And for what?
I sank down the cabinet face, bounced off a drawer pull, and fell onto my butt. I was twenty-eight years old living like a sixty-year-old woman. Not even! Mrs. Delgado, my downstairs neighbor, was sixty-three and had two boyfriends. They played strip poker and all spent the night once a week, after Wheel of Fortune.
Oh, wow. My head really started to swish now. I grabbed a bottle of cleaner, a roll of paper towels and my Scotch, and crawled out to the vomit puddle. I drank and cleaned and listened to Blade rant outside. He was now threatening to call the police.
Let him. Let him call the police. Following the plan of my life had failed spectacularly—maybe if he called the police, they’d arrest him and give me a medal for Locking Out a Plastic Surgeon Who Literally Deserved It.
Once I’d finished with the vomit-soaked paper towels, I gathered them into a plastic bag and took them into Blade’s office, namely the second bedroom. Into his gorgeous, hand-tooled leather briefcase they landed with a disgusting, wet splat.
My phone dinged with a text message. Hopefully, my sister calling to remind me that I was the short one with the bigger butt and the empty uterus. ‘I’ve birthed two miracles, and I’m smaller than I was in high school, lol.’ Yes. I had actually received that text. On our birthday.
Nope—thank God, it was Melanie.
Holy fuck, that piece of shit fired you?
I called her. “I’m on my way,” she blurted by way of greeting. “We’re gonna get you so drunk.”
“Done and done,” I replied. “Oh, and Blade dumped me. He’s moving to L.A. to give some Hollywood starlet bigger tits. And my dad is flying to Hawaii for Christmas instead of seeing me.”
She uttered a sound of total comfort and commiseration, something along the lines of “Uuuugggghhhhhrrrrrrrrrr-oooooooohhhhhhhhh-aaacccckkkkkk.”
My heart swelled. “Thank you.”
“I’m one block away. We’re going to order every kind of greasy food known to man, cut the crotches out of Blade’s pants, and leave one-star reviews on Amazon for that asshole’s books until you’re too blotto to stand.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. You’re going to get through this.”
“Be careful of Blade. I locked him out, and he’s screaming and yelling in the hall.”
“He needs to be afraid of me.”
We hung up then, and I just sat there, drinking, unfeeling. Un-feeling, as in trying to ‘un’ my feelings.
Mel worked for another publishing house. We’d met in Columbia undergrad, and she was truly the bright spot in my existence now. I’d grown up being told that women were catty and hateful, that we were in competition with each other for only one thing—men. But I’d fallen for Mel’s friendship the moment we’d been tossed together as roommates. She’d taught me that women were here to support one another. I mean, if I was smart, and she was smart, then it stood to reason that ladies were wonderful, right?
A knock sounded at the door and I scrambled to my feet to answer. When I swept it open, I spied Mel standing over Blade, rolling on the hallway carpet and clutching his balls. “He attacked me, officer,” said my best friend in her most drawling Southern accent.
I cackled. I waved her in and snatched Blade’s wallet from the side table. Whap! My tipsy aim was true, for it flopped open over his mouth. “You’re staying elsewhere tonight. See, you already have clothes.” Only about half of what I’d thrown downstairs lay in a pile beside him. He started to curse me more, but we slammed the door in his face.
“I’ve never kicked a man in the jewels,” I said to Mel.
“You should totally try it! It puts the ‘ball-busting’ in ‘feminist.’”
She threw her arms around me and I started crying anew as I sank into her embrace. Soon, her equally non-L.A. brown hair was wet with my blubbering. My every muscle screamed in tired agony and I sobbed until I’d expressed every emotion known to woman, and probably a few heretofore only available to bears.
Later, who the hell knows how long later, I lay on the couch shoving egg rolls into my mouth. Mel told me that the news of my axing had run through every editorial staff in the city. They all felt sorry for me, for I’d earned a reputation as a great editor.
“What’s the point of being great?” I asked her drunkenly, and also rhetorically. “I’m tired of being Polly Perfect while horrible men use women like Kleenex and then sneeze their snot into them.”
“Ew,” offered Mel.
I shoved a wad of chow mein noodles into my ravenous maw. “Carmichael will go to his cushy job tomorrow. Blade will soar to L.A., straight into a model’s bed, no doubt. But not Little Miss Dagmar Boring. She’ll send out tasteful résumés and meet a Wall Street wanker who’ll cheat on her with an artist from Williamsburg.”
“It’s not fair,” Mel agreed, with a pat to my leg.
I sat up and leaned against the arm of the couch. I really had no choice, for my bones no longer functioned in their proper, rigid manner. “I’m done with it. Done. Every good and sensible decision I’ve ever made has flopped. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs from school, and my own father thinks it’s a waste.”
