This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Jessica Morrison
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
5 Spot
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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5 Spot is an imprint of Warner Books.
The 5 Spot name and logo are trademarks of Warner Books.
First eBook Edition: May 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-55516-6
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
About the Author
For Christi, Leanne, Shaun, and Sophy— my broken hearts club
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First thanks must go to my first readers, my mother, Elizabeth Rains, my sister, Danielle Michael, and my almost-sister, Leanne Chapotelle. You slogged through my typo-ridden first draft and returned careful comments that helped make this a much better book. Another great big thank-you to Kerry Morrison. You gave me several things for this book, dear friend, including all the lessons in love and heartbreak I'll ever need.
Thank you, Bill Contardi, my all-knowing NYC agent, for your encouragement and endless patience with this publishing neophyte. Eternal gratitude goes to my editor, Caryn Karmatz Rudy. Your sage suggestions and boundless enthusiasm meant more than you can know.
My thanks to all the friends and family who kept me afloat with their unfailing confidence that I would make something of this little idea I had—especially my dad, Al Hyland, who is also my biggest fan. And thanks, finally, to my friends in Buenos Aires for never suspecting how scared I was to travel there, and for later understanding how scared I was to go home. I'm glad I did both.
CHAPTER ONE
I feel light-headed, like all the blood is draining from my face, arms, legs, baby toes. This might have something to do with the fact that my hands are pressing against the armrests so tightly my fingertips are turning purple. My entire body is ready to pounce. If that flight attendant would just get out of my way, I could head back up the aisle, through that maze of a connecting ramp, past the gate personnel, and into the safety of Sea-Tac Airport. But she’s struggling with someone’s stupid oversize blue carry-on that’s clearly too big to fit in that tiny wire frame at the check-in counter that tells you when your stupid oversize blue carry-on is way too big to fit in a plane’s overhead compartment. I could try one of those exits conveniently located at midcabin: two near the front and two near the back. We haven’t actually started moving, so how far down could it be to the tarmac anyway?
I peer out the window—it looks pretty far down—and the lunacy of this plan hits me. Am I actually plotting my escape from an airplane just minutes from takeoff? If this moment were happening to someone else, a character in a movie, say, I’d probably be laughing. It is funny, isn’t it? I attempt a laugh, but all that comes out is a sad little wheeze. No, not funny. Definitely not funny.
The tanned and taut older woman in the seat next to me glances in my direction. “Afraid to fly, dear?” she asks in a buttery Spanish accent.
“No,” I reply. “Afraid to land.”
She looks at me quizzically and, I think, a bit amused. She wouldn’t give me that look if she knew what I’ve gotten myself into. If she knew my pathetic state, she’d be offering me one of those little purple pills she chased with a miniature bottle of vodka a few minutes ago when she thought no one was looking.
Two weeks ago, life was so so so perfect. Flawless. On track. Nobody had it more together than I did. I watched in pity as Gen Xers wandered the streets of Seattle disillusioned and disassociated in their post-grunge, pre-Prada uniforms, desperately grasping their Motorolas and Starbucks as though instant messaging and a smooth Ethiopian roast could fill the gaping holes in their lives. They didn’t have a clue where they were going or how they were getting there. My life, on the other hand, was going exactly according to plan, due in no small part to the fact that I had one.
When I was seventeen, I planned my life. The whole thing. Being someone who’s particularly good at organizing things, I have to say it was a rather spectacular plan. I didn’t just scribble a hopeful list of things to do in the back of a diary or one of those fancy leather-bound journals that cost so much I never understood how people brought themselves to spoil them with Bic scribblings. No, my plan was serious business, and I treated it accordingly. Everything I wanted to accomplish over the course of my life was carefully, deliberately contained in one handy color-coded spreadsheet completed in my grade-twelve word-processing class.
I had always been an orderly child—the kind who has different crayon boxes for each season (use burnt umber in the spring? as if) and took her days-of-the-week underwear very seriously—so it never occurred to me that perhaps planning one’s entire life before one can even vote or buy alcohol might be a tad on the ambitious side. I approached the process systematically, as I did all things, drafting version after version until I had it exactly right. My plan was broken into eight manageable ten-year stages. Those ten-year stages were further broken down by major five-year goals, with a list of detailed tasks that would lead to each goal. I’d considered drilling down even deeper, but I didn’t want to be neurotic about it. The point was to simply clarify what I wanted and when. It was all there—nothing unrealistic, like be a rock star or discover the cure for cancer, just your typical how-to-be-sure-you’ve-got-it-all-covered-and-are-blissfully-happy-forever-and-ever life plan kind of stuff. You know, job, apartment, man, kids, house, dog, summer home, volunteer work, crafts, grandkids, another dog, etc.
