Page 1 of You, Me, and Lucky Number 13

CHAPTER ONE

LOLA

I’ve always swornI would never chase a man. As my mother always said, it’s tacky. Although, I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean with my car…

“Run, you little prick!” I smile at the fear in Chad’s eyes as he weaves through the parking lot. I swerve, purposely trying to ram the front end of my car up his lying ass. “Towanda!”

Okay, let’s pause for a second. If this were a movie, the scene would stop, and I would provide a voiceover of what the fresh hell is happening, but this isn’t a movie, and I’m not Kathy Bates inFried Green Tomatoes.

She was driving a Ford Crown Victoria circling the lot at the Winn Dixie when two rude teenagers took the parking spot she was waiting for before hollering “Towanda” and crashing her car into theirs repeatedly.

I’m an eccentric ex-girlfriend who went to the store in my pajamas for another bottle of wine and cheesecake while driving my 1970 Dodge Charger when I spotted my lying ex-boyfriend walking hand in hand with the woman he just happened to cheat on me with.

Here he is, not even a month after our breakup, with Monica, the cute blonde attached to his side like a high-end swamp leech.

I simply reacted.

I did not ask myself what Jesus or my mother would do. I revved my engine like a psycho and chased this piece of shit down.

It was a mistake—a really dramatic one. The problem is, I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Chad screams again, and I get a little giddy. “Please, Charlotte. Think this through!”

Oh, I have thought it through. I lay in bed all those lonely nights and cried on his pillow, thinking about what I possibly could have done to drive him away.

“Don’t call me Charlotte, you tiny-dick bastard! My. Name. Is. Lola.”

The rational part of me realizes my name is, in fact, Charlotte, but everyone calls me Lola—except for Chad. He always had preferred Charlotte. I could only assume that it sounded more distinguished to his wealthy father, who had all those numbers behind his name. Just wait until he hears about me chasing his only son through a parking lot in my pajamas while screaming obscenities from the window.

I wasn’t always this crazy. Chad’s constant negativity and “helpful” suggestions made me this way. I was never enough for him. My skin was too pasty, my ass too small, yada, yada, yada. I lived in a constant state of self-consciousness throughout our relationship. I wanted to be perfect so he’d feel as lucky as I felt landing a gorgeous Formula One driver who always secured a spot on the winner’s podium.

I thought the man was quite the catch. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

And all this fucking time, he wanted someone who was not me.

The bastard deserves to be hit by a car.

“Charlotte! You’re going to hurt someone!”

I sure am—him.

All my savings—gone!

My apartment—gone!

Everything I achieved over the last five years—yep, you guessed it—gone.

Job? Oh, yeah, that’s gone, too. When Chadwick freaking Tane wants a new race engineer, one who isn’t his ex-girlfriend, his agent makes it happen. I guess I should be thankful that the severance package was decent. But I can’t get past the betrayal of it all. You can break up with me, but you can’t fire me, too. My job performance had absolutely nothing to do with our relationship. Granted, I wouldn’t have wanted to work for the bastard after he unceremoniously dumped me via text, but I still would have liked the option of leaving on my own terms instead of suddenly being kicked out of our joint apartment with nothing but my savings, which was dismal from the get-go.

It’s bad enough that I ate my way to the next dress size while trying to figure out my disaster of a life one Airbnb at a time until my savings depleted. To make matters worse, I had to move into my brother’s apartment with his half-dead chihuahua, which smells like feet and taco seasoning.

I am at my wit’s end. Yep, this is rock bottom.

I’ve been knocked down and humiliated while this motherfucker spends his weekend leisurely shopping the wine section at the Food Mart while I ate half a bag of popcorn while strolling the ice cream cooler.

Hell yeah, I got mad. Maybe even a little crazy.

Should I have followed him and his new girlfriend, watching them giggle and kiss while loading their groceries? No, I shouldn’t have. But all rational thought had left my brain at that point.

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