“Jeff, are you watching Jerry Springer again? I knew you secretively loved that—” But when I walked into the room, my words got lost in my throat as shock paralyzed me in place at what I saw.

There, on the cream sheepskin area rug I’d gotten him last Christmas, was Jeff, naked and on his knees, pounding himself in and out of some blonde’s ass.

“Chloe!” Jeff called out in alarm. He leaped off the woman, his erection emerging from inside the blonde. It wasn’t until that moment that the woman turned around, causing a sharp gasp to escape my lips.

She wasn’t some random woman. She wasn’t some stranger. She was none other than Carly, my best friend.

I felt like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and replaced with something more dense and threatening. For what seemed like eternity, we just stood there, staring at each other in wide-eyed shock, both unable to say a thing.

“I—I can explain!” Jeff stammered out as he moved toward me, causing his still-hard erection to point straight at me, almost as if to ask me to look at it and acknowledge where it’d just been.

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed as I backed away from him. I glared at him, then Carly, and then back to him. “I don’t understand. How could you guys? My boyfriend? My best friend?” I drew in a sharp, uneven breath. “And on my fucking birthday?”

“Chloe,” Carly’s voice was soft, almost pleading, “I’m sorry. We didn’t intentionally want to hurt you…”

“Shut up, Carly! Just shut the fuck up! What was all that bullshit this morning about making sure I got my birthday sex from Jeff today, and how I should take the day off? And when I decide to take your advice, take the day off and come see him, I walk in on you fucking him! Did I miss something? Is your name Chloe? Did you turn thirty today? Is he your boyfriend?” By this point, I was fuming with rage.

“I—I didn’t know you’d show up, Chloe,” she pleaded. “I asked you this morning what your plans were today. You said you’d be at work. I didn’t plan for you to see this.”

I snorted at her attempt to reason with herself. “Oh, so that makes it okay for you to fuck your best friend’s boyfriend? Because you didn’t know I’d find out?”

I watched her open her mouth to respond but then she closed it without saying a word.

Jeff moved toward me again. This time, he grabbed one of my hands and forced me to face him.

“Chloe, I love you. This was just a mistake. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

I stared at him in utter disbelief. “Do you really think this doesn’t change things between us? Do you really think I can just forget this happened—that I can forget everything I just saw? Because trust me, if I could scrub the images of you fucking my friend in the ass from my memory, I’d ask you to go get me some bleach and a scrub brush.”

“Please, Chloe. Baby?” He flashed me an innocent frown.

“Fuck you, Jeff! Don’t you ‘baby’ me!”

“Come on, let’s talk about this,” he persisted.

“Get your head out of your ass, Jeff—or her ass for that matter! Don’t you get it? There’s nothing to talk about. We’re over!” I yanked my hand from his grasp and ran for his front door. I ran as fast as I could until I reached the safety of my car. It wasn’t until I drove away from his building that the anger evaporated away and tears took its place as they streamed down my face.

I cried the entire way home. And as my mind raced with a million thoughts, there was one that seemed to resonate in my head more so than any other.

It’s karma. After almost a year of eluding it, it’s finally caught up to me, and I deserve every painful moment of it.

CHAP TER TWO

Present Day

I was on a bender.

I was on the reckless path leading to self destruction.

I was completely and utterly lost.

But the thing was, I didn’t care.

This was what I wanted.

This was the only way I knew how to mentally escape from everything.

This was how fucked up I was.

Tonight was yet another night I’d found myself at the neighborhood dive bar on Hollywood Boulevard. Much like the previous nights this week, I’d gotten home after work, absentmindedly ate whatever takeout I’d grabbed on the way home, took a few vodka shots in the kitchen—to save money, of course—before walking the four blocks to the bar to close out the night in a blurry haze.

It was just a little before nine when I got to the bar tonight. It was a Friday, so the place was much more crowded than the previous nights. More options and no work in the morning, I thought to myself. I walked straight to the bar when I arrived and waved the bartender over.

“Hey, there. Chloe, right?”

“Yup, that’s me. Hey…?” I tilted my head toward him slightly, signaling for him to remind me of his name. Who could possibly keep track of names when you were just a few drinks away from being three sheets to the wind?

“Steve.” He flashed me his perfect pearly whites as he wiped down the counter between us. Wannabe actor, I immediately thought. Living in Los Angeles, you could spot them from a mile away.

“Right. Hi, Steve.”

“So what are we having tonight?”

“A glass of vodka, dirty, and a shot of Bacardi 151, hold the judgment.”

He smirked at me. “So the usual?” I wasn’t sure why, but his smug comment bothered me.

I didn’t answer him. But instead of waiting for a response, he went to make them, clearly taking my silence as a yes. A minute later, he was back with my drinks.

“Tough day?” He placed the glasses in front of me and looked at me with half-interest.

“How about tough week?” I corrected him as I threw back the shot of 151 and chased it down with a healthy gulp of vodka.

“Whoa there.” Steve raised his eyebrows, his eyes widening slightly with surprise. “Honey, you’d better slow your roll if you want to remember anything in the morning.”

“Didn’t I say ‘hold the judgment?’” I challenged him, feeling agitated by how he looked at me with unease, like I was some unstable person who needed help. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me drink the previous nights.

Okay fine, so maybe I was a little unstable, and maybe I did need help. But he was the bartender. I was paying him to make me my drinks, not to be my shrink.

To my relief, Steve had no time to respond. A group of girls at the far end of the bar waved him down, and he seemed relieved to leave our conversation to go take their drink orders.

As I sat there and sipped my vodka, something from the corner of my eye caught my attention. A girl with electric-blue hair had just walked through the front door and was waving to a group of people sitting at a booth on the opposite end of the bar. It wasn’t this particular girl, nor the color of her hair that I was drawn to. It was the red heart-shaped lock secured around the strap of her messenger bag that had caused my body to tense up.

“Ugh. I don’t want to think about him,” I muttered under my breath as I peeled my eyes off the red lock. But the harder I tried to not think about him, the more thoughts of him that began to surface in the forefront of my mind. Jax. I downed the rest of my vodka, trying to drown out my thoughts. “I want to think about anything but him right now.”

“Why don’t you think about me instead?” came a voice from right behind me.

The closeness of his voice alarmed me momentarily, but I recovered quickly and turned to face the stranger who had just walked up to the bar and sat down on the stool next to mine. He flashed me a meaningful smile and I gave him a quick once-over before returning my gaze to my empty glass. He looked to be in his mid-twenties and was cute enough for my purposes.