My laptop has approximately five hundred tabs open, and I'm no closer to making a decision. Some of them are grants and applications for scholarships for mature students to graphic design schools—anywhere from a one year to a four-year course. I've clicked through and submitted dozens of those. Good to keep my options open. Who knows? One might be exactly what I need.

Other tabs are solo backpacking trips through Europe at various budgeting levels. The countries with good exchange rates have questionable security for a single woman traveling alone, and the ones with reasonable risk are more expensive than I can afford for the six months I want to go. My temptation is to blow all my money on a plane ticket and just see how things turn out. A voice of reason might be needed.

I grab my phone off the kitchen island, and I call my older sister Paige. She's probably getting sick of hearing from me, but she's the only truly sensible person I know. Most of my friends are like me.

"Paige," I say. "Everything I find is either too expensive or too dangerous."

"Australia?" she suggests. "Or just take whatever graphic design school you get accepted to. You can live on the edge that way, Gwen. You don't have to travel. I know I'm selling the house, but you've still got options. Realistic options."

"I'm leaving design school up to fate. I've applied to a bunch of places, and if I get a scholarship, I'll go when I'm done traveling. Six months from now. When I'm thirty."

"Thirty is a very arbitrary number," Paige says. "It doesn't have to mean anything."

"Uh, both you and Mom seem to think it means a lot." I twist a lock of long brown hair around my finger and tuck my feet into the rung of the barstool while I click through the options on the screen. "I'll spend the next six months getting the last of my youth out of my system. Then poof. At thirty, I'll be ready for maturity, responsibility, and a full time, stable job." Not that I haven't had some of those things, it's just that they never stick. Jobs, boyfriends, even places to live.

I did manage to get a supply management degree before I left college, but that was mostly because my sister didn't believe I was capable of finishing. She chided me for picking it, and honestly, she wasn't completely wrong. Graphic design, even back then, might have been the smarter choice. But I didn't want my art to be my job. I used it for stress release, and I didn't want it to become stressful.

"Australia?" she says again, and I can tell the way she says it that she's distracted.

"The flights are horrendously expensive right now." I stare at the white kitchen cupboards and wonder why my sister is so hell bent on neutrals for her house. The kitchen is white and gray, and almost every other room in her house is some bland version of white or grey or light blue. A splash of color wouldn't kill her. But I know better than to make unapproved changes to the décor, especially since it's due to go on the market soon.

"Canada!" Ash, my sister's British partner, calls in the background. "I've always fancied Canada. Looks lovely."

"Canada?" Paige says, and I can hear the tinges of disapproval in her voice.

Her tone is enough for me. Not exactly the exotic locale I was envisioning, but cost and quality are important. I click to the search engine and filter for flights and deals. "Actually, that's not a bad idea," I muse. "Ash, you just might be a genius."

"I've long suspected," he says.

"Is that all?" Paige says. "We're trying to get the kids to bed."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry." I often forget the time change, and every time Paige sees that I've called at silly o'clock in the morning her time, she texts me a reminder. Which I usually receive while I'm sleeping. The sibling games we play!

We hang up, and I'm scrolling through different Canadian cities, checking flight prices, and car rental deals when my phone goes off. It's Paige again, and I snap it up, thinking she's come up with a solution or obstacle to the Canada idea.

"Paige?" I say when there's background noise but no distinct hello.

"Honestly," Paige says, but she sounds far away, "she acts like this trip will be some kind of magic bullet instead of a complete waste of money. We both know she'll be hopping from one city and one guy to another, and at the end of the six months, she still won't know what she wants to do. She'll come home, and there will be no job, no money, and no place to live since my house will be gone."

"Paige!" She must have pocket dialed me, and although she'd be just as likely to say these things to my face, it's jarring to hear her speaking to Ash about me. "Paige? Hello?"

"I reckon some people just aren't meant to grow up," Ash agrees.

I cannot believe that traitor is siding with my sister when he called me out for being mean to her when I went to visit them in England. The way she's speaking about me now isn't exactly nice.

"Chloe, have you got Paige's phone?" Ash says, and I can hear him coming toward his toddler daughter and the phone.

