“No, the problem is that I keep finding myself in these impossibly romantic situations, exactly like the ones in my books, and it makes me think I’ve finally found my person, you know? The way Molly has.” She sighs. “And even my dumb big brothers. But it never goes well for me. As soon as I realize I’m living a trope, as soon as I start thinking, Hell, this is it, Tina, prepare your ovaries for romance overload, it all goes to hell. Like this guy, Donovan, we hated each other. I mean, hated each other. But we ended up having sex—”
There’s a rustling sound in the booth behind us, but there are no further requests for service, so apparently, whoever is sitting there is satisfied to listen in.
“—and it was so good. Like, phenomenal. But then Donovan starts catching feelings, and he asks me to marry him. And here’s the thing, he was still an asshole. That didn’t magically change like it does in those books. I mean, this was a man who regularly tipped people less than ten percent.”
“But that kind of thing can happen to anyone,” I say. “Not the tipping thing. The guy sucking. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a pattern.”
“I didn’t think so either until I started dating my childhood friend. I figured this was it—a second-chance romance—but it turned out he hadn’t moved back home to take care of his parents, like he’d said. He was actually making meth in his parents’ basement.”
“Yikes.”
“Exactly. Then there was the time I got stuck in a ski cabin with a super-hot ski instructor. We had this amazing weekend—forced proximity for the win—only for me to find out he was married. Married!”
“Wait until you hear why she moved here,” Nicole says with a smirk.
Tina sighs, mussing her short pixie cut. “Rory was the worst of them. He’s this brilliant tech billionaire. We met at the bar where I worked. There was this classic misunderstanding, where I thought he was trying to pick up the other bartender, but he was really interested in me. Anyway, he swept me off my feet, sometimes literally, and we were planning to go to Italy together. I mean, we’d bought tickets and booked hotels and everything, and then he found out his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his baby. He’d never gotten over her, and he saw it as his second chance.”
She leans forward, as if to give this point emphasis. “Mary, he was living a billionaire, second-chance, secret-baby romance, and I was the other woman in it. I was the impediment to their happily ever after. That’s when I knew my luck was fucked. I came here for a fresh start, but it hasn’t helped. The only guy I’ve dated here used to be part of a motorcycle club, and he got arrested for theft after our third date. So much for the reformed bad boy. They say romance books are far-fetched, that these situations don’t happen in real life, but they keep happening to me. Except I’m never the heroine.”
“I told you it was good,” Nicole says smugly.
Maybe it’s the practical side of me, the boring side, but I’m still caught on the Italy thing. It’s really difficult to get a refund for a big international trip like that. I say so, and Nicole gives me a wry look.
“I sent my brother and sister-in-law. They deserved it, and besides, might as well make the most of my shitty luck.”
Tina’s a good person, which squares with what I already know about her. She deserves to have a shot at finding real love. I used to think wanting that kind of love wasn’t practical or wise, that a romantic like Tina was causing her own problems by chasing after windmills, but I know better now. I know what it is to find real happiness and want to clutch it with both hands. And I want that for her, both because she’s a good friend to Molly and because she’s a woman who’s struggling, like I was.
“I’m in,” I say.
“Me too,” Dottie says. Apparently, she was the person sitting in the booth behind us. “Where do we start?”
***
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Fraudulently Ever After
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Fraudulently Ever After Sneak Peek
Tina
“We’re doomed,” Harry says, slumping onto our worn sofa as if someone’s poisoned him. Actually, the last potential roommate we interviewed did bring her own homemade iced tea, but if it had arsenic in it, I’d be the one slumping over. Harry doesn’t make a habit of eating strangers’ food. I’m less discerning. I’m already cursed; what’s one more mistake?
Still a mistake, it turns out.
The tea tasted like mulch smells, except with a hint of spoiled berry on the back end. I won’t be recommending it to my boss, Dottie, at Tea of Fortune, as Potential Roommate #12 suggested. I admire a good hustle as much as the next girl—I have many of them—but making tea blends is not the woman’s strong suit.
