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Except he’d probably show up on Korean billboards somehow. Knowing him.
The point is: No, I wasn’t going to unpack these boxes. I wasn’t going to go to Ikea and buy throw pillows and arrange house plants in colorful Scandinavian pots. I wasn’t going to nest. I was going to let my life in Houston feel as sad and sterile and unwelcoming as possible, for as long as possible, so I would have nothing at all to make me yearn to stay here.
Nothing else, anyway. Besides the obvious.
That became the plan. I would max out my misery levels so anything at all seemed like an improvement.
It wasn’t a great plan, or even a good one. But it was all I had.
And it turned out, I wouldn’t have to work that hard to make myself miserable.
The world was going to do it for me.
Because three nights after leaving the ranch, when I was sitting on a packing box, eating takeout Tex-Mex out of the container and scrolling mindlessly through my phone, I happened to come upon a promoted video by none other than Kennedy Monroe.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud, dropping my taco.
She was in Texas, apparently—filming some kind of superhero movie located in a desiccated hellscape out near Amarillo.
And she’d just decided to pop down and surprise her boyfriend. Jack Stapleton. In Houston. On camera.
“What prompted the trip to Houston?” the camera guy asked.
“Oh, you know,” Kennedy Monroe said. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“What neighborhood is that?”
She smiled. “Texas.”
In the neighborhood?Please. Amarillo was nine hours from Houston. If you didn’t get caught in a dust storm.
But I was mesmerized by her. The perfection. The otherworldly beauty. She didn’t have a bump, or a lump, or a nonsymmetrical place on her body. She could have been built in a factory—and, okay, she probably was. I mean, sure, she was a poster child for cosmetic surgery… but it was good cosmetic surgery. I had to hand it to her. She was a work of art.
I was just admiring my own ability to be so complimentary and emotionally generous with her, rather than, say, rotting inwardly with jealousy, when the camera pulled back a bit and I realized that she was standing in front of a very stylish blue front door.
Next to an unmistakable full-height fiddle-leaf fig plant.
Oh, shit. She was at Jack’s house.
All generosity of spirit disintegrated.
Apparently, this was some kind of sneaker-upper Web series where she was surprising Jack with her visit. She walked up to the door at the sleek entryway and knocked. Then she turned back to the camera guy, pouted her pouty lips, and made a Shh gesture.
I paused the video to text Glenn.
Do you know that Kennedy Monroe took a camera crew to Stapleton’s house???
Yes. This is old news. It’s being handled.
I sent a few more texts—What the hell? Who let this happen?—but when Glenn didn’t reply, I switched back over to finish watching:
Jack’s door swung open, and out stepped the man himself.
Barefoot. In his Levi’s. And his favorite flannel jacket over a T-shirt I’d last seen wadded up on the bathroom floor.
Just the sight of him—even phone-sized and made of light pixels—sent a buzzy pleasure cascading through my body.
“Whoa! Hey!” Jack said, as Kennedy Monroe arched herself into a hug that somehow made her seem like a Siamese cat. Was it the way she stuck out her ass and pressed her underboobs against his torso? Or the way she rubbed against him like she was marking her territory? Or the way she purred?
