by Ellen Mint
And a plan formed in my vacant heart.
I walked, calmly, into the bedroom. Blade lay on the bed, texting. He didn’t even glance at me. I proceeded into the closet and took stock. The back corner of his side was filled with expensive suits and cashmere. Blade had always been a snappy dresser—I’d noticed right away the night we’d met two years ago at a New Year’s Eve party.
I hugged my arms around his soft, expensive sweaters and snatched them off the rack.
I returned to the bedroom.
Once again, I wasn’t worthy of a turn from his noble, blond head.
I dropped the cashmere onto the floor and opened the window. We were three floors up. I leaned down and grabbed every single stitch of Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss.
With a grin, I tossed them all out of the window. They sailed downward, colorful arms flailing in the breeze.
No sound of protest, so I returned to his expensive closet corner and started in on the suits. They seemed to plummet to the street much faster. I didn’t know how much faster, because I wasn’t a science person. I was a language person who’d read instead of getting married.
“Hey!”
A wide grin bloomed once again on my face, but I didn’t look at him. I bolted back into the closet and went for the shoes this time. Blade had his shoes flown in from Italy.
I let his shoes fly into the setting New York City sun.
He lost his mind, screaming and yelling. Men—so emotional. He told me no one would ever want me because I was such a bitch. Dagmar the boring, the plain. Living with me was like screwing an accountant’s ledger. Then he ran downstairs to reclaim his stuff.
After he left, I hollered down to the faces upturned toward me on the sidewalk. “It’s the wardrobe of a douchebag! He talked me into an expensive apartment rental and now, three weeks later, is abandoning me to move to L.A.!” I spread my arms wide. “Take it aaaaaaaaaaall!”
I got applause from a group of women strolling by in suits and sneakers. They ran to grab the sweaters just as Blade made it down there.
I closed the window and sprinted into the living room. Splendid—he’d left his keys in the decorative bowl next to the front door. This was the first good thing that had happened to me all day. I slipped in vomit on the way to the deadbolt, but I deliberately chose not to care. I slammed the door—blam!—and shoved a wooden chair from our dining set underneath the handle for good measure.
Next, I cleaned the ick off my foot and flew to my laptop. Two months ago, he’d finally convinced me to obtain a joint bank account. We’d done it, but I hadn’t closed my old, single-girl one. They were with the same bank. In three minutes, I’d transferred the bulk of the joint account into mine, then I severed the connection.
At least this money would buy me a little time. Two months’ worth, perhaps, but it was better than nothing. A smile of surprise graced me—shocking that he hadn’t done the same thing to me before he’d cut me loose. He rather had, though—I’d wanted to save more money before we moved into a pricier zip code.
Bastard.
Bang bang bang! He beat on the apartment door and hurled curses upon my head, but hell would freeze into Ice Capades before I did one more thing for that jackass.
His words sniveled through the door. “Dag, what the hell is wrong with you? You’ll be alone forever, you bitch! I tried so hard to love you, but you’re just—just a boring fucking nothing! Let me in!”
Well, that wasn’t very nice.
Drink. I needed a drink. Why not? I was unemployed and alone. I’d always had a rule about drinking on weeknights, but to heck with that.
I ignored the throw-up again as I splashed his expensive, twelve-year-old Scotch into a glass. My pool of sick seemed a fitting representation of the day. Just this morning, I would have freaked over such a mess, but now? Now my insides had snapped loose and flailed about my ribcage.
I took a huge pull of the strong stuff and nearly breathed fire from it. The taste soured my whole mouth, but it warmed my gullet all the way down to slosh in my empty stomach. Why did I have a rule against this? Monday drinking was excellent, damn fine stuff. I drank another swallow, another, and finished the glass.
I poured again.
Leaning against the counter, I drank and considered the stupid rules I’d followed all my life. Be the best, the most efficient, no wasting time, no slacking off. I did my taxes on January first. I went to bed at ten p.m. I drank eight glasses of water a day. I hadn’t consumed a donut in ten years. I was a serial monogamist who’d slept with only two men. Two men in twenty-eight years—what a wild woman.
I poured another drink and came to a realization—I was boring. Just as Blade was currently screamed in the hallway.
I’d never traveled to Vegas. I had no idea what happened there, because it stayed there. I wore khakis and sensible blazers in professional colors. My bras were all beige and black. My hair remained its natural hue. I followed every single rule from The Basic Bitch’s Guide (a tome Carmichael had edited).
