It flashes up a video with too much skin for a Facebook ad. They’re usually as anti-nudity as Peter. I bet Zuckerberg doesn’t have sex with the lights on either.
“Are you hot and horny?”
“Yes.” My body answers the voiceover’s question before my head. I can’t remember the last time I felt this randy and heartbroken at the same time. I think it was the night of my thirtieth birthday. Peter had pledged to ‘rock my world.’
I’d only just reached the tingle stage when he squashed me to the mattress for three jerking seconds before rolling over and falling asleep.
Considering that was theonlybirthday present he gifted me, I should have asked for a refund.
My focus returns to my laptop screen when the ad continues its extremely personal interrogation. “Have you been left unsatisfied too many times?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Then what are you waiting for? The men at Valentino’s are ready to answer your every desire.” A lady with a head full of gray hair slowly moves into the frame. She’s classically beautiful, and I wonder how much of her youth is attributed to the men she drapes herself across.
Orgasms aren’t just incredible for your pelvic floor.
They also help maintain your youth.
My mom barely looks a day over thirty. If you don’t want me to ruin the bedsheets I tried to gift the homeless man with vomit, we’ll skip the part that she’s been married to my father for over thirty years.
My parents are in Lastres, my mother’s hometown, to collect my grandparents for my Christmas Eve wedding. I’ve not yet had the heart to tell them my name is no longer on the invitations they helped me send. I don’t want to ruin their holiday. My mother hasn’t been home for almost a decade, so I’ll delay updating them until closer to their departure date.
My mother wouldn’t stay away if she thought her daughter was heartbroken and miserable. Don’t get me wrong. She wouldn’t let me mope either. She’d tell me to dust myself off and strive for better. She’s cool like that. I don’t think she’d even bat an eyelid if I paid for services to get back on the horse.
“There’s no wrong way to spend your hard-earned money. Only a million memories you might miss out on by being scroogie.”
Her logic was in response to the massive wish-list I created when I spent one too many hours scrolling BookTok, but my tipsy head doesn’t want to hear logic.
It wants me to revenge fuck Peter from my thoughts too.
With my decision made, I jot down the address from the ad still playing on my laptop screen, then race into my walk-in closet to find the sexiest LBD on the rack before common sense can make itself known.
Peter's stiff suits and horrid ties fuel my desire to forget him. His arrogance made what should have been a sexy ensemble stuffy and pompous. He never rolled up the sleeves of his button-up shirts or forwent a tie on a single occasion.
He’d wear suits to bed if given the chance.
I snort. Noelle will probably make him Christmas pajama suits. Then her little Christmas Bug will be snuggly and warm while waiting to taint her virtue after they’ve tied the knot.
That’s the only reason Peter is rushing down the aisle. Noelle doesn’t believe in trying before you buy. She’ll also happily accept a dud if he makes the chapel and reception hall look like an elf blew chunks over the classic décor I had picked.
She’s childish, naïve, and downright pathetic.
Anyone who believes in the magic of Christmas is.
Karma bites me for the second time tonight when my bar humbug rant is ended by me stubbing my little toe on the stupid ornaments box Peter brought up from storage last week.
Now instead of only speaking two languages, I’m fluent in multiple, but they all appear to only have cuss words in their vocabulary.
My little toe’s pain is more prominent than my heartache. I’m not surprised. Things haven’t been great with Peter for a while, but I wanted to believe him when he got down on bended knee and promised to do better.
I said yes because I want a love that spans decades, and the ‘supposed’ clock all women are meant to march to isn’t ticking in my favor.
I will still achieve my happily ever after. I’m determined to have a lifelong love like my parents. It’ll just have to wait until I’ve gotten ‘my rocks off’ with a man I’ve paid for the privilege.
CHAPTER2
Zane