How Freaking Romantic

Chapter 1

My mom likes to say I was born angry. It’s usually something she brings up during holiday meals or to her latest boyfriend, inevitably followed by a tittering laugh, as if it’s everything you needed to know about me.

And I always pretend not to hear, even as the comment stokes my ever-present annoyance—which, now that I think about it, might prove her point a little.

But honestly, is anyone born angry? Terrified, yes.

Who wouldn’t be? Thrust into a cold, unforgiving world only to be weighed and probed and manhandled by strangers?

There’s a reason we all emerge screaming.

The first few moments of being a person are horrifying.

Still, no one comes out mad about it. Mostly because we haven’t learned that being scared and vulnerable are things we can even be mad about.

That comes later. Anger comes from experience.

The first time I remember being truly angry was at my mother’s third wedding.

That’s not to say there was anything wrong with the wedding itself; of all her ceremonies it was probably my favorite.

Her fiancé, Larry Huffman, paid for us to fly first class from Minneapolis to Cancún, where he and my mom exchanged vows on a white-sand beach at sunset.

The night before, at the rehearsal dinner, he even let me order a virgin strawberry daiquiri with one of those little paper umbrellas, which, for a ten-year-old girl with trust issues, was a very big step.

No, the anger came the next day, after I watched my mom walk barefoot down the makeshift aisle on the beach.

The sun was setting behind a gauzy veil of pink and orange clouds, sending soft rays of light off the Swarovski crystals in her hair, while a guitarist played Canon in D nearby.

And when she reached Larry, smiling so brightly that her rose-colored blush creased along her cheeks, I couldn’t help but smile, too.

The moment was perfect. The epitome of what love was supposed to look like, what romance ought to be.

The music faded and they clasped their hands together as they began to recite their vows. Larry went first, his gruff voice delivering every word like he was in one of his quarterly board meetings. And then it was my mom’s turn.

“I, Denise Nilsson, promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

All the days of my life.

It suddenly occurred to me that she had said that before.

Those exact words were uttered to Darren Lupinski three years earlier on a hillside overlooking a vineyard in Napa.

She wore white to that wedding, too. And just like that, the soft focus on the moment pulled to sharp clarity, the stark lines now vivid and cutting through the gossamer of my romantic fantasy.

For the rest of the wedding, the competing vows swirled in my head.

During the reception, while the two of them swayed together on the dance floor to the hotel band’s moving cover of Vanessa Williams’s “Save the Best for Last,” I sat at the head table and poked apart a piece of pineapple cream wedding cake, unable to reconcile the promise I had just heard with the one from three years before.

Because even at ten years old, I knew those two events should be mutually exclusive.

I kept the revelation to myself until later that night.

Then, as the band began to pack up and my mother landed drunkenly in the chair next to me, I confided in her.

Did she know she had said those same words before?

Why did they mean more now than back then?

And she laughed. Her head tipped back, the carefully pinned updo now flopping to one side and her pristine dress falling off one shoulder.

She laughed and laughed, like life was some inside joke I wasn’t privy to yet.

As if I were a fool for not knowing. And that hurt so much that the pain transformed into something entirely new: anger.

By the time her fourth wedding rolled around, I was wiser.

Even at fourteen, I could see the signs.

She met Locke Taylor while she was a receptionist at his real estate development company in Atlanta.

Her first week of work, he asked her out to dinner.

By week three he had said “I love you.” Week six saw him fly her to Paris for the weekend.

And after five months, Mom came home with a two-carat diamond on her hand, proclaiming, “This is the one!” They were married in September.

She filed for divorce on their second anniversary.

Needless to say, when she called in the middle of my sophomore year of college to tell me about marriage number five, I just sent a card.

It wasn’t necessarily that the pain had dissipated.

I feel too much too often for that. It’s just that anger is such a useful tool against it all.

Protection that ensures you’re always ready for the pain, that you can fend it off and walk away unscathed.

