Chapter - 1
ELOISE
“I don’t understand why women want to look like that.” My mother scrunched her nose at the picture I was showing her, making disappointment flood my stomach at her words. I shouldn’t have been surprised by her comment, and yet, here I was. I guess because I had been putting in the work the last few years to become a better version of myself, I forgot that my mother simply, well, hadn’t.
“What’s wrong with how she looks?” I dropped my smile, something that felt a little unnatural to me still, as I pulled my phone back to look at the image of Courtney Henderson that I was showing her. Courtney had just posted a picture of herself on her social media page, a page that had significantly more followers since she and Joshua Madey, the lead singer of the most popular punk rock band in the world, got engaged.
“What man wants their woman to look so muscular? She’s losing her natural femininity by doing that to herself.” My mother sipped her tea as she explained, eyeballing the newspaper in front of her. That’s right, a real newspaper. Not an article on her phone or e-reader. My mother literally still read the newspaper.
I silently scolded myself for even bothering with her.
I had simply seen my friend post a picture of herself at the gym and wanted to share it. She was wearing black exercise shorts and a sports bra, and was posing in the mirror for a selfie, her body turned so you could see her profile, and flexing her now-defined four-pack abs. She had been exercising more intentionally for almost two years now, and I was proud of her for reaching her goals to become stronger. She still looked feminine to me. Her ass was tight and lifted, and her breasts were still bigger than mine.
I didn’t bother explaining to my mother that one of the most sought-after men, by women everywhere, was engaged to her. That the man who held the gaze of most women in the world had his sights set on Courtney and had every intention of locking her down.
“You’re assuming that her goal is to get the attention of men.”
“You’re right,” she glanced up at me with a small smile, making me blink in surprise at her quick agreement, “She clearly isn’t. She probably just likes attention from likes and comments.” My mother shook her head once, as if her assumptions about Courtney weren’t ridiculous and that she was one hundred percent right in her interpretations.
As if exercising simply to hit your own goals was silly.
As if not giving a damn about what other men thought of your body was equally ridiculous.
This was yet another domino to fall for me, and many had fallen over the past couple of years.
I had been living at home with my parents in their beachside home in Dana Point, California. I moved back in with them after my ex-boyfriend, Adam Hall, dumped me. I was in denial about the breakup at first because we seemed like the perfect match on paper. Our families were close. We had grown up together. A part of me had even beamed at the fact that the cute red-headed boy who was a grade ahead of me in high school ended up falling for me as an adult. It was the dream every teenager had whenever their high school crush didn’t reciprocate during their high school years.
We dated for about a year.
Then Adam had a serious bout with depression, which resulted in him tanking his Olympic surfing career, breaking up with me, and starting a new job working with special needs children as a Physical Therapist.
Both of our mothers had come to me to help me try to win him back, which I was all about. My ego was hit by our breakup. I had become too comfortable with our relationship, even though it had been pretty surface-level now that I looked back on it. I was able to figure that out quickly once Adam started dating one of his co-workers, Beck Scott. She was a speech therapist at the same early intervention clinic he worked at.
They fell in love and had been together for the last couple of years. Beck had even moved into Adam’s condo recently. They were clearly it for each other, and I still felt like an asshole every now and then for trying to win Adam back when the reality was, I didn’t actually like him for him. I just liked the idea of us together.
I was growing, though. I knew I had a lot of work to do on myself, and that was mostly thanks to Courtney, Beck, and Taylor. I had seen their friendship during a company retreat that I had helped organize a few years ago (you know, back when I was trying to win Adam back but he was clearly head over heels for Beck and I was blind to it), and I realized that their bond was so special and unique. Their friendships with each other were so comfortable and achingly honest.
I wanted that.
I may have not so discreetly weaseled myself into their little social circle, blatantly ignoring how awkward it must have been for Adam to have his ex-girlfriend become part of his friend group at work.
