I grin, my ears perking up at the mention of food. My mother, being a traditional Italian woman, loves to cook. Her food packages are legendary, and it means Aubrey and I likely won’t have to make dinners for a couple of weeks. My mouth waters at the thought.
My best friend wanders into the hall. “Did someone say food?” She grins at my mother before pulling her into an affectionate hug. “Hi, Stella.”
As my dad makes his way back downstairs and Aubrey drags my mother into the living room, I look back at the boxes and frown. These are remnants of the past, a leftover casualty of my broken-down relationship. My ex-fiancé texted me last week and told me he was boxing up the things I’d left behind at our apartment. He was having a clear-out, apparently. Likely so he could move his new plaything into my home to enjoy my beautifully decorated apartment and newly fitted kitchen.
There’s an envelope stuck on the top box, so I bend and tear it off, my heart clenching at the familiar, messy scrawl. Inside is a note.
Lucie, if I’ve forgotten anything or if there’s anything else you want to come and get, do let me know.
I hope you’re okay.
Lucas
There’s no kiss on it. Eight years together, and I don’t even get a measly X tagged thoughtlessly on the end. My eyes trace over his name. Lucas and Lucie—even our names match. Everyone thought that was a sign we were meant to be. Spoiler alert: everyone was wrong.
I screw his note into a ball, carelessly tossing it into the top box, pushing the packages against the wall with my foot.
When I stormed out of our/his fancy apartment three months ago after coming home and catching my loving fiancé screwing his nineteen-year-old personal trainer on our/his couch, I packed up all my clothes, shoes, and a couple of my favourite handbags, and I left without looking back. Whatever is in these boxes is nothing I want, likely just junk and knickknacks accumulated over the span of our years together. Merely brainless and meaningless tat that defined our whole lives at one time, now demoted to being unwanted and dumped in a box to collect dust.
The boxes clutter the hallway and stop me from being able to close the front door properly, so I grab the handle of the suitcase and drag it down the hallway to my room. It’s not exactly the nicest room in the world. Plain magnolia walls, accentuated with empty picture hooks and Blu-Tack grease marks, and cheap pine furniture the bestie and I sourced from the local charity shop. It’s not the luxurious grandeur of the trendy, sparkly two-bed apartment Lucas and I renovated together. I can’t complain though. I can’t afford to live on my own and am super lucky Aubrey is so awesome that she is willing to give up her home office and instead work from her bed, so I can have a roof over my head without having to resort to moving back in with my parents at twenty-six. What a shameful disaster that would’ve been.
Unzipping the case, I pop the lid and let my eyes rake over what Lucas has deemed mine. There are framed photos of us, things we bought while on holiday, some key rings, my stuffed bears he bought me when we started dating, a couple of CDs and DVDs, and the Magic 8-Ball I’ve had since I was a teenager.
I flop down on my uncomfortable bed and pick up the 8-Ball, rolling it in my hands as I think about what a catastrophe my life is now. I have nothing to my name but clothes, this suitcase, and two more boxes full of crap.
I shake the 8-Ball and close my eyes. “Is Lucie a loser?”
Flipping it over, I eagerly watch the inky-coloured window as the little triangle floats to the top.
It is decidedly so.
“Oh, charming. I get more support from drunk strangers in the ladies’ loo of a club,” I scoff, tossing it onto my bed.
But to be honest, it’s true. At the moment, I am a loser who has nothing going for her.
When Lucas and I were together, I naively tied my life around his so completely that I didn’t even think about what would happen if we didn’t make it. He was the one with the fantastic prospects and fast-track programme up the business ladder. He’s five years older than me, so he was just starting his shiny job after graduating university with honours when I was about to head off to start the English degree I’d always dreamed of. I was eighteen, stupidly in love, and just plain stupid. I let him talk me out of it. Me going to university meant less time spent with him—and honestly, what did I need a degree for when he was the big earner anyway? So, instead, I pushed my ambitions aside and took a position at the family company as Lucas’s personal assistant. I didn’t even mind really. Well, not that I admitted anyway. And to be fair, I was an absolute boss at it. With my organisational skills and eye for detail, I practically ran the place—and him! He couldn’t do without me … until he could.
Hindsight, what a bitch.
Blissfully unaware of any problematic future, we moved into a fixer-upper apartment he’d bought with his first year’s commission. I was young and a lowly PA, so Lucas paid all the bills and put his name on the mortgage and car ownership agreement. His credit card bought the refurbishment and all the furniture while I paid for food and other essentials. It didn’t matter that I’d picked everything out, that I supported him and enabled him to go get that life he had. It was all his.
Legally, I could probably fight him for some kind of severance, maybe under the law of civil partners or common-law spousal entitlement or something, but I couldn’t do that without dragging our parents through the mud and into our drama. So, I walked away. Three months ago, I calmly walked out of his apartment with my clothes and announced I never wanted to see him again. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that calmly. Maybe I screamed a little in Italian and set a curse upon his children, cut up his designer jeans, and poured bleach into his houseplants—but I didn’t kill him, so that’s technically calm, right?
Unfortunately, our break-up left me not only heartbroken and homeless, but also jobless because I couldn’t be expected to work for the man who had stomped on my heart. I’m not a masochist. I went from having everything and planning a wedding, picking out names for our future kids, to no roof over my head, no job, and no real prospects.
Thank the Lord for best friends; that’s all I can say. My lifelong bestie, Aubrey, stepped in and bumped my life back onto the tracks again. She gave me somewhere to stay, listened to me cry, watched Meg Ryan movies with me until our eyes bled, and bought me chocolate and ice cream until we both gained almost ten pounds. Then—and best of all—when I couldn’t find anyone to hire me as their personal assistant anywhere in the city, Aubrey found me a job where she works. Granted, it’s a (very) low-paid internship, but it’s for a publisher, and as I was a huge bookworm, growing up, working for a publisher is literally everything I’ve always dreamed of. It’s everything I gave up in favour of being what Lucas wanted me to be.
I’m on the first rung of the ladder right now, paying my dues and earning my stripes, but with a little luck and a lot of hard work, at the end of my one-year contract, I’m hoping to earn the junior editor position, which is awarded to one intern who deserves it the most. All I have to do is beat the two other girls who started the same time as me six weeks ago and prove I want it and deserve it more than them. Shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m not afraid of a little hard work or competition.
I hear my mother and Aubrey laugh in the kitchen, so I reluctantly push myself up to my feet and head out to them. My mother has taken over the kitchen. She’s heating a lasagne while my dad and Aubrey tear and share some focaccia bread, dipping it in Mamma’s homemade dressing. It smells like my childhood in here.