by Elise Faber
Clusterf*@k
Life Sucks #4
Elise Faber
CLUSTERF*@K
by Elise Faber
Copyright © 2021 ELISE FABER
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.
CLUSTERF*@K
Copyright © 2021 ELISE FABER
Print ISBN: 978-1-63749-009-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63749-008-2
Cover Art by Jena Brignola
Contents
1. Clusterf*@k
2. Tiger’s Eyes
3. Totaled
4. It’s Covered
5. Male Logic
6. Pirate’s Booty
7. Scarves for Everyone
8. On Top
9. Complications
10. Wicker
11. Double Fudge
12. Cloudless
13. School Tongue
14. Diamonds
15. Baseball Bats
16. Main Street
17. Purple
18. Sisters
19. Muffins
20. Moving Boxes
21. Neighbors
22. Apologies
23. Tissues
24. Boots
25. Should Haves
26. Overlord
27. Tissues Times Two
Epilogue
FUBAR
FUBAR
Newsletter
Also by Elise Faber
About the Author
1
Clusterf*@k
Misty
The ocean didn’t give a damn about her woes.
Too bad it couldn’t wash them away as effectively as it conquered the sandcastle the kids had spent hours building.
All that remained now was a mound of sand, one that was disappearing more by the second.
And in the distance, the sky was just beginning to grow darker.
She was sitting on the deck of the cottage—belonging to Soph, her friend and sister-in-law, and her brother, Rob—enjoying the cool breeze whipping her hair, the sun on her skin, and a moment of quiet from the party still raging on the sand. Raging, if one could consider building epic sandcastles and running from the waves, with a couple of hard seltzers in hand, raging.
Which Misty did.
That was what all the wild knitters did.
And crocheters because she did that, too.
And—
Soph had just announced she was pregnant.
So that was more exciting than castles and waves.
Mainly because Misty was so happy for Soph and Rob, so glad they’d found each other and managed to carve out a slice of joy. Rob had been a widower, pretending to be happy and fulfilled. Soph had been—still was—a successful actor and equally successful at pretending all was good. They’d fallen for each other. They’d struggled. They’d figured things out.
They were perfect for each other, and—
It was just…Misty was jealous.
So freaking jealous.
And add in a dash of guilt. Because her brother had barely survived the death of his first wife, had been a shell of a man for two full years until Sophie had come into the picture in her sexy little heels, with her Hollywood smile and her sweet personality.
Yup. Soph was a famous actor.
And she was nice.
Ugh. If Misty didn’t love Sophie so much, she’d hate her.
Sighing, knowing that probably didn’t make sense, she sat back and lifted her glass of wine to her lips, glugging down a large sip and looking out at the surf. Of all the places to live in town, her brother certainly had picked a good one.
Even if she was a jealous, guilty asshole.
She had her own business. She’d bought a house. She’d just paid off her car. She had a full life.
A full—of yarn—single, lonely life.
Fun, fun.
Resisting the urge to sigh again, she drained her glass then made her way over to say goodbye to her brother and Soph and the rest of the crew.
“Oh,” Soph said, after Misty had made her excuses. “I was hoping you might stay around. My dad and brothers are coming to visit.” She checked her watch. “They’re actually supposed to be here any minute.”
“I have an early morning delivery,” Misty lied. “I’m sorry. I really need to get to bed.”
“I understand.” Soph squeezed her hands. “I’ll make dinner this week on a night you can join us. Friday? You don’t have classes then, right?”
“Right.” A beat. That was five days from then. Misty would be over her jealous, guilty self by then.
Right?
Definitely.
Misty forced a smile. “Friday is great.”
She waved to her friend Finn, who was cradling his new baby, high-fived his daughter Rylie (master sandcastle extraordinaire), and called a goodbye to Shannon, Finn’s wife, then she high-tailed it back across the sand, determined to allow herself one more night of sulking before she got it together and stopped feeling so sorry for herself. She would wake up in the morning and be over her jealous, guilty self, so that by the time Friday dinner rolled around with her brother and Soph, she would be nothing but happy for them.
She’d make sure of that, even if it was just faking it until she made it.
Plus, Misty had a lot going for her.
She just needed to remember that.
And she would.
Tomorrow.
After she finished the bottle of wine in her fridge and the pint of ice cream in her freezer. After she’d lit her favorite candle and soaked in her tub, consuming bad reality TV right alongside all those extra calories.
“See?” she whispered to herself as she got into her car and turned on the engine, shifting into reverse as she backed out of the driveway. “This will all be fi—”
Crunch.