I even went as far as to start working at the same early intervention clinic as all of them, even though my parents didn’t understand why I felt the need to get a job like that. I wanted a nine-to-five. I wanted to work consistently and build up my own income so that I didn’t need to rely on my parents or their trust fund for the entirety of my life.
This brunch with my mother was making me happier about that choice, as she said way too much in the few words that she had spoken to me since seeing that picture of Courtney.
“Well, anyways,” I cleared my throat, determination only making the fear I felt slightly dissipate, “I wanted to let you know that I am moving out.”
My mother set her tea mug down and looked at me with raised blonde eyebrows. We looked so much alike, my mother and me. I was always referred to as her “Mini-Me” by her and her friends. We both had light blonde hair that only became paler during the summertime, clear blue eyes, and small frames. The only difference was that I had a slight smattering of freckles over my nose, and she didn’t.
Last year I chopped my hair shorter and kept it that way. It hovered just above my shoulders, and I loved how little maintenance it took to take care of now. My mother hated it, frowning when she first saw the spontaneous cut. She had never let me cut my hair too short as a child, saying that it was too pretty to destroy like that.
I realized last year that I was a grown-ass woman in her late twenties and that I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.
That wasn’t the only alteration I had made to my appearance. I also had three beautiful tattoos. One under my breast along my left ribcage, one on my right hip that went down my thigh halfway, and one on my right forearm. They were all bouquets of flowers. Was it a basic white girl design? Yes, but I loved flowers. I had also discovered that I weirdly loved getting tattoos, and I loved having visual art on my body. They didn’t have any special meanings, I simply thought they were pretty and found a woman tattoo artist I had felt comfortable with to design them.
My mother also hated that, stating that I would need a foundation to cover up my tattoos whenever I attended formal fundraising events that she and the Halls put on. I agreed, knowing I would find an excuse to simply never attend those events. It has worked out so far.
“Why?” my mother asked, a slight downturn to her lips making me pull out of my thoughts. “Is something wrong with your space?”
“No,” I shook my head as I stalled by sipping my own tea, “I just think it’s time for me to, well, no longer live with my parents again. I appreciate you guys helping me out so much.” I smiled. My fake smile, the smile that Beck had once told me made her convinced that butterflies would shoot right out of my ass the first time we met. That memory still made me giggle sometimes.
“Oh, I guess you have a point,” she nodded. “Where do you want to go? We have the condo in Laguna Beach being rented right now, but based on the lease they signed we could have them out within a month or two.” My mother lifted a shoulder as if uprooting a family renting from them was absolutely nothing. As if housing in Orange County wasn’t a massive clusterfuck right now, and that family would probably struggle to find somewhere to live on such short notice.
“No, no,” I wanted to shut that thought down immediately. I would rather die than live on a property my parents owned again, “I already found a room.” I smiled at some of the other members who were also having brunch in the country club dining room, waving a little bit as I avoided my mother’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, a room?” she asked, disgust blanketing her tone.
I nodded. “Yes, it’s affordable. And I already know the other two women who live there.” This was also something I was going out of my way to pretend wasn’t awkward. I was moving in with Beck’s grandmother, Susan. That’s right, I was moving into my ex-boyfriend’s, current girlfriend’s, old bedroom. Her grandmother was around seventy-six years old now and liked the idea of having roommates around just in case. Courtney was already renting the room right across the hallway from mine.
We had been helping Beck move her boxes over to Adam’s condo when they mentioned that they hadn’t found someone to take over Beck’s room yet. It wasn’t an urgent need since the mortgage was already being split two ways between Courtney and Susan. That was when I had mentioned in passing that I might be interested in staying there, and to my surprise, everyone jumped at the idea.
I had movers loading my things from my parents’ house and taking it over to the townhome at this very moment while my father was at the office and my mother was here at brunch with me. They couldn’t stop me, and it would already be done by the time we were finished here.
