The End of The World
Ivy Ferris collapsed onto the bus’s badly upholstered seat, her feet aching in the high-arched heels she wore for her job as an administrative assistant at Saint’s Marketing, a small, niche ad agency. Laying her handbag next to her, she shrugged out of the fitted jacket before undoing the first few buttons on the sleeveless shirt beneath.
The day had been hell. They’d had five fussy clients in and out of the office all day and, to top it all off, Harlan St. James, president of the company was out sick so she’d been forced to play apologetic hostess all day.
She was bone-tired and her face hurt from smiling. All she wanted was to go home.
Home.
It was still such a strange idea to her.
Her mother had been a professor of evolutionary psychology, who—no matter how hard she tried—just couldn’t quite make tenure. So they’d constantly been moving about from college to college, trying to make her positions stick.
Growing up in temporary, month-to-month apartments—and then finally her own college dorm rooms followed by her own cheap efficiency apartment—Ivy had never really had a real home until she’d moved into Marcus Ramirez’s house.