Her sedan—her awesome, recently-paid off sedan—jerked to a halt.
“Fuck,” she whispered, looking in her review and seeing that she’d run into a large black SUV. An SUV that currently had smoke coming from beneath the hood. She cursed again, dropping her head to the steering wheel for a moment, before sighing and pushing out of her car.
“I’m sorry,” she began as the driver’s door on the SUV opened. “I didn’t see you—”
The rest of her words froze in her throat as tall, dark, and handsome got out of said SUV.
He was the sexiest man she’d ever seen in her life, bar none. Towering at least a foot over her and with broad shoulders encased in tight black cotton, he had a thick black beard, piercing green eyes, and a smile that sucker-punched her right in the gut.
“There,” she finished.
He lifted a brow, still smiling. “Obviously.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I—”
He took a step toward her, those green eyes kind. “It’s fine. It’s just a car. Look, I—”
“It’s not fine,” she told him, waving her hands at the SUV. “Look at your car. Look what I did!” Unbidden, tears stung the backs of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. It was an accident. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry over something she clearly hadn’t meant to do. That would be absolutely ridiculous.
But this was the nail in the coffin on her emotions,
and she was a crier under normal circumstances. Under these? Riddled with guilt and running into the hottest guy in the universe’s SUV? Making smoke pour out from beneath the hood?
This was certainly an accident that she would cry over.
She was a jealous jerk and single and lonely and alone—yes, she knew that lonely and alone were basically the same thing—but she supposed it was possible to be lonely while actually being around other people. And that also shouldn’t be what she was thinking about right now. Not with tears threatening, and not with the fact that she now needed to add shitty driver to her list of jealous, single, lonely, and alone.
A finger on her cheek, wiping away a tear that had escaped. “Don’t cry, honey.”
She sniffed. Another tear slipped free. He wiped it away.
He stepped closer, and she was inundated by his scent. Warm like the sun, spicy like the cayenne that she liked to add to her homemade artichoke and spinach dip. “What’s your name?”
“Misty Hansen,” she whispered.
Recognition in those green eyes. “Rob’s sister.”
She nodded, though it hadn’t been phrased as a question.
“Hi, Misty.” He waited until she met his gaze. “I’m Chance—” His eyes broke away from hers. “Oh, shit.” He jerked, started running past her.
She turned to see what he was looking at.
Turned to see what he was too late to do anything about.
Her car—her freshly paid-off, awesome sedan was rolling forward…right into her brother’s garage door.
Crunch.
Fuck. Her. Life.
“Jackson,” he finished, looking back at her with wide green eyes.
2
Tiger’s Eyes
Chance
She was beautiful, albeit a bad driver.
Long blond hair trailing down her back, pretty brown eyes that swirled with different shades of russet and gold and tawny, reminding him of that gemstone, tiger’s eye, a curvy body, lush lips, and…an expression that tugged at his heartstrings. She’d been crying before, tears slowly dripping down her face. This—
She was going to lose it.
“Hey,” he said, moving toward her. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay,” she began, words hitching on a sob. “I’m so—”
“Misty!” Rob, his sister’s husband, tore around the corner, his face a mask of concern. “Are you okaaay…?” He finished the question on a long, drawn out breath, his gaze going from Chance’s car to Misty’s to his now crunched-in garage door.
“Rob,” Misty said, rubbing her cheeks, and Chance watched with no little amount of respect as she straightened her shoulders, took a breath, and locked down the tears, as she walked over to Rob and said calmly, “I’m so sorry. I—” She broke off, and Chance waited to see what she would say. Would she try to minimize the clusterfuck that had just happened?
Or would she own up?
“It’s a long story,” she went off after a jerk of her head. “Or well, not long, but it all happened really fast, but I didn’t see Chance pulling in, and I backed into his SUV, and then I got out and”—a wince that pulled her brows together—“I guess I didn’t put my car into park because it rolled forward and”—white teeth pressed into her bottom lip—“well, unfortunately for your nice, new house, um…your garage door happened to be in the way.”
Chance snorted.
She shot him a glare, no sign of those tears, then turned back to Rob, sighing. “I’m really sorry. I’ll pay to have it repaired.” Her gaze drifted back to Chance’s. “Your car, too.”
Silence.
From Rob.
Chance, on the other hand, was very close to losing it. Not because he was pissed, but because this was a disaster that could only be handled with laughter. Only, neither Rob nor Misty looked like they would be ready to laugh anytime soon.
Rob, probably because this was a brand new house and the front of it was sporting some serious damage.
