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to this department, I’m just trying to learn how things work around here. In foods, the teams I managed never had celebrities to rely on, so we had to be really creative to get the press to pay any attention to our products.”
    I glanced at Kent, who slyly rolled his eyes. Then I looked back at her.
    “We’ll let you know how it went when we’re back in the office next week, okay, Mandy?” I knew I was being a bit short, maybe even a bit rude, but I just couldn’t deal with her, especially not then.
    “Okay, thanks, Waverly. That would be great.” She smiled again.
    Ugh.

    When I got home that night I went straight to my mailbox. I hadn’t checked it in a few days, so of course it was packed with a bunch of crap that wasn’t even for me. I still received a ridiculous amount of junk mail for my old roommate, Whitney, whose bedroom I’d turned into an office after she’d moved out to get married. I had no idea how to stop the deluge, and it drove me crazy. Once I even wrote deceased on the envelope of a credit card application addressed to her and put it in the mailbox on the corner. It didn’t help.
    I sat down on the couch and flipped through the monster stack of mail. Junk, bill, junk, Pottery Barn catalog, bill, Pottery Barn catalog, bill, more junk. Finally, there it was, the Nob Hill Gazette. I just had to see it for myself.
    I took a deep breath and slowly turned the pages one by one.
    And then I saw it, on page eleven, right above the horoscopes:
     
    Aaron Christopher Vaughn III and Stacy Elizabeth Long, both partners at Vaughn, Miller and Hyde, will marry at Grace Cathedral at 7 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. The ceremony will be followed by a black-tie reception at the Fairmont Hotel….
     
    Suddenly feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach, I leaned back into my couch and looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t believe it. Aaron was getting married. Married. Hitched. Casado. And he hadn’t even called to tell me. I knew a year was a long time, but part of me still felt like it had all happened yesterday.
    And while part of me had gotten over the pain, a bigger part of me hadn’t.
    Slowly I put the newspaper down on the couch. Then I put my head down on top of it and cried.

    Our flight to Atlanta the next morning left way too early for my taste, but luckily it wasn’t that crowded, so Kent and I each had our own row to stretch out in. It was my dream to have a client who would fly me in business class, but for now the only way I was sitting in business class was if I enrolled in one at the local community college.
    Shortly after we took off, I leaned my head against the window. Within minutes I fell into a deep sleep, only to be awakened moments later by a flight attendant with very big hair asking me if I wanted something to drink. I looked up at her, half asleep. “You had to wake me up to ask that? Couldn’t you just leave some water or something here on my tray?” I said. It’s not like they were actually going to serve me food .
    “But I need to know exactly what you want, sweetheart. We have a wide assortment of beverages on board.”
    “Okay, uh, I’ll have coffee, please,” I said. I will never understand people.
    After that I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I pulled out my laptop and booted it up. I ordered another cup of coffee and took a quick look at the row behind me. Kent was sound asleep.
    As I saw the screen flicker to life, my thoughts turned to Aaron and the new life he’d created. He’d obviously had no trouble jumping back into the dating pool, whereas I could barely keep my head above water. Flirting? Dating? Playing hard to get? I truly sucked at it all. One day I’d even started jotting notes on my life as a born-again single woman, because it all seemed so ridiculous.
    At first it was just a free-flowing hodge podge, but somehow it had morphed into something more: an idea for a line of greeting cards. Aaron’s pet name for me had always been “Honey,” and I