“Fuck!” I yelled, stomping my feet in the back room, where I kept my inventory and had a desk for paperwork. I’d let Max get inside my head, which spoke to the deep emotional connection we’d once shared. A connection I’d released for sanity’s sake.
I stared up at the industrial tiled ceiling, feeling like the Lily-planets were about to collide. I am not letting this happen. I had my life together now. Okay. Sort of. And I was happy now. Sorta. But Max was…he was…
“Gah!” I walked out to the floor, locked the front door, and turned the sign to closed before going for my broom. My cell vibrated in my pocket. I slid it out.
Patricio: Dinner at your place tonight? I will bring the salami.
I smiled. Patricio loved to joke around and call his penis the salami. So unlike Max. Who was alpha male to the max. No pun intended. He was serious. Demanding. Always in control.
Christ. My smile melted away. I needed to tell Patricio what had happened today, and he would not be happy. He did not care for Maxwell Cole one little bit, and given that his ego rivaled Max’s, he’d go into instant caveman mode. No, he’d never told me why the two weren’t friends, but I guessed they’d had some sort of run-in at one of the many glamorous events both frequently attended. Over a woman? Maybe. But I didn’t want to know.
My cell buzzed in my hand, reminding me of the unanswered text.
Me: Dinner sounds great. Looking forward to the cannoli.
I grinned. At this very moment, Patricio was somewhere in L.A., swearing in Italian. No one, and I mean no one made fun of his junk.
Patricio: there will be spanking tonight
“Yeah. You wish,” I muttered to myself. We were not going to be having sex tonight. He would be too angry about Max’s reemergence. And I had Max on the brain.
Around eight fifteen, the front door to my little apartment buzzed, jarring me from my calming breathing exercises on the couch in my living room.
After the car accident, I had terrible nightmares followed by moments of sheer panic—a tightening in my stomach, dizziness, cold sweats. I endured a month of that before my mom talked me into seeing a therapist, Clara Monroe, who told me I suffered from a sort of post-traumatic stress. She taught me how to breathe and meditate, which helped a lot, but more importantly she convinced me to finally begin confronting my issues. Plainly put, growing up severely ugly had severely screwed with my head. I walked around with my chin held high, feeling confident and powerful, while a part of me, buried deep inside like a cancer, constantly whispered I wasn’t good enough. “Try harder. You know they think you’re a loser because you’re ugly.” “Run longer, because you’re too fat.” “Change your clothes. You look like shit in that outfit.”
Ugh. That voice.
That motherfucking voice.
It was always there, telling me why I sucked. Why couldn’t I have a voice that told me things like, “You’re smart, you have an amazing heart, and be proud of who you are”?
“That’s what mothers are for,” Clara had said.
“Fine. Then put her in my head.”
Clara had laughed. “If my mother were inside my head, I’d be in a padded cell. Not here with you.”
“Good point.”
But Clara had pointed out that fighting with myself—getting angry because I had this fugly voice in my head—was simply another form of self-hate. “The only way to break the cycle is to acknowledge it’s there,” she’d said.
“And then?”
She’d shrugged. “Make peace with it.”
“How the hell do I do that?” I wanted to shoot the little bastard.