“Maybe he doesn’t realize what he’s doing is making me feel disrespected in our relationship.”
“Is he jealous that his account has sixty-three thousand followers, while you have over a hundred thousand?” Georgia asks.
“That’s silly. We aren’t in competition. We don’t even talk about the same things.” Owen is a food and restaurant critic, so his account is all about the best spots to eat in SoCal.
“Maybe you should make puking sounds in the background while he’s recording videos for his account.” A vindictive gleam glints in my bestie’s blue eyes.
“I might, if he pushes me much more. I just wish he’d quit saying my reading is making me have ‘unrealistic expectations’ that he doesn’t feel he can meet. It’d be better if he just didn’t say a word about my books and kept it to himself.”
“What else does he say?” She can tell there’s more.
I sigh. “Last week, I was readingBig Beautiful, and he said, ‘No billionaire with a six-pack wants to be seen with a fat chick.’”
Georgia gasps. “Oh my God, I want to stab him!”
“Gotta admit, I thought about it. Or hitting him with a frying pan for being so insensitive.” I shake my head. “He wasn’t like that before. Or maybe we just didn’t spend enough time together until I moved in.” It’s one of my biggest regrets about the whole thing with Owen. I wished I’d been more cautious—ensured that I was one hundred percent certain before moving in—rather than getting swept up in the moment when he said he loved me.
“Buyer’s remorse doesn’t kick in until after you’ve bought,” she says, totally on Team Molly.
“I told him the title referred to the hero’s package, not the size of the main female character, while giving himthat look.” It was unfair of me—Owen isn’t small. But I was too upset to care. “He didn’t speak to me for three days, and I got so much reading and other stuff done. And that bothers me. Being ignored by my boyfriend for three days shouldn’t have felt…” I trail off, struggling to find the right word.
“Good…?” Georgia prompts.
“Good. Yeah.” I feel awful that it’s really the only suitable word. It’s painful to realize that the first guy who told me he loved me is someone I’m struggling to live with.What’s wrong with me?Or is it him? Owen seemed fine before. Or is it us as a couple?
“Girl.” Georgia makes a face. “You need to get rid of Owen. And your shitty job. You need a life makeover.”
I laugh. “A life makeover?”
“Hey, it’s a thing. There’s a podcast about it. Here.” She taps her phone and texts me a link. “You should check it out. It’ll give you some clarity. I listen to these ladies all the time. There’s even a life makeover retreat in Seattle. Wanna come?”
“Uh… I’ll take a look, but no guarantees.” Part of me says I need to start looking for a new apartment, especially if Owen and I can’t have a serious discussion about our relationship. We can’t continue like this. I wish our issues were something we could fix—because love conquers all. But real lives aren’t romance novels with a third-act breakup.
“I’m so sorry, girl. Hopefully, your birthday gets better, and you run into a hot billionaire who needs you more than you need him and treats you like the queen that you are.”
I laugh. “Yeah. So do I.” I smile to hide my wistfulness over how my life is off the rails even though I’m almost twenty-six and feel like I should have it all figured out by now.
Chapter Three
Nicholas
I look around the ballroom at the Ritz for a final check before my mother, the star of tonight’s event, arrives. She asked for a particularly lavish birthday party with all her friends, acquaintances and the other mothers of my six half-brothers. So I invited them, but not my brothers themselves because she wanted Dad present, and they can’t stand him. I try to avoid Dad as much as possible as well. Nothing embarrasses the man. Thank God secondhand humiliation isn’t fatal. Otherwise, my life would’ve been over before I became a teenager.
Mom will be thrilled when she walks in. Four hundred balloons and teddy bears fill the space, just like she wanted, and exactly one thousand red roses are arranged in beautiful clusters everywhere. She asked for a quartet to start the party, then a DJ to get the crowd going and dancing, so that’s been arranged. She couldn’t decide between a buffet or a sit-down dinner, so I got both—a seven-course sit-down dinner with a dessert buffet. Plus a chocolate fountain in the center because she said she had to have one.
It took four weeks to pull it together, but the result is stunning. Not even Athena—Grant’s super-critical mother—or Rachel—Griffin’s hyper-melodramatic mother—will be able to find fault with the arrangements.
The only thing I need to get the party started is Mom.
I check the time. She’s ten minutes late, which is to be expected. Mom isn’t known for being punctual. That virtue belongs to her husband Paul. Although I could call him my “stepfather,” it’s never felt right. Mom didn’t marry him until I was twenty-six, well past the time I needed a father figure in my life. The man is also perceptive and wise enough not to expect me to play his son.
“Just where is she?” Athena’s words are clipped, and she looks at me like it’s my fault her time is being wasted. A lanky strawberry blonde, she has a stratospheric IQ and gets bored easily. She believes most people are too dumb to associate with. She only deigned to come to the party because she’s decided I have a sufficient number of brain cells to meet her standards, and she finds Mom likable and funny.
“Maybe she couldn’t find a date,” Rachel says, tossing her long golden hair over a delicate shoulder in a typically practiced gesture—she never does anything without knowing the exact effect it will have on her audience. She’s in a white Grecian dress that shows off her lithe body and legs. She makes sure to stand with her hips canted just so, her chin tilted at the perfect angle. She’s a former model who every woman wanted to be and every man wanted to marry, and she knows how to pose to showcase her assets.
“She’s married, Rachel,” Athena points out stiffly. Her tone says it’s taking all her patience not to call Rachel an idiot.
“So? She might want some variety. And there’s something about youthful men that just makes you feelyoung.” Rachel leans closer to her date, who’s probably in his mid-twenties. He has an exceptionally pretty face, with deep-set blue eyes, a rosy mouth and a slim, wiry body that could pass for a dancer’s, except he doesn’t have the grace. Rachel likes her men young, malleable and photogenic. She doesn’t care to be seen with men who don’t enhance her.
