Page 1 of I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life

Chapter one

Nalini

“Ms. Rana, my mom said you’re a liar.”

It was first period on the second day of school. I had no idea what this child’s name was, let alone what I possibly could've lied about. All we did yesterday was a get-to-know-you activity and a summary of this semester’s syllabus.

“Can you please explain why?” I asked, taking a long drink of my coffee and trying my best to get caught up on a conversation I hadn’t been a participant in. I'd struggled to get ready this morning, giving up on my goal of wearing makeup every day. I'd put my long black hair into a messy ponytail and called it good. My second cup of coffee hadn’t hit yet, and while I was sipping on the third, I was starting to think it was a five-cup kind of day. Maybe more if students were going to continue to drop me into random conversations three minutes into the school day.

“You said yesterday the most interesting thing about you was that you had a snake,” the girl said as I tried to remember her name. Cosima? Lexus? I had no clue, as half of my girls were blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and weirdly named. “But you dated Jack Raine. The rockstar. He wrote a whole song about you! And you chose a boring old snake?”

Oh. That.

I swear, Jack was trying to ruin my life when he named his song after me. It wasn’t enough that our breakup became song inspiration. No, he had to get back at me in the most public way possible. And of course, it had to become their breakout single, popular enough that even fifteen years later, I was still jump scared by it on the radio.

“You clearly haven’t met Sylvie,” I playfully responded, hoping it shut down the questions before they came. Unfortunately, it never stopped them.

What’s Jack Raine like? The worst, and I regretted dating him.

Do you know Kam and Noah? Yes, we were neighbors growing up.

Do you get money from the song? No, and maybe if I did, I'd be more forgiving.

I should've been thankful the students figured it out this early in the school year; chances were it’d be boring by the end of next week, and I wouldn’t have to hear about it until next August. They’d have something new to gossip about other than Ms. Rana’s missed opportunity to be famous.

They didn’t know the flashbacks would be haunting me for the next few weeks, as I did my best to forget it ever happened. I still remember all the paparazzi outside our houses after the song “Nalini” had exploded. It'd been one thing for the world to track down the Raine boys, but to find out the girl who inspired the hit song was literally the girl next door? They were constantly bombarding me, trying every single tactic they could to try to turn me into a story. I wasn’t a teenager anymore; I was a source of gossip, entertainment, and hatred all at once.

And what hurt the most was Kameron had done nothing to stop it.

Everyone knew I dated Jack Raine, lead singer of the boy band RaineFall. Everyone knew I broke his heart into a million pieces, and it took “years” for Jack to put himself back together. What most didn’t? His twin brother, Kameron, had been my best friend since I was three years old.

A month after the song came out, the Raines moved to protect the boys’ privacy. Which was fine, I understood, and frankly, I never wanted to see them again. However, the paparazzi didn’t even think to give me the same courtesy, staying outside my house the rest of my junior year in hopes Jack might come back. Laughable, because despite the story Jack told everyone, we only had a three-month relationship that never should've happened in the first place.

I’d been in therapy off and on for years, the deciding factor being whether or not the cheap insurance the school district got us allowed for therapy visits. Each one had tried to help me let go, but it was hard when it'd completely derailed my life. Any time I thought I was over it, something new would happen — even though it seemed like the rest of the world had moved on from the RaineFall fandom’s favorite pastime of blaming me for the problems of a band that no longer existed.

RaineFall broke up? My fault.

Jack got divorced? My fault.

I hadn’t talked to them since I was seventeen, and at thirty-two, I still didn’t get much of a chance to live my own life. I wasn’t allowed to be successful; following my dreams would be “disrespectful to Jack.” How was I supposed to move on and let it go when the never-ending parasocial relationships these fans had created decided I would be better off dead?

I sighed and chugged the rest of my coffee. I had a lesson to teach, and I couldn’t be distracted. I just had to focus.

The only good thing that came from the school district deciding to start the school year on a Thursday was that the first Saturday yoga of the school year was two days after I started with students. It was common knowledge the Saturday morning class was primarily teachers, giving us a chance to let go of the stress from the week, while using the 50% off educator discount my best friend, Misty, had convinced her bosses to enact. I needed to let go of stress, I needed to let go of anger, and most of all, I needed to let go of the four-hundred-and-eighty-three questions I'd been asked about the Raine brothers yesterday.

“You’re never going to guess who is in my class this year,” I barely overheard a group of elementary teachers whisper behind me, “Cassidy Raine. Like Kam Raine’s daughter, Cassidy Raine!”

It didn’t matter that I had good balance; it didn’t matter that I'd been doing yoga since I was twelve. The shock from hearing his name was enough for me to crumple into a pile on the floor.

“Oh. Nalini. I forgot you were in this class,” Maya Phillips smirked, giving me a look I couldn’t interpret. Every school had its set of mean girls, and Maya was the type of person who I couldn’t tell if she was one or not. She always sounded genuine, but her actions always made me question her, which was enough for me not to trust her in the slightest. She taught fifth grade, and it was around the right age for Kameron’s daughter

“It’s fine,” I said, shaking my head goodheartedly, even though I was internally panicking, “I just haven’t heard his name in a while.” It was a lie, but telling the truth to Maya was out of the question. Yoga was my safe space, and after a day straight of RaineFall questions, I didn’t want to take the bait. If it even was bait. I watched Misty, who, despite guiding people through the practice, gave me a “we’ll talk about this later” look.

While I'd been able to stretch out my stress until that point, the ability seemed to disappear as the rest of class dragged on in a frustrating blur. Kameron Raine coming back to Briar Hill was not a thought as easily banished as my yearly student-led RaineFall interrogation. By the time yoga was over, I wanted to bury my head in yoga blocks and scream for an hour, which I was aware wasn’t going to help, but I figured it would make me feel better.

I ended class sprawled out on my yoga mat, looking like a girl who had dramatically died in a Victorian novel. Maybe I could say I died of thinking too much; it was a common enough way to go in those books. And while I'd always thought it was ridiculous, I was starting to see how it was possible. I glanced at myself in the mirrors of the studio, and I looked exhausted. My golden brown skin was covered in sweat, my thick dark hair looked like it was fighting for its life to get out of the ponytail I’d forced it into, and my deep brown eyes looked like they belonged to someone years older than I was. Clearly, I was on my way to a Victorian death, and I’d probably be better for it. Anything was better than dealing with Kameron again.

“I’m turning on the heater, because hot yoga is next, but you have fifteen minutes before anyone starts wandering in here,” Misty said, sitting down next to me. “So… tell me what the protocol is if I see him. Do I glare? Do I chew him out? Do I make him regret ever coming back to town?”