“She wasn’t so bad,” I say, pursing my lips, but a smile bursts through. “I mean, she did want to move into Molly’s old room with her boyfriend, three dogs, and a ferret, but the more the merrier, am I right?”
“No, you are not right,” he says with a moan. “This is no joking matter. This house is precisely eleven hundred and eighty square feet. Having that many beings in here would unleash total mayhem. Edward would never leave his shell again.”
Edward is his pet turtle, but Harry needs to lighten up, so I say, “Are you sure you’re talking about Edward and not your dong?”
He rolls his eyes. “Both, but in case you haven’t noticed, there hasn’t exactly been a parade of men in and out of my room lately.”
“Mine either,” I say with a sigh, although I’m pretty sure neither of us wants a parade—just one guy who doesn’t suck. Our friend Molly found one, which is the reason for our current predicament. Molly was the best roommate in the world, other than her out-of-control PDA with her boyfriend, Cal, and then Cal decided to up and give her a house for Christmas last month.
Seriously. A house!
It’s a grand gesture right out of a romance novel. I’m happy for her, but I also miss the hell out of her, especially since she’s currently at a no-phones-or-internet-allowed writer’s conference in Vermont and will be gone for the next three weeks. (She went to this willingly!) I also can’t help but feel a little twinge of…
Well, shit, I guess it’s jealousy. I’ve been reading romance novels since I was ten—probably enough to build a house out of them—but every time I pursue a relationship, it ends in disaster.
I don’t tell a lot of people this part, mostly because they end up giving me you’re crazy looks, but I’m cursed. When I was nineteen, I broke my boyfriend’s heart because he wasn’t romance novel material, and big mouth me told him so. I may have also let it slip that he was a momma’s boy who couldn’t heat up a jar of sauce on his own, let alone save a woman from a fire, an arranged marriage, a crappy job, or a lost belief in Christmas, like in my favorite books.
Tony blabbed to his momma. Who blabbed to his Sicilian grandmother. She called me—I imagined her using a rotary phone, but let’s be honest, it was probably a cell phone—and told me, You want smut instead of my Tony, Putana? I curse you! You will live in those books, yes, but you will never, ever find a happy ending.
I shit you not, lightning struck the tree just outside my window at that exact moment.
I wanted to believe it was just some sour grapes bullshit, but you don’t fuck with a Sicilian woman—something I know from my dealings with my own ninety-year-old nonna—and it’s become pretty clear she wasn’t messing around.
Ever since I broke up with Tony, my love life has been a series of romantic tropes gone wrong. I mean this literally. My exes include a second-chance romance with a guy who was secretly making meth in his parents’ basement, a forced proximity fling with a ski instructor who turned out to be married, and—most heartbreakingly—Rory, a billionaire who found out he had a secret baby with his ex. These aren’t things that happen to normal people, or at least they shouldn’t all be happening to the same person.
You might ask me, Why don’t you pull on your big girl pants and apologize?
Because Tony’s nonna died ten years ago. I did apologize to Tony, but his immediate response was to try to kiss me, and I (naturally) pulled away and stomped on his foot with my heel. He wasn’t pleased, and in all honesty, it might have made things worse.
I also got my nonna to do the counter curse for malocchio, the evil eye. She prayed over a bowl of water and then dribbled olive oil into it, just like her mother had taught her, but that didn’t seem to help.
Maybe Nonna’s heart wasn’t in it. After all, she spends at least half her pre-bedtime routine saying rosaries for my soul, for sins ranging from wearing high heels to believing men are capable of housework. She probably agrees with Tony’s grandmother.
Harry can’t possibly know what I’m thinking, but I still get a full-body shiver when he says, “I feel like we’re in an episode of The Twilight Zone.” He sits bolt upright, his eyes widening. “Are we in an episode of The Twilight Zone?”