“Honey,” my mother gave me a disbelieving look, “You know you don’t need to live in such confinement. Your father and I are happy to help cover things if your little job can’t afford a more functional space.”
I tried not to be offended by her condescending tone, mostly because I knew that my mother truly didn’t mean to belittle me this way. My “little job” was just that to her. It didn’t make sense in her mind for me to work forty hours a week when she and my dad were capable of providing everything that I needed so that I could be comfortable.
I just didn’t want to be comfortable anymore.
“Hey, girl, hey!” I heard Lucy’s voice call from the side. Though her voice now sounded like nails on a chalkboard in my mind, I was grateful for the interruption. I turned away from my mother and smiled at my old friend.
Old, because I hardly hung out with her and the others at the country club anymore.
I stood from my chair and wrapped my arms around her in a hug that she happily returned.
“Hey, you!” I grinned, trying my best not to make it a grimace. Lucy used to be my best friend. Used to be, because I had realized way too late in life that best friends don’t consistently bail on you, they don’t say mean things about you behind your back, and they don’t try to go after your ex-boyfriend once it was obvious you two weren’t going to get back together.
“I haven’t seen you in forever!” Lucy smiled, sitting down in an empty chair at my mother’s table. She was wearing a swimsuit cover-up, clearly getting ready to tan by the pool.
“Oh, there’s Barbara. I’ll be back in a moment.” My mother stood from her chair and gave me a quick kiss on the head before she hurried off to one of her old friends. I felt my shoulders visibly relax with her absence, which really said a lot.
“I know, it’s been a while,” I smiled at Lucy. She was beautiful. Tanned skin, bright red hair, bright green eyes, and lips that she had just recently gotten filler in.
“So, what’s new? How are you?” she asked, leaning her arms on the table as if she was going to settle in. I knew better. It took all of one second for her to lean back and hold her palms out to me. “Oh! Did you hear about Connor?” Of course. She didn’t actually care about what I had been up to. In a way I was grateful, it made distancing myself from her that much easier.
However, the mention of that man’s name made my gut sour again.
In the last five minutes of speaking with my mother, and now this conversation with Lucy, I had gotten a blatant reminder as to why I avoided coming back to the country club.
“No, what happened?” I asked, widening my eyes with fake curiosity for Lucy’s benefit.
“He and Michelle hooked up last weekend.” Lucy’s plump lips turned downwards with her eye roll. “Lucky bitch.”
I held my calm fa?ade in place, glad she still didn’t know about my mistake with Connor.
Connor James was a friend of my father”s. He was single, in his late-forties, and had a young daughter named Stella. She had Down Syndrome and was the absolute cutest toddler. He was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, tan, and literally a carbon copy of every other man in South Orange County. To be fair, he really was good-looking for his age. And that is the one thing I kept telling myself so that I didn’t spiral about how gross my decision was last year.
I had been upset with my father. He had belittled me again, unintentionally. I couldn’t even remember what he had said or done specifically, only that I was feeling very spiteful and petty.
Connor and the other men from the country club had come over to my father’s den for poker night.
During a break in the game where the men smoked cigars on the back deck that overlooked the ocean, I bumped into Connor in the hallway. Connor had let his gaze travel over my body, letting me know he definitely liked what he saw. That was all it took, really. To know that I could give my dad this one massive middle finger even if he never knew what happened. So, I flirted with Connor. He, obviously, flirted back. I hadn’t done anything more than slightly graze my fingers along his forearm in passing, and that was it. The next day, I got a call from him asking what I was up to that night. If I was interested in seeing some paintings that he had just purchased from the Laguna Beach Art Fair.
I wasn’t an idiot.
He wanted to get laid.
I was disappointed with where I was in life, and disappointed in my father, and wanted to make self-destructive choices.
So, I went over to Connor’s house.
Other girls my age at the country club ogled Connor James often. They called him a silver fox based on the white hair that just barely started to dust above his ears. Other girls would go out of their way to hook up with Connor like it was a game to them, or an item to check off their to-do list.
