Perfect Regret (ARC) by Walters, A. Meredith
I didn’t do depressed. I wasn’t one to wallow when life sucked. I was the girl who picked herself up, dusted off the bullshit and kept on trucking. I doled out the advice about making lemonade out of lemons and put one foot in front of the other.
I didn’t get pulled down into crappy emotion filled holes.
But that was before I got dumped.
And we’re talking remove his testicles with a teaspoon dumped.
It hadn’t been pretty. It hadn’t been civil.
It had been nasty and hurtful and had reduced me into a giant pile of pathetic.
And instead of bouncing back and getting into the life groove, here I was, lying on my bed feeling so sorry for myself that even I hated me.
Riley Walker had been reduced to the sad and lonely dumpee. And that wasn’t a person I had ever thought I’d be.
Because Damien Green and I had been perfect. Things had been fantastic. We had fit together like the proverbial missing puzzle pieces, each complementing the other just as we were supposed to.
Our relationship had been simple. Easy. And maybe that’s why this hurt so badly. Because now I was forced to admit that my simple and easy relationship had bored my former boyfriend to death.
So much for soul mates and eternal, undying love. Clearly what Damien and I had couldn’t make it past junior year and was causing me to question my judgment when it came to guys and dating and all that other blah blah stuff.
And I hated questioning myself. Because for a girl who always had the answers, I was finding that I had woefully failed the test.
So, yeah. Love sucks.
And to commemorate my recent descent into early spinsterhood, I had compiled a play list of the most obnoxious and annoying love songs ever written. Nothing says heartache and the overwhelming urge to disembowel yourself with a butter knife quite like an hour of Celine Dion ballads.
I picked up the remote and cranked the volume of my stereo, gritting my teeth through another round of “Because You Loved Me.” If I was going to wallow, I might as well do it right.
I caterwauled along with the lyrics, adding my own tone-deaf rendition to the horrendous soundtrack off my life. I ignored the knock on my bedroom door, singing louder to try and drown it out
“Dear God, enough already!” Maysie yelled over the kitschy strains of some ridiculously horrendous One Direction song. She cupped her hands over her ears as she entered the room.
I pointed at the open door. “Get out,” I told her, trying to put feeling into the words. Too bad I only sounded tired and defeated.
Maysie threw a pair of ear buds at me and I didn’t bother to try and catch them. I appreciated the dramatic effect of letting them hit me on the chest and fall off my side and onto the bed. My best friend and roommate of the last year and a half rolled her eyes.
“I thought I had the market on over dramatics. Don’t you think it’s time to give your best friend and the rest of the people living in the building a break? Because if I have to hear Vanessa Williams sing about Saving the Best for Last one more time, I won’t be responsible for my actions,” she complained.
I picked up the ear buds and sat up. Balling them in my fist, I chucked them back at her. She caught them clumsily. “And how about you let a gal listen to cheesy music and mire in the untimely demise of her relationship?”
“And friends don’t let friends listen to Chicago,” Maysie said, turning off the stereo just as the beginning notes of “Look Away” started to fill the room.
“Hey, I was enjoying that,” I whined.
Maysie shook her head. “I don’t think anyone this side of 1985 enjoys that, Riley,” she quipped and I couldn’t deny her point. I hated it when she out snarked me. There was something fundamentally wrong about that.