I give it an honest-to-God second of thought. “I don’t think so. The original show ended in 1964, and the reboot...well, let’s be honest, we’re not paying for any premium services. I don’t know a damn thing about the reboot.”
“Don’t remind me of our financial situation,” Harry says melodramatically. “We’re both cursed. You’re...you, and I might never find another job. Who would want to live with us anyway?”
Harry knows about the curse. I mean, of course he does. If you’re convinced you’re cursed, the most sympathetic ear you can find is someone who believes the majority of the conspiracy theories he’s heard. Besides, we’re the kind of friends who know each other’s shit. Just like I’m one of the few people who knows the real reason his old employer, Swordfish Insurance, went belly up last month, a few weeks before Christmas. His bosses were scamming elderly people out of money, and Harry didn’t suspect a thing. Given he’d spent years trying to overcome his issues—and, for the most part, succeeding—he blames his lack of foresight on his improved mental health. The super shitty thing is that he lost all of his retirement benefits along with his subpar salary.
He’s going through a bit of regression on the whole conspiracy theories front, to be honest. Just yesterday, I caught him watching “So You Think You’re Safe” on YouTube, which is like “So You Think You Can Dance,” except it challenges normal people to live off the grid. It doesn’t help Harry’s peace of mind that he’s still searching for a job, his savings dwindling every day.
Given I survive on a part-time job at Dottie’s tea shop and several odd jobs where the pay ranges from minimum wage to homemade jam, we need help affording this place. And, yeah, my brothers would step up in a heartbeat, even though one of them has two stepkids and the other has three little girls, the youngest two months old. My parents would help too, although there’d be no end to their nagging to move back home to Massachusetts. When I was there, they couldn’t stop complaining about having their unmarried daughter around, and now? To hear my mom tell it, I abandoned them.
Harry’s mom has also offered him money, but we’ve agreed we’re too prideful to take handouts from our relatives. We’d rather be pridefully poor.
“Who would want to live with us, you ask? Twelve people I can think of off the top of my head.” I wink at him. “It may be your lucky day, though. My phone pinged when Maple Leaf was here. What if it’s Potential Roommate #13 answering our ad?”
He gives a full-body shudder, then pulls his beanie off and scrubs his buzzed head. “We’ve had enough bad luck, Tina. Don’t call them that, call them Potential Roomate #14, like when hotels skip over the thirteenth floor.”
I huff. “They might call it something else, but I have news for you, bud, it’s still the thirteenth floor. Besides, thirteen’s considered a lucky number in Sicily.”
“We live in Asheville.”
He casts a longing look at the salt sitting out on the kitchen table, like he wants to cast some over his shoulder to dispel the bad juju I just unleashed on the apartment, or maybe he’s pissed at me for leaving the container out. Probably both.
I make a big show of pulling out my phone, only to see it’s a group text from a few pals I’ve nicknamed the Greek Chorus, mostly because I think it’s funny. They’re my own personal self-help group, devoted to breaking the curse or pulling me up out of it or proving it’s not real--the answer varies depending on who you ask.”
Nicole: Tick, tock, Tina. We may not have rules, but consider this your warning. YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. I expect results BY MONDAY.
I don’t have to ask what she means. It’s Thursday evening, so I suppose I really am running out of time if she’s serious.
“So?” Harry asks. “What psychopath are we going to meet this time?”
I swivel the phone so he can see it. A small smile lifts his lips. “Well, she is a psychopath.”
Harry and Nicole know each other from the original Bad Luck Club, a self-help group started by Molly’s not-sucky boyfriend and his equally not-sucky dad. Their goal was to help down-on-their-luck people turn their lives around, and given the whole curse thing, I was naturally interested in the concept—until I learned about all the rules.