I leaned into the game a little farther than I should have.
One thing that I learned immediately, was that if that was how he was intimate with his ex-wife the entirety of their marriage, she should have left him a lot sooner.
No foreplay took place.
Kissing was not his strong suit, let alone kissing with his tongue.
I was lost thinking about my to-do list at work the next morning as Connor was thrusting inside me, hitting nothing of significance, but panting as if he was sprinting.
I also had to remind him to use a condom multiple times. As if he assumed I would be totally cool with him going forward with this hookup completely bare.
Needless to say, he came and I didn’t.
He didn’t even ask if I did, that’s how much of a shit stain he was.
He had rolled off of me and promptly passed out in his bed, and I wasted no time in getting the hell out of there. I immediately regretted my decision to sleep with an older man out of spite. That was one of the many other dominoes to fall, I realized later on. I wasn’t fit for the culture in my mother’s world anymore. The world I was raised in was full of privilege and of wanting to sleep with conventionally attractive men, simply because the opportunity arose and I had nothing better to do. A world where my mother felt completely comfortable judging other women’s bodies and making demeaning comments as if men’s approval was what all women should strive for.
I was done.
Connor, however, wasn’t. He had reached out to me multiple times after that. He left me voicemails (like the older man he was) and texted me asking for another round. I ghosted him, because obviously. A few months after that mistake, I saw him at a club in LA with my friends and told them why I was avoiding a random man at the club.
They had laughed with me, reminding me that I didn’t need to explain why I slept with a man and regretted it. They told me that his daughter, Stella, used to be a client of theirs at the early intervention clinic before I started and that Connor had been ballsy enough to ask Beck out at her place of work.
They also called him Daddy James, which was both disgusting and hilarious.
“How is Michelle?” I asked, trying to blink away the gross image of my one night with him.
“She said she was sore the next morning.” Lucy winked at me. “Ugh, I knew he would be a beast in the sack.”
I wanted to roll my eyes but refrained. I had no doubt Michelle was sore, because so was I. Not because it was good sex, but because he sucked at foreplay and getting a woman ready for penetrative sex. Michelle cared a lot about image and what other people thought of her, though, so I wasn’t surprised that she would simply lie about how good Daddy James was in bed.
“Wow, that’s wild.” I didn’t know what else to say that wasn’t a lie. “How are you, Luce?” I knew this question would get her going for a while. She started monologuing about her newest yoga class, and how I needed to go with her sometime. She also mentioned a few casual hookups she had, that I barely paid attention to. My mother had eventually come back to the table and was nodding animatedly at Lucy’s tales of what she had been up to the last few months.
In short, absolutely nothing.
She was a trust fund kid, like me. Except she loved it. To be fair, I used to as well. Having the kind of money our families did was awesome. We could do whatever we wanted with very little repercussions. I got it, I had just outgrown it.
I didn’t want to be comfortable anymore.
“…you have to come!” Lucy said, reaching out to grab my arm. My polite smile was in place, an attempt to hide the fact that I wasn’t listening to her the last few minutes.
“Pardon?”
“Tonight! Michelle’s party!” Lucy grinned, showing freshly whitened teeth. I shrugged.
“I’m sorry, I already have plans.” I pulled my phone out to check the time. The moving company had recently sent me a text message with a thumbs up emoji, indicating that all my belongings had been properly moved. I was free to go to my new home now.
“What are you doing tonight?” my mother asked, eyeballing my phone that I pocketed as I made my way to stand.
“My friends have tickets to the Ducks” game in Anaheim. I promised I would go.” I leaned forward to kiss my mother on the head and waved my fingers at Lucy. “You’ll have to tell me all the dirty details of what happens tonight.”
