Just Say Yes Read Free

every day she rode back down with her hope cowering in a corner like an agoraphobic at a One Direction concert.
    The unfulfilling job, her nonexistent love life, and yesterday’s conversation with her best friends made her realize that she was a naive idiot stuck in the rut of playing it safe and made her want to claw out of her own skin.
Like a werewolf. Werewolves are dangerous. Well, except for the ones in
Twilight. Quinn shook her head, chastising her inner child for proving her own point. She really
was
lame. What twenty-seven-year-old career woman read
Twilight
? A boring, safe, immature one, that’s who.
    Quinn clutched her notebook to her chest as she bit her thumbnail when Rita Davenport, editor in chief of
Estelle
, stormed in. “So, what have you got for me?” she demanded. No “Hey, how ya doing?” No idle chitchat, no warm looks or pleasant body language. Rita was all firm lines and cantankerous words.
    Everyone in the room snuck glances at one another. Quinn was surprised she was actually allowed in these meetings, which her coworkers had dubbed the Dance with the Devil because that’s exactly what they were. The writers did their best to make mundane stories seem interesting to Rita, hoping she wouldn’t flay them alive. Quinn rarely said a word since she was firmly cemented in no-man’s-land, also known as retractions and clarifications. She had inherited the distinct pleasure of addressing the feedback from readers, and the occasional lawyer threat, about what their magazine had screwed up in the previous month’s issue. She had also written a few small stories for their Web site, mostly local human-interest pieces that no one read but made the magazine seem like it gave a shit about people.
    Estelle
magazine’s core demographic was women in the twenty to forty-five age bracket. And judging by the things that made it into the monthly publication, most women in that age range were vain, sex-crazed corporate climbers who would drain the blood from virgins and inject it with a syringe found in a crack den if they thought it would take a wrinkle off their foreheads. Quinn couldn’t relate, and usually she was proud of that fact. But after obsessing about her date and why she always ended up with dorky mama’s boys, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she was going about life all wrong. Maybe one had to be a little ruthless, a tad careless, and somewhat spontaneous in order to be happy. Because if there was one thing Quinn was sure of, it was that she wasn’t happy.
    â€œReally? Are you all suddenly mute? Let’s go. Give me
something
.”
    Claire, a cute blond woman who had worked for the magazine for going on five years—a near record—cleared her throat. “I was thinking about doing a piece on the new female district attorney who’s doing really great things to clean up the streets of D.C.”
    Rita looked at her like Claire had suggested an article on athlete’s foot. “Boring. Next.”
    Tyler was next to speak up. He was as awesome as he was gay, and out of everyone in the room, he was Quinn’s favorite. “What about a how-to on the different ways to tie scarves?”
    Rita turned down the corner of her upper lip in disgust. “This is for the September issue, Tyler. I doubt people are going to be into reading about scarves while they swelter in the oppressive D.C. heat. Can anyone make sense today?”
    Lucy, a twentysomething with blue hair, was the next to speak. “How about a makeup comparison? We can ask a few of our interns to try out different products and rate them.”
    â€œWe do that every summer. It’s unoriginal and safe. I want the September issue to be . . . edgier. More dynamic. Think, people.”
    The word “edgier” made Quinn retreat back into her brain. She could be edgy if she wanted to be. As Rita continued to verbally condemn people’s ideas with words