I hit the hang up button before they can realize I've heard them, and I sit back in my chair, staring at my screen. Growing up is easy. Everyone grows up and becomes responsible and ticks off all the boxes of the things they should do. Up until now, I've never wanted the steady, boring job, the house and the husband and the two point five kids. Not everyone has to want those things to be happy.

But I can feel a surge of stubborn anger in me that Paige doesn't think I'm capable of those things. If I wanted them, I could have them.

My phone rings, and I reluctantly reach for it, afraid Chloe or Joey will have dialed my number by accident again. I'm done with hearing my sister list my perceived faults.

But it's my best friend, Izzy, and if anyone would understand why Paige is wrong, it's Izzy.

"Izz!" I say, shutting my laptop. "Come over and we'll split a bottle of wine."

"I work in the morning," Izzy whines. "I can't have a hangover again."

"I'll drink most of it. Just come help me pick a travel package."

"Ugh," Izzy says. "You'll just tell me why my choice is wrong. It won't meet your quality, service, and cost triangle thingy that you love so much."

"It's a very useful measurement system."

"Fine." Izzy releases a deep sigh. "But you'd better have the wine breathing by the time I get there."

"It'll be full of life by the time you arrive," I agree, and I go to the rack between the cupboards to pluck out a merlot along with the decanter.

"See you soon," Izzy says before hanging up.

~ * ~

Izzy stares at my computer screen while she swirls the wine in her glass and thinks. Her black hair is piled in a messy bun at the top of her head, and her glasses are perched on the bridge of her nose. "I don't know."

"About Canada?"

"If I'm honest... The whole thing. Your sister let you live here rent free for a year and a half. You must have enough saved to put some sort of deposit on a house of your own. Or if you really hate everything about supply chain management, going back to school isn't the worst idea." She shudders. "I couldn't do it. Once you're out of that mindset, it's hard to go back."

"I don't want a house." I slide the laptop down my legs, and I sip my own wine. "A house isn't going to make me happy."

"For six months you're going to live this life." She gestures to the photos of Canada we've been scrolling through. "But when you get back, nothing will have really changed."

"You don't know that."

She tilts her head at me in a way that's more condescending than I expected.

"I cannot believe you're taking Paige's side." I slam down the lid of my laptop and set it onto the coffee table.

"I'm not taking her side." Izzy holds up her free hand and the one with the wine glass. "All I've ever heard from you are the things you don't want from life, and it's like you're deliberately bucking against the norm. When we were teenagers, even once we left college, I figured you'd realize that attitude wasn't sustainable. I have. You can't live in the margins forever."

Even though Izzy is my best friend, I can't say what I'm thinking. Something inside me has never felt like Grand Rapids, Michigan was meant to be my life. When I go to England or I travel to another country on vacation, I come alive. That's where I want to live—in the in between.

She's probably right that it's not a sustainable life choice, and I understand that on some level. To sustain it, I'd have to become a travel blogger or a reporter or some sort of social media star. None of those are me, but this life I've been trying to force myself into since I graduated college doesn't feel like me either. There has to be a middle ground, and maybe six months with nothing to do but travel and think will help me find it.

"I'm going to Canada," I say. "And when I get back, I'll settle down into something like everyone wants me to. This is my last gasp before I hit thirty."

"It's nice that you're willing to turn thirty," Izzy says. "I intend to be twenty-nine forever!" She raises her glass and laughs.

The thing is, I'm not afraid of growing older. I never have been, despite what my sister and mother might think. What I'm really afraid of is being forty and still feeling stuck or like I'm not in the right place. I just want to find where I'm meant to be, the same way my sister Paige seems to have found hers. She did it by doing something completely out of character. Moving to a totally new country and hiring a male nanny.

This is my out-of-the-box moment, and I intend to seize it.

Hands up if you're here for all the Gwen and Blake goodness! 🙌🏻 I'm back, baby! Who's excited?! Me. I'm excited. It's just me. 😂😳

Schedule: I'll post the first Blake part on Friday, but then I'm likely going to update only on Fridays for the first little while. We're headed into a busy time for me at work, and I want to make sure updates are consistent. When I'm able, I'll go up to posting 2 or 3 times accordingly.

Bonus chapters for The Nanny are still coming. I'm hoping for one on Thursday, but Wattpad HQ has been involved in the creation of those, so it's been a slooowww process.

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