For years I kept a copy of the plan on my fridge the way other women tack up photos of anorexic models for inspiration. There was one tucked into the back of my day planner, naturally, and another folded into my wallet, in case I lost my day planner. Once I discovered the World Wide Web, I ramped things up a notch and took my plan online. That way I could look at it from home, work, on vacation even, check things off on the go, and quickly print updated hard copies.
I know I can get a little obsessive about it—I know each step in the plan as well as I know every Sex and the City plot twist—but if you want to stay on track with your life, you’ve got to know where the track is, right?
Okay, so not everyone agrees. My friend Trish calls it The Plan, as in “Want to try snowboarding next weekend—or is it not in The Plan?” and “I’m not sure if red’s your color. Better check The Plan.” Last year one of my hilarious coworkers with far too much time on his hands posted his own version on the bulletin board in the lunchroom: Become president of the Daughters of the American Revolution, get sex-change operation, take over Canada, knit scarves fo
r the cast of Cats, etc. My initially pro-Plan mother thought it was brilliant until she realized that my plan was not exactly like the one she had for me. She found my decision not to have children until my early thirties particularly distressing.
But I knew something they didn’t. I had figured out the secret to happily ever after.
Last month, on the eve of my twenty-eighth birthday, instead of wallowing in self-pity or indulging in a quarter-life crisis—on her twenty-eighth, my old roommate Sarah quit her job and moved to Alaska to work as a cook at a logging camp (a logging camp—I mean, who does that?)—I sat back with a glass of wine and the plan (version 12.4) and admired all those happy little checkmarks I’d earned in the past decade:
• Get accepted to any—ANY—college out of state. Check. University of Wisconsin. Solid academic program, good social scene, and hundreds of miles from my parents’ house. Go Badgers.
• Eschew snotty college sorority experience and embrace dorm life à la Felicity. Check. Okay, so my RA didn’t look like Noel, but I did make some amazing friends who still liked me when I cut my hair into a pixie senior year.
• Lose virginity freshman year to a cute, popular sophomore or junior. Check. Cam Bowers after a kegger. Painful, clumsy, and thank God, fast. I heard Cam got fat and works at his dad’s tire company. Still counts.
• Try one illicit drug. Check. Pot, acid, X, pot, X, X, X . . . What can I say? It was college. Of course, all that came to an abrupt halt when I woke up one morning wearing someone else’s bra.
• Get a degree in something non-flaky that might actually lead to a good job. Check. Business admin. So what if my college friends enjoyed their English lit/political science/modern dance classes. They might as well have majored in upselling appetizers for all the good their degrees did them. I, on the other hand, was upwardly mobile.
• Get previously mentioned good job. Check. Assistant producer at Idealmatch.com, the fourth largest dating website in the U.S. Worked my way up from researcher. All those dull statistics courses finally came in handy.
• Have a one-night stand. Check. Starbucks barista with a Kurt Cobain thing going on. Bonus: still get free Macchiatos.
• Buy a pair of shoes over three hundred dollars. Check. Check. Check.
• Find adorable apartment in University district, Capitol Hill, or somewhere else really cool. Check. One-bedroom Bridget Fonda-in-Singles-esque walk-up with hardwood floors, a fountain in the courtyard, and rent so cheap I felt like I was stealing. (Three-hundred-dollar shoes helped ease the guilt.) Of course, I eventually gave it up to move into a downtown loft with floor-to-ceiling windows and a concierge. So what if the building was kind of impersonal and I never looked at the view. My new roomie trumped Matt Dillon any day.
• Meet perfect man. Check. Gorgeous, smart, ambitious Jeff with fabulous downtown loft.
• Get engaged. Check. Jeff proposed on Valentine’s Day after a decadent meal at the top of the Space Needle, where he gave me a stunning two-carat diamond ring hidden in a piece of cheesecake. My friends would swoon when they heard the story. Like everything else in our one-year relationship, it was pure fairy tale. Could anything but bliss follow?
• Have dream wedding. Almost check. Jeff was too stressed working full-time and studying for the bar, but once he was done with that, we’d set a date and start planning (or rather, start putting my wedding-day plans in motion). As long as it happened before I turned thirty, I was fine.
How could I not be? I was twenty-eight and everything in my life was precisely the way it should be. To top it off, Jeff was taking me away for the weekend, I wasn’t currently arguing with my mother, and work was great. Being an assistant producer suited me. I spent my days making and enforcing schedules, drafting and checking off lists—it doesn’t get much better than that. They liked me, too. There’d been a recent round of layoffs, but I was still there. Better yet, word around the office was that they were going to fill the empty producer spot from inside the company.
