I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. When it comes to Nate, my life has been one long string of humiliation and horrifyingly bad luck. Before he disappeared, taking my heart with him, I tried everything to get his attention.
Okay, not everything. I stopped short of stripping to my skin and climbing into his bed naked because hello, I still have some pride left. (Not much, but enough to know that ambushing him in my birthday suit and demanding that he finally remove my pesky virginity — only to be rejected and dismissed with the same detachment he’d use to send an overcooked steak back to the kitchen — is a blow from which my self-esteem would never recover.) But I’ve tried everything else.
Heated glances. Cold shoulders.
Sidelong-looks. Full-frontal stares.
Ignoring him. Adoring him.
And you know what?
Not a damn bit of it worked.
It doesn’t matter what I do — Nate still treats me with the same aloof disinterest he always has, since the day I hit puberty.
In a few days, I’ll be twenty-four, which means I’ve been in love with Nate for more than a decade. And not once in all that time has he shown me so much as a flicker of reciprocal interest. Hell, he doesn’t even check out my boobs — which are now very real, thank you very much — if I walk around in a bikini when he comes to visit Parker in Nantucket. And it’s not like there’s nothing to look at — I’m a generous C-cup, for god’s sake. (Frankly, I think the universe realized it owed me, after the pool-stuffing incident, and bequeathed me with a really stellar set of ta-tas to even the score.) But, it was with a heavy heart and some seriously neglected lady parts that, two months ago, I decided to toss in the towel for good. I’m not usually a quitter, but it seemed there was no choice other than to lock my heart away in an impenetrable steel box inside my chest and move on — to new men, who actually noticed I was alive and worthy of love. Or, at the very least, a little below-the-belt action. After all, a girl can only wait so long.
So, I did something seemingly harmless.
I accepted a date to a stuffy dinner gala with a wealthy, eligible bachelor named Brett from one of Boston’s most prominent families. With dark hair and ice blue eyes, he looked a tad like Ian Somerhalder, which was about his only redeeming quality because most of the time, he gave off seriously creepy vibes. Not that it mattered — I wasn’t interested in him. I just thought, after years listening to Lila barrage me with advice about The Top 10 Successful Ways to Make a Man Jealous and 12 Irrefutable Strategies to Forget That Rat Bastard, I should finally give it a go. One last-ditch attempt to catch Nate’s attention, before my ovaries dried up from lack of use. I figured it couldn’t hurt, right?
I just never in my wildest dreams imagined it would actually work…
Chapter Two
Wait, that’s what that song is about?
Phoebe West, after listening a little closer to the lyrics of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer.”
Two months earlier…
I set my clutch purse down on the counter with a heavy sigh.
It’s been a weird night, to say the least.
That’s not much of a surprise, though. Blind dates are probably always weird, even when they aren’t at boring business galas full of somnolent speeches and really gross arugula salads, with only a semi-lecherous date to keep you company.
Not that I’d know. My dating experience is limited to watching ten-year-old reruns of FRIENDS on Netflix, while Boo — the only man in my life with whom I don’t share DNA — snores gently by my side. (Don’t get too excited. Boo is a pure white mini Pomeranian with so much sass, he could intimidate a Great Dane.) He doesn’t even lift his head from the gray sectional cushion where he’s sprawled when I cross through the low-lit kitchen into the adjacent living room. The space is dark, but I easily make out the outline of his tiny furry chest, rising and falling with each snore. There’s a puddle of doggie drool forming on the $300 chenille throw beneath his slackened jowls, growing larger with each rattling exhale.