3. WAR
ONE
LAUREN
Holy shit,I’m actually writing this down.
My pen hovers over the diary page like it’s confessing to murder. Which, maybe it is—murdering my last shred of dignity. But here goes nothing:
Dear God or whatever deity gives a damn about hot messes in small-town cafés—I just want to get laid.
There. I said it. Well, wrote it. Same difference when you’re a twenty-eight-year-old virgin living in her mother’s spare bedroom, sending job applications into the void like messages in bottles that nobody’s ever gonna find.
I bite my lip and keep writing, because apparently I’m a glutton for punishment:
Actually, scratch that. I don’t just want some mediocre five-minute fumble in the dark. I want to know what it feels like when a man looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world. I want him to worship every curve, every imperfection, like they’re masterpieces. I want to shake and scream and completely lose my shit from pleasure so intense I can barelycatch my breath before he’s making me come again, harder than before.
Jesus. The words stare back at me like they’re written in neon. Part of me wants to rip out the page and pretend I never had these thoughts. The other part—the part that’s been suffocating under my mother’s constant criticism and my ex’s casual cruelty—wants to shout it from the rooftops.
I might as well be wishing to sprout wings and fly to Mars. But a girl can dream, right?
The late afternoon sun slants through the café’s tall windows, casting everything in honey-gold light that makes even the chipped paint on the window frames look romantic. I’m curled up at my usual wrought-iron table on the outdoor patio, the metal warm against my bare arms, my laptop balanced precariously next to a half-empty iced coffee that’s gone watery in the heat.
The fountain beside me gurgles and splashes, sending up a fine mist that catches the light like tiny diamonds. It’s one of those perfect summer days in Springfield—the kind that makes you forget this place is basically a glorified truck stop on the highway to somewhere better. The air smells like fresh bread from the bakery across the square and the sweet, cloying scent of the magnolia trees that line the cobblestone walkways.
Around me, the town square buzzes with lazy afternoon energy. A young couple shares a cone from the ice cream cart, her sundress fluttering in the breeze while he laughs at something she whispers. Moms push strollers along the brick paths, their toddlers scampering ahead to chase the pigeons that cluster around the fountain’s edge. An elderly man feeds ducks from a bench, his weathered hands gentle as he scatters breadcrumbs.
Everyone existing in a world where dreams actually come true sometimes. Everyone except me.
Meanwhile, I’m the sad girl in the corner, watching life happen to everyone else.
God, listen to me. Poor little Lauren, all tragic and shit. My friends would roll their eyes so hard they’d see their brain stems. “You’re not a victim,” my best friend Jess told me last week over video chat. “You’re just stuck. There’s a difference.”
Easy for her to say. Jess has a corner office, a hot boyfriend, and zero toxic mothers breathing down her neck twenty-four-seven.
Speaking of which—my phone buzzes with an alarm. Fifteen minutes until I have to drive Mom to another doctor’s appointment for another imaginary ailment. Because God forbid I have one afternoon to myself without her reminding me what a disappointment I am.
“Did you go for a walk today, Lauren? Really, how do you expect to lose weight and find a man if you aren’t even trying?”
Or my personal favorite: “Why don’t you come into the salon with me? That frumpy look isn’t going to get you any job interviews. Employers respect presentation.”
The woman puts on full makeup to check the mail. She cannot comprehend that her daughter—her “life’s great embarrassment,” as she so lovingly puts it—dares to leave the house in leggings and a t-shirt without a full face of war paint.
I used to be pretty, according to her. Back in high school when I had an eating disorder and she still found ways to shame me about my weight. Even when I was literally starving myself, it wasn’t enough. When I ended up in the hospital, barely conscious and hooked to IVs, she visited once.
“Why do you have to be so dramatic about everything?” she’d cried, like my near-death experience was a personal inconvenience. “Why can’t you be normal like everyone else’s daughters?”
Yeah. Mother of the fucking Year material right there.
I shake off the old wounds and check my phone again. Ten minutes now. These stolen moments away from her, here in the open air with the breeze carrying the scent of summer and possibility, feel like the only times I can actually breathe. The café’s striped umbrellas flutter overhead, and the distant sound of traffic from Main Street mingles with children’s laughter from the playground on the far side of the square. Which is ridiculous at twenty-eight—needing to escape to a public space just to feel human—but here we are.
I always dreamed of finding adventure. Of traveling the world, having a grand love affair, doing something—anything—that mattered. Instead, I’m living in my childhood bedroom, unemployed, single, and writing sex fantasies in a diary like I’m fourteen years old.
Life was supposed to be different by now. Seven years with Michael should’ve led somewhere, right? College, marriage, a future that didn’t involve explaining to my high school classmates why I’m back home, defeated and alone. Instead, all I got was a heartless boot to the curb when he “upgraded” to someone skinnier and younger.
“You just don’t fit into my five-year plan anymore,” he’d said, like I was a subscription he was canceling. Seven years of free labor, free sex, free emotional support, and I “didn’t fit.” The gall of that man. Guy. Whatever the hell he was.
A scream cuts through my spiral of self-pity, sharp and sudden in the peaceful square.