“Yeah, well your dad lives in 1952, and his treating you like shit is nothing new. Sorry to say, hon.”
Mel was the only person in the universe who could call you ‘hon’ or ‘sugah’ and you wouldn’t mind. She couldn’t sound more Georgia if she sang about midnight trains.
I waved an egg roll. “I’m not following the rules anymore. I’m gonna get some shitty job I don’t care about. Because caring only hurts you. And then—I’m gonna bang the boss.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Well…at least choose a hot boss.”
“Duh.” I switched to a sushi roll and pondered aloud while I chewed. “Den, I’mf gonna bang shome other guy. Wish tattoos! Mayshe I’ll get a tattoo.”
She nodded. “Careful—you’re spitting tuna on the couch.”
I swallowed. “It’s Blade’s couch. He can take it with him. No—maybe I’ll keep the couch and have lots of nasty sex on it. I’ve never had nasty sex. I’ve had very polite, sensible sex because that’s what I learned from the book I was given about sex when I was thirteen.”
She gasped as if I’d just admitted to wearing double-knit polyester.
I leaped to my feet, fell down, and got up again (more slower-ly) to find my notebook, the one I usually used for grocery lists and reminders to collect dry cleaning.
Notebook and pen in hand, I plopped next to her on the floor. I ripped out a page with a list of chores on it, and another with a packing list for Christmas.
At the top of the fresh, new page, I scrawled Ways to Screw Up My Life.
A giggle escaped Mel. “I like where this is going.”
“Wait—girls who don’t care don’t say ‘screw.’ They say ‘fuck’ in a most unladylike fashion.” I scratched out the ‘screw’ and printed in all caps FUCK.
“How many ways?” Mel asked. “You should aim high so you don’t quit.”
“But aiming is for achievers, and I’m not doing that anymore. I’m giving up, Mel. I’m giving up.” I waved my notebook around. “I’m fucking giving up! No more shoes with sensible two-inch heels. No more washing my bras after only wearing them once!”
“You actually do that?”
I sniffed mournfully. “By hand.”
“That’s madness!”
She whooped, and I whooped, and we whooped. Then it came to me. “Six-hundred-sixty-six. I’m going to do six-hundred-sixty-six numbers of fuck-ups.”
“Damn.” She placed her hand over her heart. “That’s a fuck ton of fuck-ups.”
“It’s the devil’s number. If assholes always prosper, which they do—they always, damn it, do!—then I shall become one.”
“Don’t sell your soul, though. Gotta leave room for a deathbed recant. Just in case.”
“It’s what an asshole would do.”
And we clinked Scotch glasses.
&n
bsp; I added my numerical goal to the top of the sheet so it read 666 Ways to Fuck Up My Life. Under this non-lofty title, I put the first item on my bad-girl list:
1. Get shitty job I don’t care about
I left the period off the sentence, because who cares about grammar and shit? Nobody else in the world did. They abused punctuation as if it were a hard-working underling.
“Bang boss,” Mel reminded me.
I added:
2. Bang the boss
3. Use him to get ahead
“What’s the point of the sex if you’re not also taking advantage?” I said of number three.
“That’s just good sense.” She grabbed the pad and scribbled a few words after number two. I turned the page and blinked until my drunky eyes focused. She’d put and have nasty orgasms in inappropriate places after bang the boss.
I crooked my arm around her head. “That’s an excellent point.”
“I have another one.” Her green eyes danced as she offered me the last of the spicy tuna rolls. “Let’s do what a dirty attention whore would do…what Carmichael Burns would do. I think you should start a blog.”
4. Start attention-whore overshare blog
What could go wrong?
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About the Author
Gloria Herrmann is a contemporary romance author living in beautiful eastern Washington. All of her books have been set in Washington and she is proud to show readers how gorgeous her state is.
An avid reader and lover of words, becoming an author has been a dream come true for her. She still pinches herself all the time and wonders how she got so lucky.
Gloria remembers her mom giving her a paperback romance novel when she was a teenager. It was a pretty exciting book, filled with suspense, love, and an overall excellent storyline. That was it. She was hooked. Gloria began to devour these romance stories that varied over the years from sweet to sultry, consuming thousands of books and stories. Each time she finished reading a novel, the desire to write her own grew stronger. As ideas for books were born, her go to genre was contemporary romance. Why romance? She simply loves it. That’s why she writes it. What is there not to love about falling in love and finding that special person to share your life with? Who doesn’t wish for a little passion, butterflies fluttering in your stomach, and that happily ever after? In Gloria’s eyes, that’s what it’s all about.
Email: [email protected]
Gloria loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
Reeling in Love Page 24
