After a late night fight between Alex Summers and her ex goes terribly wrong, her parents ship her off to spend a stress-free summer in Los Angeles. But the second she steps off the plane, Alex stumbles into California bad boy Elias King, a too-hot...
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Alex
Dear Nobody,
Today I socked my therapist in the face. He didn't call the cops. Maybe he thinks I'm making progress. This journal is supposed to be a start-at least, that's what he says. But I hate doing what he says so I think I'll stop here.
-Alex
Okay, wait, that looks bad. I'll start over.
Dear Nobody,
I'm not a violent person. Really. Ask anybody-except maybe my therapist 'cause he'll probably tell you I'm lying. The thing is, Dr. Harris just had one of those punch-able faces, mousy, judgmental, portrait of a shrink who knew nothing about actually helping people, and everything about making things worse. Plus, he asked for it-literally.
He said that if I was still angry at my situation I could let it out, so I did. He just wasn't expecting my way of coping to involve a fist and the bridge of his nose. People say you're not supposed to hit a girl, but there's no rule that says you can't pop a guy if you feel like it, and I'd felt like it since he started our session .
"Do you still have romantic feelings towards your ex-boyfriend, Rory, Ms. Summers?"
What do you think?
"Do you blame yourself for the situation?"
No comment.
"Have you forgiven him?"
Are you joking?
"Forgiveness is the first step towards--," and that's when I hit him.
He flew clean out of his chair, not the comfy kind from the movies, but one of the shitty ones on wheels, and sprawled onto the floor like a ragdoll. Believe me, it was hilarious but don't tell anyone I said that or they'll send me back to therapy, or worse an institution-and I can't swallow pills.
So anyway, when I stopped laughing and he stopped shrieking or crying or whatever, he called my parents. Well, he called the receptionist to "retrieve me" first, and once I was isolated in the coffee break area, he managed to get both my mom and dad out of work to pick me up.
Bad news.
Nobody said anything in the car ride home.
Mom took out her frustration on the radio dial while Dad had his eagle eyes on me through the rearview mirror. His glares are beyond terrible. If the bad dude from Lord of The Rings had two fiery all seeing eyes and possessed the body of a fifty-year-old accountant, he'd be my dad.
At work he's snagged the snazzy title of chief financial officer, no thanks to Rory's Dad. Apparently, it pays to keep your CEO's secrets. Mr. Lancaster steers the ship and my dad handles the funds for Duncan & Lancaster Investors. Sounds great on the surface, but since his promotion, he's been coming home and acting less like my dad and more like a Lancaster--and the last thing I need in my life is a Lancaster doppelganger under my own roof.
Dad went from Summers family superhero to Chief Family Officer, Commander and Chief of All House Related Affairs, Chief of the Kitchen, you get the idea. Monster titles. So that meant he had final say on what to do with me.
Sadly, unlike his accounts, I don't quite "balance out" anymore. Instead of keeping his wallet and overall sanity in the green, I cost him several hundreds of dollars in therapists, and nearly his job over the last few months since my "incident".
See, that's the problem. The incident. Every one of these pen-pushing, glasses-wearing, style- deprived therapists want me to talk about it.
And that's just it. I don't want to talk about it, or think about it, or not-cry about it ever again. Not a difficult concept. If the world would just leave it alone, it'd probably go away. That's how I've always dealt with problems, and usually, it works out.
My parents, on the other hand, like to send their problems away and in less than twenty-four hours, I'm going away.
Mom and Dad expedited their decision to ship me three-thousand miles across the country in hopes of "curing" me from all things Rory. They're convinced that a summer in L.A. with my sunshine superstar of a cousin is going to "patch up my attitude."
I mean, I doubt I'll make the magical recovery they're expecting, but three months outside of Trenton sounds too much like salvation to turn down. I've spent the last three hours packing all my clothes that don't smell like Rory while silently contemplating whether I should burn the rest.
Who knows?
Maybe I'll find a boy without a temper this time around. If not, I'll resign myself to seventeen-year-old spinsterhood.
Mom's quietly hoping I'll meet someone good for me in L.A. She's a RomCom addict so she thinks the universe has a big shiny plan in store, whatever that means. I don't know if I believe in fate, but I believe in gravity. So I'll flip a coin on the future.
