Who does he think I am?“I do things.”
His phone lit up and he snagged it before I could get a read.
“Beth’s pullin’ up. I got to go.”
I nodded and stepped out of the truck, barely holding myself upright as I tapped the hood.
“Same time tomorrow night?” I called after Josh as he moved down my driveway.
He kept walking and shot a thumbs up before disappearing into Beth’s car and driving off.
He seemed happy. They’d been hookin’ up for a few months now and as far as I knew it, he hadn’t slept with anyone else. Not that I cared who my best friend shagged but it was good to see some loyalty around these parts.
Maybe one day I’ll trust someone enough to call them at midnight to come get my drunk ass. But until that day comes, my bottle of Jack will keep me company.
Chapter Three
Marley
How the hell I ended up stranded on the side of a dark backroad in Nebraska was beyond me. I just drove and drove, convinced that Todd had superspeed and was zooming behind me.
You know how some people pretend to be chased by zombies to run faster on a treadmill? Yeah, well, I truly believed I was being chased by Todd. That’s how foggy and exhausted my brain was. And I guess I manifested it into my car because my tire was now flat, and my phone was dead because stupid me forgot my freaking charger trying to keep myself together and run out of the apartment.
“Ugh, justkill me!” I yelled into the onyx sky.
And the stars laughed at me, every single one of them. But I didn’t care. I needed to yell. I needed to cry. I needed to do something because I couldn’t just stand here in the cold October air and wait for my death.Well, I could. But I would rather die peacefully than at the hands of a crazy masked murderer.
I developed a good routine of pacing outside my car,my new carmight I add, for a few minutes then proceeded to retreat back into the drivers seat and cry. I cried my heart and soul out. Whatever water was left swimming in my body came out through my eyes and stamped my cheeks in a coat of mascara and sadness.
How did I ruin my life this badly? I mean, I’ve seen movies about how sad, depressed women went A.W.O.L and changed their entire life, ended up meeting a sexy business man and became a millionaire all within six months.
But me? Of course I wasn’t that lucky. My brother was a shark on Wall Street, raking in over six-figures a year by simply breathing in the direction of the right person. My parents adored him, of course they did. He was everything they wanted him to be and he did it happily.
Not Marley Matthews. Nope. I was the black sheep of the family I suppose, tainting the Matthews lineage for future generations to come.
I never meant for any of this to happen. I never wanted to be the rebellious kid who preferred going to parties over burying my nose in a book. As much as I wanted to be in good graces with my parents, I was never going to turn into Adam.
Sometimes I wish I turned out like my brother. He kept to himself, graduated Columbia with a summa cum laude in finance and got married to a successful chef at an expensive restaurant in Manhattan.
He was my parents’ little angel even though he was three years older than me. It was never a competition between us because I wasn’t even in the races, not to Harlow and Mike.
I remember how happy they were when I finally graduated from NYU with a marketing degree – even happier when I copped a paid internship position at BH&Y for marketing. Don’t even get me started on the sheer heart attack I thought they’d had when I landed a secure placement as a permanent marketing assistant.
And then I messed it up.
I messed it up by meeting Todd Sherman on a random Friday night at SixFiveFour downtown NY and moving my dumb ass to Nebraska.
Naturally the question that plagued my mind for the entirety of my four hour drive was if I could go back.Should I even want to.But that was not an option.
My parents were already under the impression that their only daughter was a lost cause, a mess of a woman and an embarrassment to the Matthews name. If they heard about my split from the one man who forced me out of my near-successful life in New York, they’d laugh in my direction before slamming the door in my face.
I stepped out of my car and began circling the perimeter of the road as I pulled my thin, baby blue cardigan around me tightly. My jacket was buried somewhere in the thick of clothes stuffed into my luggage and truthfully, the cold air soothed my insanity. Almost like a lasthoorah!for being such an idiot.
It was in my period of pacing that I noticed a bright light across a field in the distance. I squinted a little harder and made out the silhouette of a barn and a farmhouse.
“Oh my God,” I laughed, my breath clouding as it escaped my mouth. “This is how I die.”
Like every single bad horror movie I’d ever seen, the idea of me finding help was definitely slim. But what the hell was I going to do? Todd and I had been living off of his previous lottery winnings and my grandparents’ inheritance was running thin.Like I said, I didn’t think anything through.
