Contents
Title
Spotify Playlist
REASONS WHY I’M GLAD WE BROKE UP FOR GOOD THIS TIME – Emilia
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – July
1. Emilia
2. Alex
3. Alex
4. Emilia
REASONS WHY I’M GLAD WE BROKE UP FOR GOOD THIS TIME – Emilia
5. Alex
6. Emilia
Chapter 7
8. Alex
9. Emilia
10. Alex
REASONS WHY I CAN’T DATE MR. V – Emilia
Chapter 11
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – October
12. Emilia
13. Alex
14. Emilia
Chapter 15
16. Alex
17. Alex
REASONS WHY I CAN’T DATE MR. V – Emilia
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – November
18. Emilia
19. Alex
Chapter 20
21. Emilia
22. Alex
REASONS WHY I CAN MAKE THIS WORK WITH MR. V - Emilia
23. Emilia
24. Alex
25. Emilia
26. Alex
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – December
WHAT I’D GIVE ALEX FOR X-MAS IF I HADN’T TOLD HIM WE SHOULDN’T EXCHANGE X-MAS PRESENTS - Emilia
27. Emilia
28. Alex
Chapter 29
30. Emilia
31. Alex
Chapter 32
33. Emilia
34. Alex
35. Emilia
36. Alex
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – February
REASONS WHY THIS IS DEFINITELY THE RIGHT THING TO DO – Emilia
37. Alex
38. Emilia
39. Emilia
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – May
REASONS WHY YOU AND ATTICUS NEED TO JUST MOVE IN WITH US RIGHT NOW
40. Alex
Epilogue One
Epilogue Two
Author’s Notes
Acknowledgments
Connect with Kayley
Also by Kayley Loring
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Kayley Loring
All rights reserved.
COVER DESIGN: Kari March Designs
COVER PHOTO: © Regina Wamba
DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING: Jennifer Mirabelli
COPY EDITING: Jenny Rarden
PROOFREADING: Viviana Varona
Spotify Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bApcaleiBvYg4XhfKfdFF
REASONS WHY I’M GLAD WE BROKE UP FOR GOOD THIS TIME – Emilia
1. Because there’s someone else out there for me, but I won’t be ready for him until I’ve gotten back to the person inside of me that I ignored when I was with you… I know, I know. You would totally critique the structure of that sentence if you ever read it, but you’re never going to read it. This list is just for me. Everything is just for me now. Fuck you, Brent.
2. Because you never really cared about my career as a teacher and you never really wanted to hear about my students. Even though you always joked about how teachers and kids make you uncomfortable and it was almost (almost) funny—being a teacher and caring about my students is a huge part of my life. You think listening to you going on and on about budget analysis was a sexy thrill for me? I can’t believe I went to that convention with you! Fuck you, Brent.
3. Because the truth is, it hadn’t been a real relationship for a very long time. It was a habit. I thought it was a good, responsible habit, like flossing. But it was the kind of boring habit you stick with because people who are older and supposedly wiser than you tell you that you should—like flossing. I’m comparing you to flossing, Brent. Flossing. And also, the way you floss your teeth is violent and disturbing and thank God I never have to see you do it again. Ever!
4. Because Friends is not a stupid show—it’s a delight. And I am so lucky that I can watch it whenever I want to now. P.S. I never really liked Westworld, but I would never tell you it’s pretentious because that’s just my opinion. It’s also my opinion that your taste in TV shows sucks donkey balls.
5. Just because I miss holding hands with someone and having someone’s arm around me when I watch a movie, and spooning, and the coffee that you made and poured for me every morning, and the way you kissed the top of my head when I’d hide my face in your chest while we were hugging, and your cologne, and your phone voice, and that thing you did to my clitoris occasionally—that doesn’t mean I miss you. And I definitely don’t miss Us. I just miss being a part of an Us. But I’ve missed myself more than anything and I’ve always had a feeling I’d find her again in Los Angeles.
6. Los Angeles. I had always planned to move there after college, before I met you. I love Paso Robles, but I have literally been down every road so many times. I like this apartment, but after tomorrow I won’t be going down your road again. I’m not afraid of how big the city is anymore. I’m afraid of how small my life would be if I never leave here.
7. I don’t blame you for all the times I chose you over me, Brent. And I wasn’t even choosing you, so much as I was choosing what felt safe and familiar and someone else’s definition of what’s right. I know that once I finally move out tomorrow, it will be so good for both of us. May you also go forth and love and live life to the fullest, blah blah. Because we both deserve better than what we’d gotten used to.
