I figured maybe a cheating asshole with a three-bedroom apartment in Uptown was better than my childhood bedroom and a toxic mother who took sadistic pleasure in tearing me down every time I dared to enter the kitchen for food.
Let me tell you, I thoughtthatwas rock bottom.
Nope. Not even close.
Rock bottom was discovering he’d already moved his new girlfriend into our—his—master bedroom and thrown out the rest of my shit when I didn’t come crawling back within a week. Seven years of my life. Seven years of cooking his meals, doing his laundry, managing his calendar, building his business, sacrificing my own dreams and education.
Seven years, and all I got was a heartless boot to the curb when he upgraded to someone younger, skinnier, and apparently less “high-maintenance.”
Oh, and the cherry on top of that shit sundae? I’d been working at his company doing everything from bookkeeping to marketing to advertising, even dropped out of college to help him build his precious startup. But on paper, I was nothing more than an “Administrative Assistant.” And after all the names I called him when I found out about New Bitch—let’s just say they weren’t complimentary—I knew there was zero chance of getting a reference letter.
So here I am. Twenty-eight years old. Unemployed. No college degree. Living with my emotionally abusive mother because I was stupid enough to let some narcissistic asshole use me up and throw me away like yesterday’s garbage.
No, I donotwant to tell the devastatingly handsome new guy who literally swept me off my feet about my spectacularly shitty past. Call me crazy.
I tip the bottle up again, whining pathetically when the last drops hit my tongue and there’s nothing left. I shake the bottle over my open mouth like some kind of desperate alcoholic, managing to extract maybe three more drops before giving up.
Then I flop back onto the enormous four-poster bed with its ridiculously luxurious silk hangings.
I’m doing such a bang-up job of not repeating my terrible patterns.
A handsome, obvious red-flag-waving disaster of a man shows up demanding volunteers to be swept away, and which brain-dead idiot raises her hand like she’s volunteering as tribute in the Hunger Games?Ding ding ding, ladies and gentlemen—that would be me.
I’m pretty sure my therapist—back when I could afford therapy—would say something annoyingly insightful like, “Well, Lauren, if you’re starting to notice a pattern in your behavior, maybe that’s something worth examining more closely.”
Can I help it if I’m apparently magnetically attracted to emotionally unavailable assholes with control issues?
I grab one of the silk pillows and yank it over my face, screaming into it with all the frustration of my twenty-eight years of terrible decisions.
Sometimes we’re drawn to familiar dynamics because they feel safer than the unknown, even when they’re harmful.Great, now I’m hearing my therapist’s voice in my head. I drag the pillow away from my face and glare at the ornate ceiling.
Oh dear God, please tell me I have not fled from one narcissistic control freak only to throw myself directly into the arms of another one. Please tell me I’m not that stupid. Please.
I sit up too quickly and feel the expensive wine slosh around in my mostly empty stomach. I let out a long, unladylike burp that would have sent my mother into a lecture about proper feminine behavior, and then I giggle because fuck propriety.
Damn, that’s some seriously good wine. I feel very, very buzzy, which is a polite way of saying I’m drunk off my ass on what’s probably a bottle worth more than my car.
Usually, at this point in my few and far between spiral-into-despair-and-drink-away-my-problems moments, I’d fire up Netflix and watch some sappy romantic comedy about a lonely woman who buys a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont or moves back to her small hometown only to find some perfectly imperfect carpenter with emotional baggage waiting to sweep her off her feet.
I look around the opulent bedroom with its tapestries and fireplace and antique furniture. Yeah, it’s gorgeous—like something out of a fairy tale—but my millennial brain is having a full-scale panic attack from the complete lack of screens, Wi-Fi, or any connection to the modern world. I’d kill for a good trashy romance novel right about now, but I usually read those on my phone, which is currently as useful as a paperweight in this magical fortress of technological darkness.
I stand up and only wobble a little before my knees give out and I fall back on my ass. At least the mattress is soft enough to catch me. The second attempt goes better—I manage to stay vertical, even if I have to grip the bedpost to keep from listing to one side like a ship taking on water.
I’m bored. And hungry. And what kind of asshole brings you to his castle and doesn’t even show you where the damn kitchen is?
Yeah, yeah, fly off to Paris and get me some Michelin-starred dinner from the fanciest and oldest restaurant in the city—very impressive, very romantic. But how about showing a girl where she can find a midnight snack when she inevitably gets hungry later? That should be Basic Hospitality 101; everybody knows that.
I make it to the heavy wooden door and head down the stone corridor, both arms stretched out so I have a hand on each wall to steady myself. Thank God, little sconces automatically light up as I pass, because I would have made it maybe three feet in complete darkness before giving up and crawling back to bed.
But then I reach the spiral staircase and remember exactly how stupidly far up in the air we are in this tower.
I slump against the cool stone wall and let out a long-suffering groan that echoes through the stairwell.
“Whyyyyyy did I think this was a good idea?”
Half of me wants to sit down and scoot down the stairs on my butt like I used to do as a kid, but I realize that approach might take the better part of an hour to reach the bottom. At least I’m not starting from the very top of the turret like earlier.
It turns out that maintaining a death grip on the stone walls and carefully stepping sideways works reasonably well. I make it down each level without falling to my death, which I’m counting as a major victory. And then I have to play explorer because, hello, nobody bothered to give me the grand tour that included practical information likewhere the fuck is the kitchen.
