Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
You’re being unreasonable.
The little snippet they show you to entice you to open the email does the opposite.
We’re two weeks out until our wedding, Kels. You can’t expect me to buy Noelle another ring before then. Not all of us got big bonuses this year. Mine was sliced in half.
“Because you flirted with your analysts instead of taking their advice seriously.”
In my eagerness to tell Peter he’s only on the cusp of my pettiness—I still have our mutual workplace to woo to my side of our split—I accidentally click on the Show Me More button of an advertisement instead of the floating email bar that disappeared a second too fast.
It flashes up a video with too much skin for a Facebook ad. They’re usually as anti-nudity as Peter is.
I bet Zuckerberg doesn’t have sex with the lights on either.
“Are you hot and horny?”
“Yes.” My body answers the voiceover’s question before my head does.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this randy and heartbroken at the same time. I think it was the night of my thirtieth birthday. Peter had pledged to “rock my world.”
I’d only just reached the tingle stage when he squashed me to the mattress for three jerking seconds before rolling over and falling asleep.
Considering that was the only birthday present he gifted me, I should have asked for a refund.
My focus returns to my laptop screen when the ad continues its extremely personal interrogation. “Have you been left unsatisfied too many times?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Then what are you waiting for? The men at Valentino’s are ready to answer your every desire.”
A lady with a headful of gray hair slowly moves into the frame. She’s classically beautiful, and I wonder how much of her youth is attributed to the men she drapes herself across.
Orgasms aren’t just incredible for your pelvic floor.
They also help maintain your youth.
My mom barely looks a day over thirty. If you don’t want me to ruin the bed sheets I tried to gift the homeless man with vomit, we’ll skip the part that she’s been married to my father for over thirty years.
My parents are in Lastres, my mother’s hometown, to collect my grandparents for my Christmas Eve wedding. I’ve not yet had the heart to tell them my name is no longer on the invitations they helped me send. I don’t want to ruin their holiday. My mother hasn’t been home for almost a decade, so I’ll delay updating them until closer to their departure date.
My mother wouldn’t stay away if she thought her daughter was heartbroken and miserable. Don’t get me wrong. She wouldn’t let me mope either. She’d tell me to dust myself off and strive for better. She’s cool like that. I don’t think she’d even bat an eyelid if I paid for services to get back on the horse.
There’s no wrong way to spend your hard-earned money. Only a million memories you might miss out on by being a scrooge.
Her logic was in response to the massive wish list I created when I spent one too many hours scrolling BookTok, but my tipsy head doesn’t want to hear logic.
It wants me to revenge fuck Peter from my thoughts too.
With my mind made up, I jot down the address from the ad still playing on my laptop screen and then race into my walk-in closet. I need to find the sexiest little black dress on the rack before common sense can make itself known.
Peter’s stiff suits and horrid ties filling half my closet fuel my desire to forget him. His arrogance made what should have been a sexy ensemble stuffy and pompous. He never rolled up the sleeves of his button-up shirts or forwent a tie for a single occasion.
He’d wear suits to bed if given the chance.
I snort. Noelle will probably make him Christmas pajama suits. Then her little Christmas Bug will be snuggly and warm while waiting to taint her virtue after they’ve tied the knot.
That’s the only reason Peter is rushing down the aisle. Noelle doesn’t believe in trying before you buy. She’ll also happily accept a dud if he makes the chapel and reception area look like an elf blew chunks over the classic décor I had picked.
She’s childish, naïve, and downright pathetic.
Anyone who believes in the magic of Christmas is.
Karma bites me for the second time tonight when my bah humbug rant is ended by me stubbing my toe on the stupid ornaments box Peter brought up from storage last week.
Now instead of only speaking two languages, I’m fluent in multiple, but they all appear to only have cusswords in their vocabulary.
My little toe’s pain is more prominent than my heartache. I’m not surprised. Things haven’t been great with Peter for a while, but I wanted to believe him when he got down on bended knee and promised to do better.