8. Because I feel so much more comfortable sleeping with Atticus on this sofa bed than I ever did with you in that bedroom. Fuck you for never letting my dog sleep on the bed with us.
9. Because seriously, fuck you for refusing to let my dog sleep with us and also fuck me for not insisting that he be allowed there. He was only ever sweet to you and he only ever wanted to snuggle with us.
10. But it’s the past and I forgive you and I forgive myself and everyone else. Everything happens for a reason and we all learn and grow in our own time and I’m sure there’s a reason why I’m not moving to LA until now, so blah blah. Because I’m over it. I’m over Us. I’m over you. And one day I won’t even be sad about it.
ALEX VEGA INSPIRATION JOURNAL – July
– Current Mood… wistful, as characterized by melancholy, longing, yearning.
– The end of Cinema Paradiso, written by Giuseppe Tornatore with Vanna Paoli, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.
All the kisses. Fucking brilliant. Nothing compares, in movies or in life. Not yet, anyway.
– “Going to California,” Led Zeppelin
Unbridled hard rock gone soft and dreamy and simple. A band stripped down to its soul, in search of its roots. The sudden absence of John Bonham’s drums is somehow electrifying and sad. Like the booming silence of this house when Ryder’s with his mom. All I can hear are my own thoughts, and I’m drowning in them.
– The sound of Ryder’s slippers scuffling across a bare floor. He always walks normally when he wears any other kind of shoes or when he’s barefoot, but he still drags his feet when he wears slippers. I wonder if he’ll always do this.
– The look on his face that entire first time I took him to a Dodgers game. So excited to be there, full of wonder and awe, so despondent when it was over and time to go. “When do we get to come again, Dad?”
When you’re a kid, you want to experience something good again immediately, because it doesn’t even occur to you that it won’t be just as great the next time. How’d I become a
thirty-two-year-old guy who questions the pros and cons of an experience as soon as it starts? Why don’t I believe love could actually be better the second time around?
Side note: I could really go for a Dodger Dog or five right now. Did I eat lunch? Dinner? What did I even do today?
– This necklace Ryder made for me.
Who would have thought to turn a peach pit into a necklace? My son, that’s who.
Side note: I could go for a warm peach pie with French vanilla ice cream too. Or a cobbler. Or even just a peach.
– The diffused light through the eucalyptus tree in the backyard, early evening this time of year.
Why is twilight the loneliest time of day? Is it the prospect of eating dinner or waking up alone? Is it because you’re hungry? Why don’t I just get up and eat something?
– The way that guy was looking at that girl at Urth Caffé this morning.
Christ, I’d love to look at a woman like that again. The way I would have been looking at Nova in our wedding pictures if that guy at the Vegas chapel had actually done his job and remembered to keep a spare battery on hand for his camera. Or if it had occurred to any of us to have him use our phones. I should have known then that it wouldn’t last. Maybe I did. Maybe she did too. But we were too drunk on absolutely everything to think beyond the moment. I’d give anything to be that drunk in love again.
Or would I? Maybe I need to walk into a relationship stone cold sober for a change. Maybe responsible grown-ups aren’t supposed to fall into anything.
Side note: How can the same woman who destroyed my belief in love and marriage be the same one who gave me the greatest gift anyone has ever given me? From two people who eventually turned each other into the worst versions of themselves when we were together came a little person who made us both better people. It’s the strangest alchemy…
Fuck, I’m making it sound like the wounds are so fresh. It’s been four years since the divorce and I’m over it. I don’t feel anything when I see or talk to or think about Nova anymore. I just think about Ryder. And maybe that’s the thing. Being so far out of love with the only woman I had ever been in love with. It’s not like she was my anchor—the opposite, really—but part of me still feels lost at sea.
For a little while after I moved out, the resentment I had for my ex kept me company even when the women I was dicking around with left me feeling empty inside. It’s not that Ryder isn’t enough. He is. He’s my reason. My work is everything else. I guess I feel guilty about the empty feeling. About wondering if anyone else could ever fill that void.
Or maybe I just need to get laid.
Maybe I just need to tell my agent to find any quick directing gig that’s ready to go ASAP so I can throw myself into work.
Maybe I’m just hungry.
Or I might just need a beer.
I don’t know. I’ve been keeping these journals ever since it was an assignment in summer theatre camp forty million years ago, and it became a habit. I thought it was a good habit, like flossing. But maybe it’s time to stop writing in a journal like a fucking thirteen-year-old girl and be a little less in touch with my feelings. Leave it to the screenwriters and other creatives on my crew to be all feelsy. If Alfred Hitchcock could be a coldhearted dick, why can’t I?