A proverbial suit of armor that I have gotten quite good at wielding, thank you very much.

But despite that protection, pain can still find a way to sneak up and surprise you.

Like when your mom moves to Florida with husband number six and forgets to tell you until two months after the fact.

Or the first time you open your student loan debt statement and see the interest rate spelled out in actual dollars.

Or, most recently, when you get a phone call in the middle of the night relaying information that you feared was coming for weeks: your two best friends, the ones you worked so hard to bring together, are getting divorced.

And suddenly the old scar along your heart that you had worked so hard to protect is ripped back open again, leaving you feeling raw and powerless and duped. A ten-year-old sitting alone in a ballroom somewhere in Mexico.

Sometimes a person has to lean into anger just to survive.

Which is why I’ve spent this entire elevator ride up to the law office of Hayes, Patel don’t worry about it,” he murmurs into the receiver. Then he hangs up and turns his eyes to me. They’re blue—bright blue—and a spike of resentment shoots through me for all the times I ever found blue eyes attractive. “Can I help you?”

Four words have never been so enlaced with patronizing amusement, as if waiting to see what I have in store. As if this is fun.

“Nathan Asher, right?”

“Right.” He leans back in his chair and unbuttons the front of his suit jacket, getting himself comfortable.

“You’re Joshua Fox’s divorce attorney.”

He smiles. “Are you Mrs. Fox?”

“No.”

His cool demeanor falters, but only slightly. I can see him taking mental stock of me, trying to connect the dots.

“I’m here to tell you that your client is an asshole and you’re an even bigger asshole for representing him.

” I’m standing just a foot or so from his desk now.

How did that happen? I had been so concerned with keeping my voice even that I had forgotten to keep a safe distance, one that would make it impossible to take an involuntary swing at his jaw.

“And you are?” he asks.

I ignore him and barrel on. “You realize he’s the one who filed for divorce, right?

He blindsided her with those papers, demanded that she move out as soon as possible, so why the hell is he the one drawing it out?

Or do you even care? The more hours you spend helping him bleed my friend dry, the more zeros on your paycheck, right? ”

“Ah, Jillian Fox is your friend.” He says it as if this all suddenly makes sense, and he can now mentally disengage.

As if he’s not the catalyst for this crack in the foundation of my support system, my friends who are my whole life.

And just like that, there’s a new tear in my heart, bleeding and raw, and I have to shore up my anger again to protect it.

I take a step closer to his desk, my hips flush with its glass edge. “First it was the apartment. Then the dog. Now he wants alimony ?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Of course it’s a problem! Josh doesn’t need it! But instead of telling him that, you’ve fully endorsed the idea. Do you honestly think it’s Jillian’s responsibility to support your client just because he quit his job to go to grad school, then decided to quit that, too?”

“Yes,” he replies. He has the audacity to still look amused, as if this happens every day. God, maybe it does.

I nod with the realization. “Ah, I see. You’re not just paid to be an asshole. You’re a bona fide, purebred asshole.”

“Okay, let’s not—”

“No.” I hold up my hand. “Don’t pretend like there’s room for manners in this conversation. Or integrity, for that matter.”

That seems to get to him. He leans forward, eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You already put a price on your integrity, Mr. Asher. Eight fifty an hour, right?” I reply, bracing my arms on either side of his desk.

“Well, when you drive home tonight in your luxury car, eat that expensive steak at some fancy restaurant, and then go home to fuck that beautiful woman who wouldn’t give you the time of day if not for your penthouse apartment, I hope you enjoy it.

That’s if you don’t choke on the steak first. A girl can dream, right? ”

He stands, but I’ve already turned around, marching back the way I came.

“Hold on a sec—”

I slam the door behind me before he can finish.

The office that only moments before had been a hive of activity is now silent, a dozen sets of eyes following me as I walk down the hall, keeping just short of a sprint until I reach the waiting elevator and press the down button.