I thought I’d get over it. Vet school was kicking my butt, so who had the time to be infatuated with three guys, all at once, equally? Me. I did. My obsession with them never went away.
It stayed and ruined me. I couldn’t date anyone else, couldn’t sleep without dreaming about them, or breathe without being aware of their existence. My whole world crashed around me from the moment I first saw them, and I haven’t been the same since.
But deep down, I’m still a practical person. So I took a chance at a masquerade ball with a very specific twist: buy a ticket, and if your number gets chosen by a celebrity or billionaire, you win a private dinner with them in one of the venue’s luxury hotel rooms upstairs. I bought tickets for all three of them.
It would be the most serendipitous, perfectly fated thing ever if they picked my number. Not that I was leaving anything to chance. I already had a backup plan—I was going to make a deal with whoever was chosen so I could take their place instead.
But they picked my numbers.Me. We were meant to be together, surely. It was written in the stars. Except that detour in my destiny was just so they could tell me face to face, “Yeah, no.”
“Well, you know what,” I say to Alessia, the memory of their rejection in the hotel room still stinging. “They can have blah blah and blah blah and blah blah. I’m done. I’m so done.”
I need to do something grand, something outrageous to signify this pivot in my life. But what... Then an idea forms in my head, and my heart beats faster. “You know what I’m going to do, Sia?”
“Tell me,” Alessia begs.
“It’s perfect, so perfect, you’re going to fall to your knees and worship me for my ingenuity.”
“Just tell me,” Alessia says as she follows me around my room, while I open drawer after drawer looking for a couple of markers.
“I’m going to sell their underwear online, and I’m going to buy myself a ticket to... to some island somewhere with white sand and blue waters. I have ten days of vacation. The timing is perfect.
“I’m going to have myself a five-star vacation. I’m going to day drink little pink cocktails with umbrellas. I’m going to sunbathe, swim with the dolphins, and eat carbs. So many carbs. And then I’m going to return a new woman, and if you ask me about them, I’ll say Kellan who? Nolan who? Oren who?”
Chapter Four
Clover
“That is brilliant,” Alessia says with her eyes wide, looking at me in true admiration. I soak up her praise and seek more.
“And guess what, I’m going to do it in color. Reds, yellows, greens, and turquoise—turquoise, Alessia.”
“That’s my girl,” my best friend says, before we break out into a dance and high-five each other. Then we hug as we bounce around. This is me reclaiming my heart back. Screw them.
“I’m so freaking proud of you, babe. This is exactly the thing that must come out of your diabolical act. Fuck Kellan, Nolan, and Oren,” Alessia shouts.
“Triple fuck them—their gorgeous faces, their eight-pack abs, the way they smell like... like addiction. But most importantly, fuck them for having such deplorable taste when they didn’t pick me,” I shout, feeling oddly liberated.
It’s true. I’m a damn catch, and they’ll never get to have a piece of me. Okay, I’m not really, but this is what I need to tell myself for the purposes of empowerment.
“Preach. Let them have their blahs. They’ve got nothing on you, darling.”
“Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero,” I agree enthusiastically. “Right,” I add, opening a marker with my teeth, then talking around it. “I’ll make a lot more money if they’re signed, so all their groupies can go wild.” I clear my desk, pick up a bunch of their boxer briefs, and get to work.
“Excellent idea. And you know what, use my laptop so they can’t trace anything back to you. And my bank account. Set everything up, get all the money, book your un-unrequited vacation, and I’ll take care of mailing the goods to your customers.”
“Would you?” I ask, thankfully, with a hand on my heart.
“You didn’t think about that part, did you?”
“No. But that’s why I have you,” I say sheepishly. I didn’t even think about the huge administrative task involved in this endeavor.
“I got you, babe. Now get started. That vacation is not going to pay for itself. I’ll catch you later. I have to go and clean another house.” She air-quotes “clean.”
“Bye. Love ya.”
“Right back at ya,” Alessia says over her shoulder as she leaves.
An hour later, my hand starts to cramp. I’ve already signed a bunch of them, and I even wrote a few personal notes for each one.
