Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Right,” Willow muttered.
“I’ll text Jinx,” Raye decided.
“I’ll put in a DoorDash order,” Jess said. “We had to take off before we could eat anything at Oceans 44. Sauce or Joyride aren’t exactly Oceans 44, but they far from suck.”
“I could always eat a burrito,” Willow put in.
Couldn’t we all?
Jessie pulled out her phone.
I continued in my efforts not to peek at Javi’s texts.
I was telling myself I didn’t care what he had to say after all he’d said. He might feel badly for finally being honest, but it was out there. It had been said. There was no taking it back.
And sure, if I let him apologize (if that was what he was doing), we could maybe settle back into the place where I avoided him and he put up with me, but right now, I wasn’t ready to give him that.
This wasn’t my usual MO.
I could flounce, fume and wallow, but I wasn’t the type of girl to hold a grudge.
I guess we live, we learn, we grow into bad behaviors.
I’d sleep on it (if I could sleep). Maybe I’d feel better tomorrow (I didn’t have high hopes for that, but ever the optimist), and then I’d deal with his texts.
Yeah.
That sounded like a plan.
Jess got all our orders and set up delivery.
Raye set up a meet with Jinx after work the next day.
The Angels were back in business.
And I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
I’d successfully done what I’d never been able to do before in my life.
Controlled my emotions in order to get on with it.
It was costing me, I knew.
But by God…
I’d done it.
The girls were gone.
My phone was silent, but even so, it was still screaming at me.
I left it on my bed and went to my closet.
Because yeah, keeping myself together had cost me.
And now it was time to pay the price.
Raye said I could start a business as a professional organizer, and since I loved doing it, maybe one day I would.
And that was what I saw in my closet.
Everything perfect and put in its place.
But for some reason, looking at it now, I wanted to mess it all up. Pull clothes from their hangers. Take shoes out of their plastic boxes with the Polaroid picture on the end and toss them in a jumble on the floor.
I didn’t do this.
I shifted some shoe boxes aside until I saw the row of books hidden behind them.
I didn’t know why I hid them.
Maybe it was because they were a reminder of what I didn’t have.
And after what happened with Javi, now, what I didn’t think I’d ever have.
Those books were the stories of the women who came before us.
We were the Avenging Angels.
They were the Rock Chicks.
Their men were the Hot Bunch.
The men in our circle where the Hottie Squad.
I knew Raye, Luna, Jessie, nor our newbies, Shanti and Willow had read them yet.
But I had.
I reached up and pulled down one of my favorites.
Rock Chick Regret.
I’d met Sadie, the real woman behind the heroine in that story.
She’d been broken. Utterly shattered.
Her man, Hector, hadn’t put her back together.
No.
He, with all the rest, had stayed close and stayed strong while she found her way to fix herself.
Along that journey, she’d pushed him away, though.
But he wouldn’t budge.
All those women pushed those men away.
But they stuck.
Thick. Thin. Kidnappings. Car chases. Explosions. Fights. Misunderstandings.
Those men were glue.
Feeling my eyes begin to water, I listed to the floor, crossing my legs under me and flipped through the book.
That was what I wanted. Not just Sadie’s story. Any of them.
Call me traditional, I did not care one whit.
I wanted my man to pursue me. To look at me and know I was the one. To pull out all the stops to win me to his side.
I wanted him to be protective, possessive, to stay close and strong while I figured out how to fix the damage of being a girl and having a Boy Mom. Of being in a family of overachievers but wanting a simple life and existing among those who just did not get me. And worse, they didn’t want to. They didn’t understand who I was, but they did think who that was was wrong in some way.
Defective.
Broken.
Truth, I didn’t go there with Javi all these months because I wanted him to make the effort.
I wanted him to be my Hot Bunch guy.
He didn’t become that, and now I knew why.
And it hurt so much more.
The tears falling, I clutched that book to my chest.
Then I got up, safe in a zone I knew all too well. Sniffling and wallowing, I put the book away. I carefully replaced my shoe boxes. I closed my closet door. I went to bed, grabbed my phone, curled up on top of the comforter, and through an extreme effort of will, I ignored Javi’s texts and went back to my Sonos system.