Misty, probably because she was embarrassed, as any human would be based on the last five minutes.
She took it well, again, though. Just lifted her chin, moved to her car, and carefully reversed it away from the garage. It looked worse once the sedan was out of the way. Maybe the door was cheap, or maybe her car was heavier than it appeared. Either way, the garage door had a decent-sized dent in it, along with the wooden siding to the right of it. The door was probably fucked. The siding and house were going to need some work, and not all of that work would be cosmetic.
He noted that this time, she triple-checked that the car was in park before getting out.
With a stack of papers in her hand, she crossed over to him. “You have your phone?” she asked.
Chance lifted his brows.
“You can take a picture of my insurance information.”
His lips twitched, and he pulled his cell from his pocket, snapped a pic then held it out toward her.
Now her brows lifted.
He closed her fingers around it. “Put your number in there in case I need to get ahold of you.”
Those brows remained lifted, but suspicion had joined the ranks.
Probably because some of the humor and attraction he felt for her was bleeding into his face. She was cute. She owned her shit. She’d swallowed her tears.
Yeah, this was a cool chick.
“About the cars,” he added when she didn’t immediately take the cell.
Slowly, her brows descended. “Right,” she murmured, plugging in her number, and he fought another chuckle—along with a blip of disquiet since he tended to stay away from women who were cool and might make a place in his heart and instead focused on those that were easy (easy to leave, easy to keep at a distance)—when he saw the disappointment in her eyes. He’d noticed her, thought she was fucking gorgeous, bad driving or not, but she’d also noticed him.
Which meant this was going to be fun.
Or disastrous.
Or…no, fun. He always made things fun.
“Can you move your car?” she asked, just as Soph came around the corner and gasped.
He watched pink spill on to Misty’s cheeks, her shoulders slump slightly…then a little further when several more people rounded the house—a good-looking man, a beautiful woman with deep brown skin and shocking blue eyes, a little girl whose mouth went from smiling to shocked.
Misty groaned quietly.
“What happened?” the little girl asked.
Silence. Then Misty spoke up. “It was my fault.” Her gaze went to Soph’s. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay to get it fixed.”
Soph was his sister—by heart rather than blood—and she was also a famous actor.
She didn’t need Misty to pay to repair the garage, accident or not.
And she made him proud by striding across the driveway, slipping an arm around Misty’s waist, and saying quietly enough so no one besides him and Misty could hear, “You absolutely will not be paying to repair this. Shit happens. Plus”—she smiled and gently jostled Misty—“my man happens to be a contractor and your brother. He’ll get it sorted.”
Misty groaned again and dropped her head on to Soph’s shoulder, and it did something to Chance’s heart to see his sister, so easily accepting the touch, so easily initiating it.
She’d been through hell.
He still remembered how tiny and broken she’d been when she’d first moved in with them. To see her out in the world, whether as an actor pretending to be someone else, or just a friend, but seeing her as a woman in a loving relationship was nearly a miracle. And he was so damned proud of how far Soph had come.
“I’m paying,” Misty said firmly, proving that she had spine.
Chance liked spine. Chance liked lush curves and long blond hair he could sink his hands into.
He’d like both more if they didn’t belong to the sister of the man his own sister was seeing, but if Misty was interested, he was interested, family complications aside.
Life was too s
hort to worry about complications.
Plus, he’d make it fun for them both while it lasted, and then he’d leave her happy while they remained friends.
That was how he rolled.
Leave ‘em with a smile and fond memories, but always leaving them.
Because it was better for both of them that way.
Except, seeing Rob come up to Soph, placing his palm over her stomach in a way that was both tender and loving and revealed the news his family was gathering to hear made him wonder if it was really better.
But since that was an uncomfortable thought that had him thinking about things he really didn’t like to think about, Chance shoved it down, focused on the trio, and watched the show.
“You’re not paying,” Soph countered.
Rob nodded in agreement.
Misty started to argue, but then Rob said, “You’re not.”
“I am—”
“Not,” Rob repeated.
“I’m—” She broke off with a sigh and rubbed her forehead. “We can talk about this later,” she said. “I really do need to get home.”
“Dewdrop,” Rob murmured.
Chance’s heart squeezed but even more so when Misty’s eyes went glassy again, her bottom lip trembling as she looked away from her brother and right toward him.
She blew out a breath.
But it felt like she’d exhaled some sort of magical mist, because he felt exposed, vulnerable, wanting to take her in his arms in a way that was less fun and more comforting.
Then she blinked and the tears were gone. The trembling lip stabilized.
