PROLOGUE
Never givea man a second time to waste yours.
The thought rolled through my head as I rubbed the mascara wand across my lashes. The instant lift and visible thickening forced my hand down as I gazed at my reflection. A smile creased the corners of my lips. I shifted my weight from my right side to the left. Instinctively, my head lifted and fell.
“Oh, she’s good.”
There was hardly anything Roulette managed to screw up, but beauty finds were her specialty. Suggesting the new stick of mascara wasn’t enough for the newlywed damsel. She’d contributed to our ever-growing vanity collections by purchasing one for every woman in her circle.
Bzzzzt.
Bzzzzt.
My cell vibrated on the vintage wood. I was brought back to my initial thoughts.Men. A mundane subject that didn’t quite deserve the few minutes of recognition it managed to acquire from me daily.
Bzzzzt.
Bzzzzt.
My thumb pressed into the side of the phone, forcing silence. The unknown caller was no secret, nor were the digits that combined to form his cell number. They were blocked.
Second chance.
Second wind.
Second attempt.
Second nothing.
The music resumed. I swayed my body slowly.
Because it’s incredibly likely they didn’t deserve the first. Red flags will still be red no matter how many times they are forgiven.
I leaned toward the mirror of my antique vanity, applying a second coat of mascara to the same lashes I was head over heels for. Once satisfied, I began brushing the wand across the lashes of my left eye, promising to return once the second coat of the left eye was semi-dry.
Men will beg you to disappoint you again.
I kissed the skin of my teeth at the thought.
Righting their wrongs is hardly ever their objective.
Not for most men.
Victory is.
They can’t stand to lose.
It hardly has anything to do with you and everything to do with their fragile egos.
They inherit a sense of urgency to be in the good graces of women that should be grounds for insanity. Mainly because itis improbable they’ve changed anything within hours or days of their exile.
Chuckling, I considered the facts.
They feel like the heroes of their lousy friend group when they’re expressing the dirty things they’ve done to their partners. Cheating. Lying. Manipulating. Gaslighting. Harming. Hurting. The list goes on.
Yet, when the gift of that woman stops giving, those loose lips are sealed. There’s silence amongst that circle. And, the mission is to retrieve what they’ve lost before the realization hits those around them.
Explaining they’ve lost the person they joked about cheating on, lying to, manipulating, gaslighting, harming, and hurting feels incriminating, embarrassing, and impossible.
