It was a typical day in Grubsville. Ms. Ostentatious woke up in her giant, silk covered bed next to her wife, Ms. Resolute, who was always determined and never backed down once she made a decision. Ms. Ostentatious kissed Ms. Resolute’s forehead in a showy manner and pulled the conspicuously heavy comforters off of her admirable body. Ms. Ostentatious gracefully swung her legs over the bed and carefully placed her perfect feet on her pretentious, handcrafted rug from France, which she loved to show off at parties. Ms. Ostentatious tiptoed out of the room and down her ornate tiled spiralling staircase, which everyone complimented her on, to the kitchen.

The kitchen had elegant marble counters embedded with diamonds and had a bar in the middle, perfect for impressing guests. The counters on one side of the bar were littered with chopping boards and had a knife holder filled with emerald encrusted knives which were very flashy. The counter on the other side of the bar had a fancy stove with a high class microwave and a toaster that could speak to you and tell you when your toast was slightly toasted, toasted, and burnt, for whoever liked it that way. The whole kitchen was as ostentatious as ever!

Ms. Ostentatious walked over to the opal glass cupboards and grabbed the pancake mix, ready to make breakfast for her wife. She bent down towards the bottom cupboards to get a kitsch 100% gold pan, and then placed it on the stove. Ms. Ostentatious grabbed a bowl for the mix, and grabbed all of the other ingredients she would need from her ruby fridge. As Ms. Ostentatious began to mix all of the ingredients to make the pancakes, Ms. Resolute came down the stairs.

Her hair was up in a messy bun and she was wearing loose sweatpants with a tank top. She still looked tired, and her eyes were drooping, but to Ms. Ostentatious, she looked as beautiful as ever. Ms. Resolute came over to her and gave her a peck on the lips. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, pulling back from the kiss. As Ms. Ostentatious continued to mix the ingredients, she replied, “Morning, love.”

Once Ms. Ostentatious was done mixing the batter, she buttered the gold pan so that it was ready for the pancakes. As they poured one after another circle of batter on the pan, Ms. Ostentatious and Ms. Resolute had a conversation, discussing work, as well as the trip to France that they were going to take. Before long there were two stacks of golden pancakes ready to be eaten, and you could smell the sweet maple syrup as well as the perfectly cooked pancakes that would have made anyone’s mouth water.

Seeing as they didn’t want to be late for work, Ms. Ostentatious and her wife quickly ate breakfast and got ready, being careful not to take too much time.They decided to take one car to their jobs, because though they had way more than too many, the couple enjoyed driving together before the start of their long day. They decided to drive their gaudy custom made Ferrari, which had been made an electric car, with a pure gold bumper and a shiny white body, that looked way out of place in Grubsville and would easily draw the attention of anyone around it.

The drive wasn’t too long, and soon enough, Ms. Ostentatious had been dropped off at her work, which just happened to be a modeling company. When she was a kid, people had always told Ms. Ostentatious that she had the perfect body for modeling. As she grew up, she didn’t know what she wanted to do for a job, and so modeling was her back-up. Her day was long and tiring, with a lot of photo shoots and barely any time to eat lunch. Ms. Ostentatious was put into fancy dress after fancy dress, some made of the wool from vucana, which was from sheep that could only be sheared once every three years, and some made of cashmere wool. She was dragged from place to place, and with each new photoshoot she did, she felt worse and worse. As Ms. Ostentatious was being taken around, she drew everyone’s attention to herself, and Ms. Ostentatious did not feel pride, but instead continued to feel despair.

What is wrong with me, she wondered at the end of the day, waiting to get picked up by her wife. Why am I not happy? she thought. With that question came many more: Why haven’t I felt this way before? As she thought about it, she realized that she had. Through her whole modeling career, Ms. Ostentatious had never felt happy doing her job. She would see makeup artists and photographers with content smiles on their faces, and she assumed that they just had extra great jobs, but now she realized that they had just loved their jobs. The only reason why Ms. Ostentatious hadn’t figured out that she didn’t like her job earlier was that she was happy with Ms. Resolute, and she would make her forget what she felt at work.