I definitely need to get out of my fucking head and this house and into the night again.
Maybe I’m just bored, or it’s the weird ominous lack of the Santa Ana winds in the summer, but I have this feeling. Something’s going to happen. Or someone.
I probably just need to get my flirt on. Get into some good old-fashioned trouble tonight.
Or maybe I’m ready to fall in love again.
Heaven help the woman who captures this half-broken heart. Will she get the half that’s full? Or the half that’s empty?
Where the fuck has she been?
1
Emilia
Here I am.
I am so ready.
My golden retriever and I made the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Paso Robles, California to Los Angeles two days ago. I was towing a 4’x9’ cargo trailer (filled mostly with books, school supplies and teaching materials) behind my Subaru. I was leaving behind my parents, a lifetime of safe memories, and one on-again-off-again ex-boyfriend who is totally off-again for good. My “Road Trip to a New Life” playlist was dominated by Kelly Clarkson songs, and it ended just as I was starting to panic about being able to cross four lanes of Highway 101 traffic to make it to my exit.
I did not miss my exit.
Because I am Miss Independent.
Now I am a warrior, a shooting star.
I’m so movin’ on, yeah yeah…
Etcetera.
I am here.
Now, after spending hours and hours unpacking, organizing, and rearranging the pieces of myself that I brought with me to this big bright bedroom in this big bright city, I am so ready to curl up in my overstuffed armchair. I’m ready to think about what the next chapter of my life is going to be about. This is the only piece of furniture that I brought with me. I just want to dangle my legs over the side of the chair and write in my journal, with a mug of tea and Atticus in his dog bed nearby. I just want to think about how lucky I am to have this chance to start over.
But I can’t.
Because a very well-groomed, well-intentioned asshole is banging on my new bedroom door and insisting that I go out with him to actually begin the next chapter of my life and start over—tonight.
My best friend, Franklin Baldwin, bursts in, belting out the chorus from “Defying Gravity.” He is all about me letting go of the man that I used to love so that I can fly. If it weren’t for Franklin, I’d probably be dragging my feet all the way back to Brent’s place already. Still, it would be nice to feel like I’ve landed at my new home first before taking flight.
“Why are you sitting down?” He claps his hands together, and my dog perks up a lot more than I do. “It’s time to celebrate! We do not celebrate being single by plopping down in nondescript armchairs that don’t match the rest of the carefully curated furniture in this house.”
“You said I could bring it.”
“And I’ll let you keep it as long as you promise not to spend the rest of the summer in it. Up! Get up!”
“Okay, but can we do an Eat Pray Love sort of celebration? But you know—locally? We could go to an Italian restaurant and then come home to meditate and watch a Javier Bardem movie. But not Eat Pray Love. Because we don’t like the movie version.”
“We can definitely do the first part of that, except instead of an Italian restaurant we’re going for sushi. It’s beach season—we’re low carb. Get up! Get up!”
Groan. “You aren’t going to make me wear a penis hat again, are you?” I came to visit the last time I broke up with Brent. Franklin took me out and told everyone we were having a bachelorette party to celebrate the fact that I wasn’t going to marry Mr. Wrong. And then I accidentally got back together with Mr. Wrong again. But that was the last last time I made that mistake. As Franklin says, I only have a few years left in my twenties to make some really great new mistakes. So I’d better start now.
“I’m going to make you wear the full penis costume if you don’t get up off of that fat chair immediately.”
Franklin is my new landlord and housemate. He has been my best friend since high school in Paso Robles. He called me Hermione because I was a prissy nerd, and I called him Ferris Bueller because he was always trying to get me to take a day off. Not much has changed in terms of our dynamic since then, although I am considerably less prissy. He has been an in-demand interior designer in LA since he came here to study at the Otis College of Art and Design. He has more followers on Instagram than most of the authors I read. He is a quarter Jamaican, a quarter English, a quarter Norwegian, a quarter Chinese, 1000% gorgeous, totally gay, a nonstop bossy pain in my butt, and the only reason I can afford to live in such a beautiful house in Silver Lake on an elementary school teacher’s salary
.
Franklin has been vehemently disappointed by most of my life choices ever since we met, but he was so happy to hear that I had finally decided to break up with Brent for good that he begged me to move to Los Angeles and offered to let my dog and me live with him for as long as we need to. I insist on paying him an adequate amount of rent and a portion of the utility bills, of course. But what I’m really giving him in return for this exquisitely decorated space is permission to push me outside of my comfort zone.
Troublemaker Page 1