And for what?
I sank down the cabinet face, bounced off a drawer pull, and fell onto my butt. I was twenty-eight years old living like a sixty-year-old woman. Not even! Mrs. Delgado, my downstairs neighbor, was sixty-three and had two boyfriends. They played strip poker and all spent the night once a week, after Wheel of Fortune.
Oh, wow. My head really started to swish now. I grabbed a bottle of cleaner, a roll of paper towels and my Scotch, and crawled out to the vomit puddle. I drank and cleaned and listened to Blade rant outside. He was now threatening to call the police.
Let him. Let him call the police. Following the plan of my life had failed spectacularly—maybe if he called the police, they’d arrest him and give me a medal for Locking Out a Plastic Surgeon Who Literally Deserved It.
Once I’d finished with the vomit-soaked paper towels, I gathered them into a plastic bag and took them into Blade’s office, namely the second bedroom. Into his gorgeous, hand-tooled leather briefcase they landed with a disgusting, wet splat.
My phone dinged with a text message. Hopefully, my sister calling to remind me that I was the short one with the bigger butt and the empty uterus. ‘I’ve birthed two miracles, and I’m smaller than I was in high school, lol.’ Yes. I had actually received that text. On our birthday.
Nope—thank God, it was Melanie.
Holy fuck, that piece of shit fired you?
I called her. “I’m on my way,” she blurted by way of greeting. “We’re gonna get you so drunk.”
“Done and done,” I replied. “Oh, and Blade dumped me. He’s moving to L.A. to give Jennifer Aniston bigger tits. And my dad is flying to Hawaii for Christmas instead of seeing me.”
She uttered a sound of total comfort and commiseration, something along the lines of “Uuuugggghhhhhrrrrrrrrrr-oooooooohhhhhhhhh-aaacccckkkkkk.”
My heart swelled. “Thank you.”
“I’m one block away. We’re going to order every kind of greasy food known to man, cut the crotches out of Blade’s pants, and leave one-star reviews on Amazon for that asshole’s books until you’re too blotto to stand.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. You’re going to get through this.”
“Be careful of Blade. I locked him out, and he’s screaming and yelling in the hall.”
“He needs to be afraid of me.”
We hung up then, and I just sat there, drinking, unfeeling. Un-feeling, as in trying to ‘un’ my feelings.
Mel worked for another publishing house. We’d met in Columbia undergrad, and she was truly the bright spot in my existence now. I’d grown up being told that women were catty and hateful, that we were in competition with each other for only one thing—men. But I’d fallen for Mel’s friendship the moment we’d been tossed together as roommates. She’d taught me that women were here to support one another. I mean, if I was smart, and she was smart, then it stood to reason that ladies were wonderful, right?
A knock sounded at the
door and I scrambled to my feet to answer. When I swept it open, I spied Mel standing over Blade, rolling on the hallway carpet and clutching his balls. “He attacked me, officer,” said my best friend in her most drawling Southern accent.
I cackled. I waved her in and snatched Blade’s wallet from the side table. Whap! My tipsy aim was true, for it flopped open over his mouth. “You’re staying elsewhere tonight. See, you already have clothes.” Only about half of what I’d thrown downstairs lay in a pile beside him. He started to curse me more, but we slammed the door in his face.
“I’ve never kicked a man in the jewels,” I said to Mel.
“You should totally try it! It puts the ‘ball-busting’ in ‘feminist.’”
She threw her arms around me and I started crying anew as I sank into her embrace. Soon, her equally non-L.A. brown hair was wet with my blubbering. My every muscle screamed in tired agony and I sobbed until I’d expressed every emotion known to woman, and probably a few heretofore only available to bears.
Later, who the hell knows how long later, I lay on the couch shoving egg rolls into my mouth. Mel told me that the news of my axing had run through every editorial staff in the city. They all felt sorry for me, for I’d earned a reputation as a great editor.
“What’s the point of being great?” I asked her drunkenly, and also rhetorically. “I’m tired of being Polly Perfect while horrible men use women like Kleenex and then sneeze their snot into them.”
“Ew,” offered Mel.
I shoved a wad of chow mein noodles into my ravenous maw. “Carmichael will go to his cushy job tomorrow. Blade will soar to L.A., straight into a model’s bed, no doubt. But not Little Miss Dagmar Boring. She’ll send out tasteful résumés and meet a Wall Street wanker who’ll cheat on her with an artist from Williamsburg.”
