Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
LAUREN
Please God or whatever deity may be out there—I just want to get laid.
Since I’m putting wishes out into the universe, I might as well be specific. I lift my pen again and tug the diary closer on the little café table.
Okay God, no, I don’t just want to get laid. I want to know what it feels like for a man to lay on top of me and worship my body because he can’t get enough of it. I want to know what all the books and movies are talking about. I want to experience it. I want to feel my body shake with a pleasure so shocking that I’ve barely recovered before I’m fucked again and keep coming, even harder.
I stare down at the shocking words and bite my bottom lip.
Then I sigh, looking out on the sunlit courtyard. I might as well be wishing to go to the moon. Maybe overdramatic, but there it is.
I know I’ve got far more pressing, realistic things I should be wishing for. To get another job. My unemployment benefits are about to run out. Even though I send out job applications every day, I’ve only gotten one interview. The woman barely looked at me the whole time. I tried to respond enthusiastically and fully to every question, but walking out of there, I knew I hadn’t gotten the job. That was two weeks ago, and it’s been crickets in my inbox since.
Which means I’m not moving out of my mother’s spare bedroom anytime soon. I sigh deeply and try not to feel defeated.
It’s a beautiful summer day in Springfield, after all. I’m seated with my laptop and journal at a table beside a big fountain in the center square. People walk around me in couples and groups. Moms push baby carriages, more kids scurrying beside them. Men carry their girlfriends’ or wives’ shopping bags.
A thousand lives are being lived around me while I sit here.
That’s me: always watching life go by, scared this is all I’ll ever be. Longing for a story that will never be mine. Scribbling dreams I know will never actually come to pass because all I can do is watch lives that belong to other people.
Which is BS. I have plenty of friends living big, vibrant lives. I’ve tried hanging around with them more, even if it’s mostly online. My mom never saw the optimistic side of anything, and sometimes it feels like she lives to tear me down so I’ll be right there, just as dour and down in the dumps as her.
Not that long ago, I had a job and a boyfriend and was out living. I thought that it meant things would only get bigger and better from there. It had for all my high school friends, or so their online pics proclaimed. There was a path to life we’d been told about since we were kids, ya know? College or something like it, the man of one’s dreams and a big white dress. Or if not that, then a career at least.
I’d felt close to having it all. And then, just like that poof, gone. I’m no one, with nothing to my name. No man, no job, no money, no college education. Starting over at twenty-eight. I try to shake it off. Just because the obstacles seem insurmountable doesn’t mean they actually are.
I pull out my phone for some perspective from some of my favorite influencers who remind me that ‘impossible’ is just a word.
Then I sigh again when an alarm goes off, telling me I only have another fifteen minutes here before I have to get back and take Mom to her doctor’s appointment. She can drive herself, but as she tells me constantly, “You’re lazy enough; you might as well be good for something and take me to my appointments.”
Which she has a lot of. Not because there’s anything actually wrong with her at a spry sixty-one, but she’s a hypochondriac with good insurance, so between the doctors and her weekly hair appointments, we spend a lot of time on the road together. And there’s nothing worse than being locked up in an enclosed space with a woman who loves to pick at all your flaws.
“Did you go for a walk yesterday? Really, Lauren. How do you expect to lose weight and find a man if you aren’t even trying?”
Or, “Why don’t you come in with me to the salon? That frumpy look isn’t going to get you any jobs. Employers respect presentation.”
My mother’s the kind of woman who puts make-up on to take mail to the mailbox. She cannot fathom that I, her daughter, her life’s great embarrassment, leave the house in leggings, a T-shirt, and no make-up. It’s why, though she expects me to drive her everywhere, she tells me to stay in the car instead of coming in with her to the actual appointments.