Prologue
I heaved the last load of clothing out of the second story apartment window and watched it land on the soft, brilliant white snow below. A pair of boxer briefs and a white sock snagged on the barren branches of the Knockout rose bushes hugging the side of the beige building, and I smiled in grim satisfaction before yanking the window shut on a gust of wind. Winter was relentless, dropping snow almost every day since Christmas. I shivered as I made my way to the bedroom door.
There hadn’t been much of Brent’s stuff left to throw out—a sweater I used to wear around the apartment, a couple law review journals tucked under my art magazines, two suits layered between a winter jacket and a gown I’d worn to a charity event hosted by his parents.
Little things to remind me how big a role he’d played in my life up until a week ago, New Year’s Eve. A night I’d likely not forget.
At the door, I turned and glanced around the now-bare room. There were still indentations in the carpet from where the heavy furniture had been. Everything I owned was downstairs in the U-Haul parked at the curb, all except a few boxes I had dropped off at my parents’ house a few nights ago. My little yellow VW was already parked in their driveway, probably snowed in. I planned to stay with them in my old bedroom until I figured things out.
This was the final load I had to move, and then it was all over.
There weren’t any tears. I’d been running on adrenaline the last few days. Weird how I was mostly numb, considering my two-year relationship with Brent had taken a nose dive and shattered into a million tiny pieces of disillusion.
I still grimaced at the memory of catching Brent locked in a porno-worthy position with his fake-breasted ex-girlfriend on the sheets I’d gotten us for Christmas. At least he’d had a good excuse for not showing up to the New Year’s Eve party. I’d waited for him all night, and when the clock struck midnight and my boyfriend wasn’t there to kiss me, I’d gone looking for him.
The sight that met me at the apartment had left me speechless. Probably, my eyes would never recover. It was like being in one of those nightmares where running was the best thing to do—the
safe
thing to do—but you couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything except watch your life be slashed apart. When I had finally moved, Brent had chased me through the apartment, buck-naked. By the time I made it outside in the pitch black, the snow swirling around my shell shocked body, sound had finally come back to me and I’d heard him calling down to me from the window of our apartment.
I closed the bedroom door and made my way down the hallway to the kitchen. Everything was different now. It felt as if someone were slowly removing excess skin with a dull blade.
I couldn’t bear to stay another day. Living in this downtown apartment—one I couldn’t afford on my own—was part of a plan I had made with Brent, the two of us together. It was near his family’s law firm and only blocks away from the art gallery I worked in. It had been perfect for us. Together, we’d had lots of great plans: get married, buy a house, and I’d have babies for the rest of my reproduction life.
Everything had seemed perfect, and wadded up into a wrinkled ball of resentment somewhere near the back of the U-Haul was a pretty white gown to remind me just how naïve I’d been. What kind of idiot bought a dress before the actual proposal, anyway?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I wished moving out would be the very end of us, the final cut to sever all ties. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be, not when my twin, Lexie, dated Brent’s best friend. He’d be everywhere all the time, probably with Stripper Barbie on his arm. I’d have to stay clear of our old hangouts, stick to the opposite side of town. Just to be safe. I hadn’t ever liked Brent’s ex-girlfriend. If I had to see them together, I’d get flashes of their Kama Sutra pose and I’d vomit.
I’d even changed my number. He’d been leaving me endless voicemails, begging to explain himself. I was tired of ignoring him.
Exhausted.
Why he thought I’d ever want to hear from him at all made no sense. He’d moved in with Stripper Barbie to the Barbie Mansion, where I imagined them playing house, eating chocolate-dipped strawberries, and ordering around the maid. Seemed to me he had nothing to explain and no reason to.
After penning a quick note to the landlord, I locked up the apartment and took the steps down to the entryway. The overcast sky matched my mood. I was ready for spring, for color and light—a new beginning.