I put down my glass of wine and started packing for the trip, trying to focus on all the activities Jeff had planned, but my mind kept wandering back to that job opening. They won’t pick you, I told myself. Definitely not. It’s too soon. They’ll promote someone who’s been there longer. According to my plan, I wasn’t even scheduled for a serious promotion until thirty. But what if? Or, better question, why the heck not? The big boss loved me. I worked twice as hard as the other assistant producers, rarely ate lunch (except for a fat-free yogurt consumed at my desk between noon and 12:15), and, unlike most of my coworkers, I never, ever showed up to work looking like I was about to start in a triathlon. And I had a plan! When my boss asked me where I saw myself in six months or a year, I had an answer (and an accompanying pie chart). Why not me? A promotion would mean more responsibility (goodbye, yogurt—maybe I could acquire a taste for protein bars?) and more money, but that wasn’t what excited me. All I could think about was the plan. Two weeks into stage two, and I’d already be checking off an item! Maybe it was the wine, but it suddenly seemed that things couldn’t possibly go any other way. I was going to get that promotion, and twenty-eight was going to be my best year ever.
I didn’t even care that Jeff was taking me to the same resort where he’d once taken his ex, Lauren. At first I’d been surprised that he wanted to go back there. Lauren had done a number on him, and I figured the place would be full of bad memories. But I guess guys aren’t as sentimental as women are. She was the past, he said. I dug through my underwear drawer and found the white teddy Jeff had brought home a few months before. I tucked it into a side pocket along with the black bra and panties he loved. This was our weekend, and everything was going to be perfect.
Perfect it was, from the beautiful room overlooking the ocean to the bottle of champagne Jeff hid on the beach for our moonlit walk to the pearl earrings he gave me over dinner. When I walked into work the following Monday morning, I was still floating on the memory of it all. As usual, the office was dark and quiet. I liked to start early so I could go over the day’s schedule (meetings, industry research, paperwork, bonding with coworkers in the kitchen over espresso drinks, cleaning my desk, scheduling the next day, etc.) before the crowds filed in, the latest garage band cranked out of the office stereo putting its cheap speakers to the test, and the Frisbees started flying. Ah, the Web industry. Never before has so much been accomplished by so many dedicated underachievers. If not for me, nothing would have gotten done in that office, with the exception, naturally, of espresso drinks and spontaneous indoor Ultimate matches. But on this particular morning, I couldn’t focus on my e-mail in-box or the list of tasks I’d left for myself the Friday before. I opened Word, intending to compose a letter, but ended up creating a mock business card complete with a new title and new last name.
I could barely hide my excitement when I returned from the printer, a sheet of pretend business cards in hand, to see the big boss waiting at my desk, admiring my wall chart that mapped all current, past, and future projects (color-coded, naturally). She was wearing her gray Armani knockoff, an appropriate suit for a serious occasion, promoting someone, for example. A huge smile broke across my face. I wanted to play it cool, but I couldn’t help it. I was already dreaming about getting online and pulling up the plan. Check!
“Good morning,” I said quickly, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. My hands were shaking so bad I had to shove them in my pockets.
The big boss turned to face me. “Good morning, Cassie. Glad you’re here early. There’s something I need to—”
“Talk to me about?” Check!
“Yes. Well. Why don’t we go to my office?” She was stammering a bit. What did she have to be nervous about? But then she smiled warmly. I’m just projecting my own nervous energy, I assured myself. And so what if she doesn’t look as ecstatic as I feel? She’s promoting someone into middle management. Do I really expect the woman to kick off her Prada loafers and do cartwheels? Surely it was enough that she came
all the way downstairs to give me the good news herself.
“You bet,” I answered, trying not to sound too eager and failing miserably. “Just let me get my notebook.”
“You won’t need it,” she said and started down the hall to the elevator.
I shook my head and smiled to myself. Duh. Star Web producers don’t write things down. Star Web producers have people to write things down for them. And make them color-coded charts. And espresso drinks. No, that’s pushing it, I decided. No matter how powerful I became, I resolved, I would always make my own coffee. In this state of complete and absolute exhilaration, I followed her down the hallway, rode the elevator, and entered her office. I was so giddy—chattering about the weather while mentally constructing the perfect producer wardrobe—that I didn’t notice she hadn’t said anything for several minutes, until she spoke again and the sound of something other than my own ramblings made me jump.
“Cassie,” she began seriously. I put on my most serious face to match. I am a serious Web producer. This is the face that serious Web producers wear. “As you are well aware, this is a competitive marketplace.” She frowned. I frowned back, adding a contemplative nod. “We’re slipping into fifth place, and there are a dozen new dating sites coming online every month—”
“None as good as Idealmatch.com,” I said.
“Yes, well. If only it were that simple.” She took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh, her cheeks puffing and deflating with cartoonlike perfection. I shifted from foot to foot. All this lead-up was killing me. “Let me say first of all that everyone here has been consistently impressed with your hard work.” God, I thought, here it comes. I tried not to smile, but it was nearly impossible, so I settled on a straining grin. “We’ve seen the long hours you’ve put in without being asked. You’ve delivered everything you’ve been asked to deliver, on time and on budget. Honestly, you’re the most organized person I know. You’re a perfect associate producer.” My grin burst into a full-blown, dopey, big-toothed smile.
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club Page 1
