Between Boyfriends (Book 1 in the Between Boyfriends Series)

Chapter 2

The next morning, Jan was back at her mirror. She was debating whether she looked sociably acceptable enough to go to class without being arrested for indecent exposure.

With her brain working overtime to come up with a plan for concealing the damage, Jan forgot about her plan to get up early to schedule a haircut. She had turned her alarm clock off in her sleep and woken up at her usual time: noon.

Jan's hazel eyes were red from crying. Nothing sunglasses won't fix, she thought. Her normally tanned skin looked pale and blotchy. Thank God for MAC concealer. Her hair looked as if it had been ravaged by Edward Scissorhands.

"Whatever," she exclaimed and stormed out of the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, Jan was outside her apartment contemplating a different dilemma. She studied her reflection in the beast's mirrored skin and decided that her black hat hid her hair perfectly. It complimented her outfit, her sunglasses, and her mood. Jan refocused her eyes to take in the bulk of the problem. Raising herself gracefully into the Jeep Wrangler was a daily struggle. It was a Rubicon model based off Lara Croft's ride in the Tomb Raider movie. Her dad hired an auto broker to find the limited-edition vehicle. Jan never missed an opportunity to tell the story.

No new solutions came to mind that morning. There was simply no way to get in without clearing a decent runway, sprinting to gather momentum, and then catapulting herself off her lead foot.

Here we go again.

"Eek." Jan was airborne. She caught hold of the steering wheel and the door frame, and pulled herself the rest of the way into the driver's seat. She felt undignified after her clumsy acrobatics display. To compensate, she sat up ramrod straight in her seat and attempted to fake poise.

Once out of sight of her apartment complex, Jan allowed herself to slump back in her seat. She looked the other way as she drove past the university she was not enrolled in to begin the twenty-minute journey to the school she did attend.

It was too quiet. She switched on her six-CD changer and selected an appropriate song. "In the end, it doesn't even matter!" she shouted along with the music, her hands gripping the wheel like a stress ball before reaching to turn up her Linkin Park CD. She felt slightly better after several minutes of scream therapy.

Unfortunately, after a few more songs that should be titled "I Swear I'm Over That Horrible Relationship Yet Still Obsessing About Every Detail," Jan felt less empowered and more introspective. Her brain began replaying the last conversation she'd had with the ex. She remembered how he gave her asinine excuses for the breakup before biting her head off and then hanging up on her. She ran over a thousand ways she could have handled it better.

She took a moment away from daydreaming to check the road, just in time to see her exit approaching rapidly. She prepared to swerve across several lanes, glanced over her right shoulder to make sure the road was clear, and swore when she saw a little old lady in a gigantic Hummer cruising alongside her. She jerked back into her lane. The exit, like everything good in her life, disappeared behind her.

Jan burst into tears.

She was late, of course, even more so than usual. This meant no parking spaces. Jan had to circle around her school like a vulture waiting for something to die. It took ten minutes for her patience to croak and for her to park illegally in front of a fire hydrant. She began fixing her makeup.

As she worked, she assured herself that if she ever got a ticket she could send the bill to her father. It was an educational expense. If her father was unavailable, Jan figured her mother could take care of it. She owned a law firm after all. If she could assist corporate slimeballs in avoiding jail, she could easily fix a ticket.