Just My Type(5)

Jesus, I’m pathetic.

“You’ve been divorced for nine months, Ember,” Brooklyn states, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“Aww, you’re such a big girl now, being able to count to nine!” I reply sarcastically, groaning when I pull myself out of the couch cushions my body has become one with while I worked the last few hours.

“I’m just saying, you’ve been in Chicago for a year-and-a-half now. Three months being miserable in a new city, six months being miserable while you were separated, and another nine months being miserable after the divorce went through—”

“I can do the math, asshole,” I cut her off in annoyance.

“Great. Then you should know that three, plus six, plus nine equals it’s time to get off your fucking ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself and being miserable! What Brandon did to you was shitty. But you’re not dead. Even though you look like a corpse. Have you even left the house since you signed the divorce papers?”

“Of course I’ve left the house,” I huff with another eye roll. “Your nephew has to go to school. And play sports. And there’s this thing he does called eating, which requires me to grocery shop.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” Brooklyn sighs. “You are a fun, intelligent, thirty-two-year-old single woman, who is hot as shit when you actually shower, pull a brush through your hair more than once a week, and stop licking food off your clothes. You need to get out there and get back on the horse.”

Just the idea of what she’s saying sends a full-body shiver through me. I haven’t been single in almost ten years. I’ve heard plenty of stories about single mothers trying to date, and none of them make me feel warm and fuzzy. Sure, I’ve heard all these stories at two in the morning when I took a break from working and watched old episodes of Dateline and Unsolved Mysteries, but whatever. I love horses. I miss the horses from the farm. But there’s no way in hell I’m getting back on that horse anytime soon. I’m a small woman. I would fit perfectly in the trunk of a car. And even though I was a Girl Scout when I was younger, I’m not really all that great at untying knots that have been secured around my wrists and ankles.

“Why are you two talking about horses? What did I miss?” All of a sudden, my brother Clint’s face pops up on the screen behind Brooklyn, and I have to swallow past the lump in my throat when I watch him lean down and kiss the top of her head. As annoying as it is having an older brother whose sole mission in life is to either overprotect me to death or tease me, he’s still my family and I miss him. When our father retired from running the farm and handed everything over to my brother so our parents could move to Florida, it was just me and Clint taking care of everything together on our own for so many years. Next to Brooklyn, he’s my second best friend.

“Calm down, Farmer Joe. We’re not talking about actual horses,” Brooklyn teases him. “We’re talking about how it’s time your sister got laid.”

I can’t help but smile as I watch my brother grimace and fake a few dry heaves.

“Nope. Nope, nope, nope,” he states with a quick shake of his head. “I’d rather stick my hand in a cow’s ass.”

With that, he disappears from the screen and I can hear his boots thumping against the kitchen floor of my family’s farmhouse, where he, Brooklyn, and my nieces Mia and Grace live, as he walks out of the room.

“At least buy her dinner first before you surprise that cow with arm anal!” Brooklyn shouts after him before turning her face back to me. “So, I was doing some research on dating apps, and I think—”

“Oh no! You’re breaking up!” I cut her off, rubbing the front of my phone against my sweatshirt to give the effect of static and a bad connection. “Can’t… hear… you! Call… you… later!”

I hear her voice shout through the line, calling me a chicken shit, and I quickly end the call before she can say anything else. Tossing my phone onto the couch next to me, I grab my laptop from the coffee table where I set it when Brooklyn called, and pull it onto my lap.

I quickly log back into my account at Just My Type Transcription and see I’ve received a brand new transcription job in my inbox. When I first started working for JMT, I couldn’t be picky. I took every single job I could click on fast enough that showed up in the master que for all beginner transcribers. It’s basically a free-for-all. You could be online with hundreds of other transcribers at the same time, and you’re all trying to grab jobs as fast as possible when they show up in the que. The more jobs you take, the more money you can make, and the faster you can move up the food chain with the company.

Now that I’ve quickly worked my way up, I’m no longer considered a “beginner” who has to use the free-for-all pool of jobs. Now, the company gets requests specifically for me from either past clients of mine, or because new clients can see my stellar transcription rating on the site.

Under normal circumstances, I would listen to a few-minute clip of the job and decide whether or not I’d take it. Sometimes, the audio is really bad and impossible for anyone to transcribe. Sometimes, clients speak in thick accents I have a hard time understanding, and the job would take twice as long to complete, making me half the amount of money. Two weeks ago, I had to transcribe a three-hour meeting that took place in a coffee shop. Right next to the espresso machine. Have you ever tried to have a conversation next to an espresso machine? Try typing up every single word someone says while you’re listening to them talk next to said machine.