After adjusting the crocheted burgundy scarf around my neck, I hurried through the door and squinted into the wind as my boots crunched over the snowy sidewalk. The truck was parked illegally at the curb in front of a fire hydrant.
There wasn’t a ticket under the windshield wiper, so that was good. I jumped inside and turned the key in the ignition. While I waited for the heater to warm up, I gazed out the window. One of Brent’s ties dangled from the rose bushes, just a few barren branches away from a pair of navy blue boxer briefs. The worn and fuzzy sweater I’d loved had a white cross trainer sneaker on it. I didn’t see the other sneaker, but it could have been behind the leather duffel bag lying on its side. It looked like a tornado had hit in the middle of a blizzard.
If my weasel ex had any idea his belongings were strewn all over the lawn getting snowed on, he’d be in his Porsche, headed in my direction. I’d conveniently left that little nugget out in the text I’d sent him, telling him he needed to pick up the rest of his things.
Maybe a homeless guy would come along and get to the tailored suit jacket first. I could only hope. Brent was too vain about his appearance anyway; he didn’t need another expensive suit he’d purchased to flatter his blue eyes. The guy could afford a hundred more just like it.
I buckled up and put my cell phone earpiece on. While I waited for my older sister, Catherine, to answer, I put the vehicle into gear and pulled out cautiously into the street.
“Hey, Gennie.” The concern in Catherine’s voice sounded through my cell phone loud and clear. “Are you on your way to Mom and Dad’s?”
“Just got in the car. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, thirty at most if there’s traffic.”
“Oh good, you’ll be here in time for supper. Mom’s making tater tot casserole.”
Comfort food. Of course.
My family was the rock I needed right now.
“Great, sounds good,” I said, though I wasn’t hungry. My appetite had been just as void as the rest of me. I glanced into the rearview mirror at the distance widening between me and the apartment building.
“Lexie’s here. She made up your old bed.” There was a pause before she asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m great,” I said, channeling my inner optimism, which been on vacation the last couple of days. But I was okay, really. Not a tear. That was good.
“Just be careful. We’re supposed to get sleeting rain here soon. Hopefully you make it home before then.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just across town, remember,” I assured my worry-wart sister. Catherine had inherited the trait from our Mom. “I’ll see you soon. Love you, Cat.”
I had mixed feelings about moving back home. After graduating high school I’d had so many plans for my future, and all of them had involved a career in art on the East Coast. I’d been so excited to find myself out in the big old world. Instead, I had met a man, fallen in love, and stuck around Nebraska. Then he’d cheated on me.
The streets were congested with evening traffic and I crept along behind a minivan full of kids and a woman waving her hand blindly back at them from the driver’s seat. It didn’t seem so long ago that I’d been in the backseat of my mom’s minivan, and she’d waved just like that at me and my two sisters. Always to “knock it off” and “get along, or else.” A wave of nostalgia put a smile on my face as I veered right to merge onto the on-ramp. The highway would take me around town, away from traffic, and give me time to think. I gripped the steering wheel, nervous as the sleeting rain began to pelt my windshield, and stayed a few car lengths behind a semi pulling a trailer full of cows.
When had my relationship with Brent gone so wrong?
Within a few miles, I realized we’d never been as close a couple as we should have been. We’d both craved our personal time, and mostly because I wasn’t interested in his golf game or hanging out the country club; it was much too pretentious for me. Brent hadn’t been interested in my art, either. Spending an afternoon under a tree in the park with a sketch pad or book was as foreign to him as shopping at a superstore. He’d never wanted to come along, so eventually I stopped asking.
Like Lexie’s boyfriend, Brent was from a wealthy family, heavy into politics and parties meant for social climbing, to show off the new Mercedes or brag about a company bonus. I was more of a black boots and live music kind of girl. He’d never dated someone like me, which was why he’d been so determined to get me to say yes to a date. It must have been exciting for him, living on the edge with a girl like me. I’d worried about our differences for months at first, but we’d fallen into a routine, a safe comfort. There’d been two versions of Brent—the one who’d lounged on our living room couch eating fried chicken and cupcakes, and the one who drank too much with the boys at the club or ate caviar at a Sunday brunch with his family.