I don’t do rules, just like I don’t do full-time jobs. Which is why my interest was piqued when I heard Nicole was starting her own version of the Bad Luck Club. Nicole is not a person who venerates traditions and rules. She’s kind of an asshole, actually, all pink hair and attitude, but she has a track record of success. She managed to help Molly’s straight-laced big sister, Mary, sort out her life in all of a month, so I’m hoping she can do something for me.
Actually, Mary volunteered to help me, too, along with my boss, Dottie. I guess my luck must be pretty shitty if I need three mentors to set things right, but I’m not complaining. Even if I do joke that they’re my Greek Chorus, narrating my doom.
Molly said she wanted “a piece of the action” too—her words—but Nicole refused, saying she knew me too well to be part of the process.
My phone buzzes again. The screen is still facing Harry, and he laughs.
“Was it Dottie or Mary?” I ask.
“Dottie.”
I swivel the phone around to see her response.
Dear, I have a very soothing sedative tea. My intuition tells me you might need it.
I laugh. “Her intuition and the blood vessel that’s probably popped in Nicole’s eye.”
A few dots pop into view on the screen, then Nicole writes, She doesn't need a sedative tea; she needs to do her fucking challenge.
Dottie’s response is immediate. I was talking to you, dear. Your red energy is transferring over the phone.
That’s when Mary steps in. Don’t drink anything she gives you, Nicole. Dottie, you need to stop experimenting with sedatives. You could get into legal trouble.
She’d know; she’s a lawyer. But if I was hoping even-keeled Mary would step up to my defense, I was sorely mistaken.
Mary: It’s been nearly three weeks, Tina. Didn’t you get the latest link I sent you? That looked like a really solid option.
I convey their messages to Harry, because he’s obviously depressed, and I’m okay with being the entertainment.
“Why don’t they just give you a new challenge if you’re not up for this one?” he asks, running his hand over his hair again. He gave it a fresh buzz cut after losing his job. Maybe not the best idea in January, but I understand the impulse. When I was dating Rory, the billionaire who became
someone else’s baby daddy, I had long hair, so after I moved to Asheville post break up, I cut all of mine off in the bathroom. I did it on impulse, the way I make most of my bad decisions, and I panicked until my sister-in-law took me to her friend’s salon to clean it up.
She gave me a pixie cut that looked a hell of a lot better than my hack job, and afterward, I kept running my hand through it, feeling weirdly free.
I sigh, pocketing my phone, and slump down on the couch beside Harry.
“Huh. Slumping feels pretty good.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” He gives me a look. “So? Why aren’t they moving on?”
Another sigh slips out of me. “This is apparently the only thing they agree on. They’ve all been sending me ideas for situations that would fit. I guess the flip side of not having to follow any of the original club’s rules is that Nicole doesn’t need to follow them either.”
Meaning she doesn’t have to accept “no” for an answer.
Nicole, Mary, and Dottie have decided that instead of passively falling into romance novel scenarios, I need to seek one out. My challenge is to knowingly slide into one so I can flip the script and take control. Mary thinks it will help me realize that I’m emotionally damaged, not cursed, although she has a nicer way of putting it, and I’m pretty sure Nicole just wants an up close and personal seat when everything goes to hell. Dottie refuses to explain why she agrees with them. She’ll only say that she’s read my tea leaves enough times to know what’s good for me.
I love Dottie, but it’s a little baffling the way she’ll tell a stranger within five minutes that they’re about to have the best (or worst) sex of their lives, but she still won’t confirm that I’ve been cursed. That’s why I sought her out in the beginning. My brother knows her pretty well, having worked for her before her fortune-telling tea lounge became a thing. After I moved to Asheville to get away from the whole Rory thing, he suggested that I connect with her. One of the first things I did in Asheville, after the hair hack job, was visit Dottie at Tea of Fortune. But she refused to comment on the whole curse situation. Instead, she offered me a job. Apparently, she has a personal stake in ensuring the DiVirgilio kids are employed. My mother can’t decide whether she’s grateful or pissed.
Jingle Bell Hell (Bad Luck Club) Page 35