“It’s not fair,” Mel agreed, with a pat to my leg.
I sat up and leaned against the arm of the couch. I really had no choice, for my bones no longer functioned in their proper, rigid manner. “I’m done with it. Done. Every good and sensible decision I’ve ever made has flopped. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs from school, and my own father thinks it’s a waste.”
“Yeah, well your dad lives in 1952, and his treating you like shit is nothing new. Sorry to say, hon.”
Mel was the only person in the universe who could call you ‘hon’ or ‘sugah’ and you wouldn’t mind. She couldn’t sound more Georgia if she sang about midnight trains.
I waved an egg roll. “I’m not following the rules anymore. I’m gonna get some shitty job I don’t care about. Because caring only hurts you. And then—I’m gonna bang the boss.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Well…at least choose a hot boss.”
“Duh.” I switched to a sushi roll and pondered aloud while I chewed. “Den, I’mf gonna bang shome other guy. Wish tattoos! Mayshe I’ll get a tattoo.”
She nodded. “Careful—you’re spitting tuna on the couch.”
I swallowed. “It’s Blade’s couch. He can take it with him. No—maybe I’ll keep the couch and have lots of nasty sex on it. I’ve never had nasty sex. I’ve had very polite, sensible sex because that’s what I learned from the book I was given about sex when I was thirteen.”
She gasped as if I’d just admitted to wearing double-knit polyester.
I leaped to my feet, fell down, and got up again (more slower-ly) to find my notebook, the one I usually used for grocery lists and reminders to collect dry cleaning.
Notebook and pen in hand, I plopped next to her on the floor. I ripped out a page with a list of chores on it, and another with a packing list for Christmas.
At the top of the fresh, new page, I scrawled Ways to Screw Up My Life.
A giggle escaped Mel. “I like where this is going.”
“Wait—girls who don’t care don’t say ‘screw.’ They say ‘fuck’ in a most unladylike fashion.” I scratched out the ‘screw’ and printed in all caps FUCK.
“How many ways?” Mel asked. “You should aim high so you don’t quit.”
“But aiming is for achievers, and I’m not doing that anymore. I’m giving up, Mel. I’m giving up.” I waved my notebook around. “I’m fucking giving up! No more shoes with sensible two-inch heels. No more washing my bras after only wearing them once!”
“You actually do that?”
I sniffed mournfully. “By hand.”
“That’s madness!”
She whooped, and I whooped, and we whooped. Then it came to me. “Six-hundred-sixty-six. I’m going to do six-hundred-sixty-six numbers of fuck-ups.”
“Damn.” She placed her hand over her heart. “That’s a fuck ton of fuck-ups.”
“It’s the devil’s number. If assholes always prosper, which they do—they always, damn it, do!—then I shall become one.”
“Don’t sell your soul, though. Gotta leave room for a deathbed recant. Just in case.”
“It’s what an asshole would do.”
And we clinked Scotch glasses.
I added my numerical goal to the top of the sheet so it read 666 Ways to Fuck Up My Life. Under this non-lofty title, I put the first item on my bad-girl list:
1. Get shitty job I don’t care about
I left the period off the sentence, because who cares about grammar and shit? Nobody else in the world did. They abused punctuation as if it were a hard-working underling.
“Bang boss,” Mel reminded me.
I added:
2. Bang the boss
3. Use him to get ahead
“What’s the point of the sex if you’re not also taking advantage?” I said of number three.
“That’s just good sense.” She grabbed the pad and scribbled a few words after number two. I turned the page and blinked until my drunky eyes focused. She’d put and have nasty orgasms in inappropriate places after bang the boss.
I crooked my arm around her head. “That’s an excellent point.”
“I have another one.” Her green eyes danced as she offered me the last of the spicy tuna rolls. “Let’s do what a dirty attention whore would do…what Carmichael Burns would do. I think you should start a blog.”
4. Start attention-whore overshare blog
What could go wrong?
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About the Author
Ellen Mint adores the adorkable heroes who charm with their shy smiles and heroines that pack a punch. She recently won the Top Ten Handmaid's Challenge on Wattpad where hers was chosen by Margaret Atwood. Her books, Undercover Siren and Fever are available at Amazon as well as a short story in the Lucky Between The Sheets anthology. Married, she lives in Nebraska with her dog named after Granny Weatherwax. Her hobbies include gaming, painting, and halloween prop making. The basement is full of skeletons because they ran out of room in the closets.
Ellen loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.totallybound.com