Desire Uncaged: An MMA Romance by Ina Anielka Page B

the rest of her career, was the last straw. Sara had come to the realization that she either took the dive to being a writer now, or she would spend the rest of her life wondering what could have been. She had ample savings and could make it a year living off of what she had tucked away. She began freelancing over the internet, taking whatever writing work she could get. This mostly meant generating content for websites. Writing meaningless pieces so a blog to get a higher result on a search engine. But she could add “Professional Writer” to her resume. And that counted for more than the barely-more-than-minimum-wage she was earning by doing it. In the meantime, she was also looking for a real, full time job, with a more reliable salary. But in a mid-sized Midwestern city, writing jobs were tough to come by.
    Sara had started to feel like a shut-in. She only left the house minimally, just to do laundry or buy groceries. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to spend money she didn’t have to, but in truth, Sara had been lethargic since seeing Ethan’s fight. Despite telling the mirror again and again that she didn’t care about him, she still found herself emotionally invested in the fight. And in his wellbeing.
    Sara stood up from the computer and poured herself a glass of water. I need to focus , she thought to herself. She had found concentrating on her writing to be getting harder and harder as the day wore on. Now that it was 7:00pm and the sun had set, her mind wanted to wander. But someone was paying decent money for a short review of their product, and they wanted it in the next day. Sara sighed and sat back down in front of the computer.
    She had barely gotten a sentence complete when her phone buzzed. She picked it up. It was an alert from her social media app. someone had friend-requested her. Given that she hadn’t interacted with much of anyone in the past several days, Sara was curious. The boredom too, had taken its toll on her and she opened up her social media page. The friend request was from someone familiar: Joe, Ethan’s friend and roommate. Sara clicked “Yes”.
    She also noticed that along with the friend request was a message. It simply read, “We need to talk.”
    Sara saw he was online. She accepted that this piece wasn’t going to get done until the morning. She opened a chat box, and sent Joe a message.
    “Hey Joe. What’s up?” She tried to keep her tone pleasant, but for some reason, Sara’s chest felt as if it were tightening.
    He responded quickly, “Not much. Where did you disappear to? Ethan told me you quit?”
    She had given the same line when her parents and supervisor asked her the same question. She threw it out once again, “I wanted to do something different. Chase the dream of writing full time.”
    “Really? A writer? So what do you write?”
    “ Hahaha. Nothing cool. Mostly stuff for websites.”
    “Well, I’m glad you’re doing well. ” A pause, and then, “So, I need to ask you something.”
    Sara’s stomach felt light. She had been ignoring, suppressing her feelings ever since running from Ethan. Now she would be stuck confronting them. She debated just closing the chat box, unplugging the internet. But she couldn’t just spend the rest of her life running from anything that felt uncomfortable or bad.
    Sara’s fingers clicked across the keyboard, “Sure.” She typed, “What’s up?”
    “I gotta ask. What went down between you and Ethan?”
    Sara paused. She stared at the screen.
    “It just wasn’t working out.”
    She hit send. She could sense Joe thinking on the other end. Weighing her response. It’s too late for all this drama, Sara thought to herself in frustration.
    “I know there is more to it than that. C’mon. Ethan deserves to know.”
    Fuck it . Sara thought. The keyboard clicked under her fingers.
    “His ‘other’ girlfriend sent me pics of them together. I’m not gonna be someone’s side girl.”
    Joe answered