Ms. Resolute, who had been adamant about picking Ms. Ostentatious up that day, came around the corner at that point. Ms. Ostentatious got into the car, in an unconsciously theatrical way, still thinking about what she had just discovered. Her wife noticed her unusually quiet demeanor, and asked, “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Ms. Ostentatious didn’t want to trouble her wife with her new discovery, so she just replied with “Nothing,” hoping Ms. Resolute would let it go. However, as she should’ve known, her wife ignored that response, and continued to prod.

“Tell me. Please. I want to help if something is troubling you,” Ms. Resolute urged, determined to make Ms. Ostentatious talk.

Ms. Ostentatious gave in, too tired to fight. “Today I figured something out,” she started. “I learned that I don’t find joy in my job. I hadn’t noticed it before because you had made up for that lack of happiness, as you still do, but today something just clicked and I didn’t feel right working there as I do everyday. I don’t always want to be the center of attention. As a model people are always looking at me as if that was what I was made for, and I want to be something more than just an object.”

“Finally,” Ms. Resolute got out, sighing in relief.

Ms. Ostentatious snapped her head up, eyes wide. “What do you mean, finally?” she asked wondering if her wife had already noticed that herself.

Ms. Resolute replied, “I have noticed for a while that you haven’t been happy with your job. When we talk about it at home, you try to keep the focus on me and my work, asking a whole bunch of questions so that I can’t get around to asking mine.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ms. Ostentatious asked, though she couldn’t bring herself to be mad at her wife.

“You’re stubborn, and probably would’ve denied it if I had mentioned it,” she said.

Ms. Ostentatious stared out the window blankly, and asked, “What do I do?” which came out as a whisper.

“I think it is about time that we find a job that you will love and will not require you to have a beautiful body,” Ms. Resolute stated back, her voice soft and comforting, but also firm.

Ms. Ostentatious felt immediate relief, and she rushed out, jumping at her wife to hug her,

“Thank you so much for understanding. We may not have as much money as we do now, but you are still a CEO, and so we will still have more than enough.”

“Money’s not a problem, dear,” Ms. Resolute muttered, “just find something that you love doing.”

The next day Ms. Ostentatious went to her agent, Ms. Copious, who had mountains of paperwork on her desk, and told her that she didn’t want any more modeling jobs. She explained that she was done, and though she would finish the jobs for contracts she had already signed, she wasn’t planning on coming back. Ms. Copious was okay with that, because although Ms. Ostentatious brought her a lot of money, she had a large amount of clients. After that Ms. Ostentatious went job hunting, searching for anything that interested her. Although she was a model, she had made sure to go to college and graduate, getting her masters degree in Business Administration.

Ms. Ostentatious found some jobs that seemed a little bit interesting, and she tried them out, but they weren’t quite right for her. The search was long and hard, and before finding the perfect job, Ms. Ostentatious was close to giving up and going back to her life of just being something to look at. However, one day, she was sitting around, thinking, and she remembered something. From the age of 10 to 24, Ms. Ostentatious had taken lessons in boxing, and every time she was fighting someone, her heart would feel light and full of happiness. It was her time to let go of all of the pent up anger she held when people looked at her like she was an object. Ms. Ostentatious realized that that was where she had been the most content, and she wanted to do that again.

Over the next few weeks, Ms. Ostentatious spent time setting up what would be her new boxing club, where she would teach lessons and also just have equipment for people to practice and work out on their own. Buying a building wasn’t too hard considering all of the money that she and her wife had, and her degree in business would also help her general income. It took a few months, but soon Ms. Ostentatious was doing what she loved every day, and she was finally completely happy.

Now, every night Ms. Ostentatious would go home to her extravagant mansion with the giant tinsel fountain out front, and all of the luxuries inside. She climbed up her fancy stairs and went down her hall with tasteless wood floors to her bedroom, which she shared with her wife, with the handcrafted rug from France and the large bed with silk comforters. Though she had given up her life of modeling, she still enjoyed showing off her belongings. She was not as flamboyant as she used to be, but there was a little part of her that would always be true to her name: ostentatious.