“Oh, I will.” Lucy wiggled her eyebrows at me while my mother just giggled at us. I waved goodbye to them both as I started speed walking for the country club exit. I wasn’t positive my mother even remembered our conversation before our friends distracted us, so I wasn’t sure how she would react when she eventually came home this afternoon and her only daughter would be nowhere to be found and her bedroom was completely empty, minus the large four-post bed frame that simply wouldn’t fit in my new bedroom.
I left the club and rushed into my car, accidentally slamming the door behind me as I landed in the driver’s seat. The exhale I made was loud and dramatic, which was another physical reminder of how important it was for me to distance myself from this part of my life.
I was improving, and I wanted to keep improving.
I didn’t want to be the kind of woman my mother was; the woman who looked at a picture of another woman at her physical peak and turned up her nose at it. The woman who loved gossip and sleeping with men simply for the status of it, like Lucy.
I wanted to be like Courtney and Beck. Maybe even a little bit like Taylor, unapologetically true to themselves.
I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin, while surrounded by people who allowed me to be. Friends who cheered and admired my new tattoos and welcomed me into the townhome with open arms. Who welcomed me into their workplace with the occasional coffee left on my administration desk in the morning. Who bent over backward to not make things weird since my ex-boyfriend was dating Beck, someone I now considered to be one of my good friends.
People who, and I cannot stress this enough, introduced me to the wonderful world of romance novels and happily shared smutty recommendations with me.
I have read more in the last year than I have read in the entirety of my life. I also learned so much more about what kind of woman I want to be after reading hundreds of romance novels. I want to be strong, independent, loving, and safe. Who knew romance novels would make me realize what kind of partner I deserved? Not just a man to fill the role as husband, or spouse. I want a partner, what Beck and Adam have with each other. What Courtney and Josh have with each other. Someone I don’t exactly need, but someone I specifically want. Who also wants me in return.
I want someone who will be my cheerleader.
That didn’t mean I needed to settle for anyone, like what I was unintentionally doing with Adam when we were dating. Sure, the sex between us was good. I got off more with Adam than with any other man I had dated, but that was it. There wasn’t a lot of emotional connection between us. We didn’t even like watching the same kinds of TV shows and movies. He loved reading science fiction and fantasy, and I didn’t. Come to think of it, I was genuinely surprised that we lasted a whole year.
I was just about to pull out of the parking space when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Court: Is everyone set to meet at the townhouse tonight before the game? I’m eating at old-person dinner time with Susan before we leave.
Beck: Adam and I will be there for dinner, too.
Taylor: Yup, I’ll be there after.
Josh: I can have my driver take us since the car can fit us all in one vehicle.
Adam: I guess I can ride in your gas-guzzler this time.
Josh: Adam is officially uninvited to the carpool.
Adam: Oh no, I guess I’ll have to drive in my environmentally friendly vehicle instead.
Court: If your driver had an electric car available, I know you’d take that instead J-shua.
Taylor: Lo, are you coming?
I smiled. I loved my nickname; it was so cute and simple. It felt like me. I replied immediately, warmth filling my chest at simply being remembered.
Me: I’ll be there after the old-person dinner.
Taylor: Is Logan sitting with us?
My stomach soured. Fuck that guy.
Court: Nope.
Thank fuck he couldn’t join us for whatever reason. I pocketed my phone and pulled out of the driveway. How someone as loveable and friendly as Courtney was able to befriend an asshat like Logan St. James was beyond me. I had only a handful of interactions with the man, and they all sucked. He seemed to charm literally everyone else in the group, all except for me. Just looking at him filled me with anger.
I was glad he wouldn’t be coming tonight. After this morning with my mother and Lucy, I wanted time to let loose and relax with my friends. Without Logan’s silent glares and frowns and various looks of disapproval for simply existing.
No, tonight I would treat myself to an alcoholic beverage.
Maybe some stale stadium popcorn.
I would pretend to understand or care about what was happening during the hockey game. I would laugh and joke around with my friend’s company, not caring what I looked like or how I sounded. I would simply exist and find peace in that.