawk.

Part of her probably always would.

But she wasn't waiting for him.

And she definitely wasn't going back to Blaise.

That door wasn't merely closed.

It had been locked, boarded over, and rezoned.

Piper picked up a marker.

Underneath the company name, she added one final line:

DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB STAFFING TEMPORARY WORK SOLUTIONS FOR GIG LABORERS & LOCAL BUSINESSES BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED SOMETHING THAT WORKS FOR NOW.

She stepped backward.

The sign was crooked.

Piper considered fixing it.

Then decided she'd earned lunch.

The sign could wait.

For the first time in a long time, her life didn't feel like something that needed to be rescued.

It felt unfinished.

And Piper was finally beginning to understand the difference.