The fake blonde I’d caught riding him like a drunken cowgirl had been more his type, a wealthy daughter of an old family friend. The two together made sense, and Brent and I never had.
I switched on my MP3 player and turned the volume on high, then tossed it onto the seat beside me. The music flooded through the moving truck and I broke out singing off-key to Kate Voegele’s “You Can’t Break A Broken Heart.” It wasn’t until I hit mile marker 215 that the tears finally poured, and with it, all of the emotions I’d been blocking out the last few days.
I’m going to be okay.
Chapter One
Three months later, I sat at a corner table at Decadence, a dessert and drink bar in the historic Haymarket in downtown Lincoln. The ambiance here was great, with its swanky décor, soft lighting, and funky artwork hanging from the brick walls. My twin, Lexie, and our best friend, Roxanna, sat with me, each of us sipping at an extra-dirty martini.
It was a Friday and we’d just had dinner down the street at a family-owned steakhouse serving its specialty, prime rib, as it had for three decades. My parents had taken my sisters and me there growing up and it had become just as much a staple to dining out as ranch dressing with a salad. With my tummy full, I sipped at the cold martini in my hand and gazed out across the brick street at the vintage cycle shop. Its red and white striped awning dripped with spring rain, the colors complementing the stripes of the red, white, and blue barber’s pole in front of the neighboring shop.
“I miss working down here.” I swirled the liquid around the glass with my drink stick.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t sue Cora for firing you.” Roxanna caught her long ink-black hair up in her hand and pulled it over her shoulder. A unique mix of Filipino and Italian, Roxanna was striking. She’d inherited her mother’s golden complexion and dark, almost black eyes, and her father’s bone structure and spattering of light freckles across her nose and cheeks.
“Nah, it’s okay.” I shrugged. It really wasn’t okay, though. “The only thing I miss is being around the art and some of the regulars.”
The owner of the gallery I’d worked at had been close friends with Brent’s mother. After he and I broke up, Cora called me into her office and fired me. No long-winded explanation; I hadn’t needed one. Brent was the reason I’d gotten the job in the first place.
“Cora had a stick up her ass, anyway,” Roxanna offered.
“I never liked her, either,” Lexie agreed.
I loved their loyalty. I popped an olive into my mouth, and when I was finished chewing, I said, “Thank God, Catherine was able to get me that data entry job at Bradshaw Insurance or I’d still be living in Mom and Dad’s basement.”
“I wished you would have moved in with me,” Lexie said, repeating a conversation we’d had many times after I’d finally moved out of our parents’ basement. Lexie lived alone in an apartment across town. She had plenty of room for me, but that had been a quick “no” on my end. Lexie was a veritable neat freak. Since the day she’d learned to walk, she’d been my constant shadow, straightening the clutter left in my wake.
“I like my apartment,” I said with a smile.
Lexie and I were identical twins. We both had platinum blonde locks, ocean blue eyes, and a pair of button noses. If it weren’t for the fact I wore my hair shorter, just above my shoulders and straightened with a hot iron, while Lexie wore hers to the middle of her back in big fat curls, it’d be impossible to tell us apart, at least to a stranger. Usually, I wore color in my hair. Like this month, there were hot pink highlights framing my face, my bangs tucked back with a neon green barrette.
Our styles were completely different. I liked color whereas Lexie was more of a strawberries and cream kind of girl. All through college she’d worked in one of those chain bridal stores where pearls paired with classy, but sometimes uncomfortable, clothing was a necessary evil. A few months ago she’d opened her own bridal boutique, and being the face of her business, she was always meticulously put together. I almost felt guilty in a pair of jeans and a Metallica tee, my toes free in a pair of flip flops, while hers were wedged into a pair of platform heels.