It’s amazing how just one glance at a person can make you feel so much.

And right now I’m feeling like we’re back in high school and she’s sitting at the popular table after being the new girl for two days while I’ve been trying for two years to get those kids to even know my name. I’m feeling like I just saw her making out with Todd Overman, my crush since seventh grade who I was sure would eventually fall for my nerd-girl charm and make lots of babies with me. Just looking at her flawless skin and perfect hair reminds me of everything I wasn’t back then, of everything I’m still not now, and how unfair it is that people like Mindy fucking Abraham get ahead in life just by being pretty.

From the day we met nearly ten years ago, that woman has made it her personal mission to one up me in any and everything. Except, not really. She’s just naturally better than me, and her lack of trying only made me hate her even more when we were teens.

Just once glance at her and the self-esteem I’ve spent years building comes crashing down and I’m shaken to my core. It took me until I became an adult to finally accept myself—to an extent. I still have a ways to go, I know—and embrace my flaws and fly my freak flag high with pride. And yet standing here, feeling like a sixteen-year-old girl hugging my X-Men notebook to my chest as I blink back tears and feel the burn of embarrassment in my cheeks, questioning everything.

Fuck.

After a mishap at MIT, I ended up graduating from our local college, and low and behold, a few classes with Mindy fucking Abraham. She never said anything to me, never acted like she had once mocked me to the point of tears over my Harry Potter obsession.

“Nope,” I say and reach into my purse, fingers catching on the straps as I madly wrestle the contents for my sunglasses. I stab myself in the face in my haste to put them on. “You must have gotten me confused with someone else.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mindy says and walks past. “You have a familiar face.”

“I get that a lot,” I say with a nod and keep walking.

“I swear that’s her,” Mindy whispers to the woman next to her. I keep walking, not stopping until I’m next to my Malibu. I press the button on the door handle and plop into the driver’s seat, exhaling. I’m a bit ashamed for letting myself come undone so easily. I shake my head, put my parcels in the seat next to me, and start the car. I’m calmed when Taylor Swift comes on, reminding me to shake all this off.

I grab Taco Bell on the way, thinking more and more about trying out the new vibrator the closer I get to home. I pull into the narrow, one-car garage attached to my town house, sliding sideways out of the car to avoid hitting my bike.

“Hey, Ser Pounce,” I say to a fat orange and white cat that slinks around my ankles when I walk into the house. I kick off my black kitten heels and pad through the laundry room into the kitchen, sitting at the small island counter. I dig into my food as I unpackage the vibrator, more excited than I should be to discover it’s fully charged. I toss it on my bed for later, do a bit of much-needed housework, and then log onto my computer.

I’m tempted to look up Mindy on Facebook, but eventually resist. Nothing good comes from online stalking, and I don’t want to deal with the ill feelings I know I’ll get when I see how perfect her life it.

But hey, it’s not like my life is bad. I’m new to this town, having moved here six months ago for work. I hadn’t made any good friends yet, besides my boss and his boyfriend. I wasn’t particularly worried. I knew I’d made friends eventually. I still talked to my best friend, Erin, pretty much daily online or via text message, and I had a large group of online gamer friends. I couldn’t complain about being lonely, that was for sure.

I text Erin, telling her about my awkward sex shop experience (her hatred of all things Mindy is almost as deep as mine), then settle in at my computer to play League of Legends for just an hour or so. Ser Pounce curls up in my lap, not bothered by my talking and angry muttering during the game.

At two AM I realize I need to get my ass in bed or I’m going to be dragging in the morning. Figuring if I skip the new workout routine I’m trying to stick to—it’s not like I do much anyway—I can sleep in another forty-five minutes and be okay. I change into my PJs and collapse into bed, finding the neon-pink vibrator tangled in the sheets. I pick it up, wrapping my fingers around its rubber tip, and bite my lip.

Well, I do sleep better after a good orgasm, after all.

CHAPTER TWO

“What are your plans for the weekend?” Mariah asks me the next day at work. I yawn and down my second cup of coffee. One good orgasm wasn’t enough, and I ended up staying up way past my already late bedtime seeing if I could outdo the last until I eventually passed out. Not my proudest moment. And now my wrist hurt. Cue all the shame.

“I’m going home for my brother’s bridal shower. Well, not his, I guess, but his fiancé’s. My future sister-in-law,” I added, raising my eyebrows.

Mariah laughed, her strawberry-blonde hair moving around her face. “I take it you don’t like her?”

I turn away from my computer, swiveling the chair around with a creak. “I don’t really know her, that’s all. It’s weird to think my little brother is spending the rest of his life—give or take a divorce or two—with this girl that I’ve only met a few times. And she’s going to be part of my family and I’ll have to spend Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving and … and other holidays that I can’t think of right now with her. Forever.”

Mariah, who’s been married for over ten years with two kids, laughs again. “I hate my brother’s wife,” she says softly. “She’s a total gold-digging bitch. Joke’s on her because my brother squanders all his money and can’t put anything away to save his life. We’re all waiting on that divorce to happen. Hopefully before he knocks her up.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Any fun plans?”

Mariah puts her hands back on her keyboard, quickly typing as she talks. “We’re taking the kids to the beach and then the children’s museum. It should be fun and they will be exhausted by the time we come home. That’s horrible, isn’t it? I look forward to my kids being worn out and quiet.”

I smile. “The boys are eight now?”

“Nine. And so hyper.” Her steel-blue eyes widen. “They never stop.”

I press enter and wait for the page on the website I’m building to save.

“I should feel bad that I look forward to bedtime, right?” Mariah says. “I love those kids.”

“Nah, I get exhausted cleaning the litter box and cleaning cat dishes. You’re fine.”

Mariah gives me another smile then goes back to work. I look at the clock, see I still have two hours until lunch, and get back to work. I’m building a custom website from scratch for a gardening company, and they’ve given me pretty loose reins to run with the project. Setting up sites is a cakewalk for me and gets boring day after day. But this job has minimal stress, it pays well, and I don’t have to deal with people face to face, which is the biggest win of all.

I design a few graphics just because I can, email them to the art director for approval, then spend the rest of the morning customizing HTML for the client. I take my lunch into the break room, sitting at a large wooden table that’s under an air-conditioning vent, and shiver. The room is by far the best break room I’ve had at a job, with a snack bar, fridge full of free drinks, and donuts and bagels every morning. It’s clean and well decorated, like the break room of a big company should be.

I dig into my food while texting Erin about designing our costumes for Wizard World in Chicago later this summer. She wants to go a Sailor Jupiter—again.

I text her: Let’s do Batman and Superman instead. You get first pick.