Trashley: Thirty

The Shark

My parents had invited Ashley and me to Florida for Christmas, but since I was in the midst of planning our Swiss-mas Christmas itinerary of a lifetime, I told my parents we could visit at the beginning of December instead. Ashley promised I’d have another thirty thousand dollar check coming from her company soon, in exchange for a handful of tweets, and I figured I’d spend at least half of that well-earned check on restaurants, shopping, trains, and planes. It was my first real vacation since Covid, and I wanted to do it right. I will never take luxurious vacations for granted ever again.

A few days before our Florida trip, Ashley said a sobriety app start-up called BuzzKill had hired her for remote work. I thought it was weird because Ashley didn’t drink, but she sure as hell got high as fuck. I wasn’t sure why she needed another job since she claimed to be saving humanity with her Physics work, along with her other job as an executive at the head-hunting place, which paid more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, while BuzzKill offered stock options and a weekly salary of twenty-five hundred dollars. I didn’t think double-dipping at a startup for twenty-five hundred dollars a week would be worth putting her main job on the back burner, but I loved the idea of a side-hustle if she could swing it.

On her first day at BuzzKill, I overheard Ashley on a Zoom call with her new team as I waited for coffee to brew in the kitchen. They were introducing themselves, talking about their previous work experience and…