EMILY

“Hi, I’m Emily Golden and I’m an addict.”

My index finger looped through a curl escaping the headband meant to contain my hair. It tickled my cheek. I swirled my finger through it, brushing my thumb over the strands of hair repeatedly, over and over. Old habits died hard and playing with my curls was one of them. So was picking the wrong kind of men.

“I am an addict,” I repeated, but this time I smiled. “I’m addicted to asshole men.”

A small throw pillow came sailing across the room, nailing the top of my head. Maggie Stuart has been my best friend since we were five years old and I came to live with my grandmother. She loves to throw things, especially at me.

I would never forget the day I arrived at Nana’s, a scared and confused child, my rag doll clutched tightly to my chest as if someone might take her away from me, too. Everything I possessed was in a box in the back of Nana’s old Station Wagon with the wood panel sides.

Maggie sat on the front steps, waiting, her own baby doll placed next to her on the cement, a wilted dandelion in one hand and a baggie of chocolate chip cookies in the other.

As I stepped out of the car, she skipped toward me, her hands extended with her offerings. Maggie’s smile was bright with anticipation of a new friendship; mine was tentative and fearful. The smile of a five-year-old girl with an old soul, already having lost so much.

Maggie has been my best friend ever since.

I am Emily Golden and I am addicted to asshole men. You know the ones, the bad boy, the I-can't-commit ones, the players and the cheats. I have this warped desire to save them, to change them, and to mold them into what I want them to be. If I do succeed in changing one, I throw them away. The problem isn’t the men. The problem is me, and I’m a mess. It's going to destroy me someday. 

I need a new addiction, and I need a new life!

Maggie threw another pillow to distract my rambling thoughts. I took a sip of my wine and glanced over at her, beckoning her wisdom.

“First of all, Em, your taste in men has sucked since grade school. The boys you were friends with back then were troublemakers and misfits. As we got older, you had crushes on the absolute worst boys in school. You wanted to save them. You gave your poor grandmother every one of her grey hairs with the stuff you did. It's what you’ve always done. Are you thinking it's time for a change? Do you want to try something new?”

I knew she was laughing at me, but I also understood she was trying to make a point. This couldn’t go on.

Memories of my childhood, the terrible teen years, and college came screaming back at me. Sometimes I wondered how I made it to my thirties. So many people came and went from my life; I didn’t remember half of them.

“Do you remember the fourth of July party? What were we, sixteen?”

Maggie started strolling down memory lane.

“I remember, it was the summer between sophomore and junior year...” I laughed, remembering.

“I was so mad at you for dragging me to that horrible party. You wanted to go because of some guy you liked so much. I can’t remember his name.”

Images of that particular party and that boy came to mind. Trying as hard as I could, I couldn’t recall the kid’s name either. I must have been so in love!

“You had the worst crush on him and he was so bad. If I remember right, he got expelled his junior year, didn’t he?” Maggie was going for the jugular now.

“Yeah, he was busted for dealing. The only time he ever really talked to me was to invite me to the party. I was so drunk that night that I really don’t remember much,” I admitted.

“I kind of interrupted when he was leading you into the house. He wasn’t very happy with me, but I didn’t care. I heard the sirens, and I knew the place was about to get raided. There were so many kegs and illegal fireworks blowing up all over the place, not to mention the pot. All I had to do was breathe the damn air and I was getting high from it.”

“I just remember hiding under a bed during the raid and somehow I fell asleep!”

I cringed, thinking back to that time of my life. I gave so little thought to the consequences of my actions or to the trouble I could have gotten myself into, or dragged Maggie into with me. I just didn’t care.

“How did we ever wind up underneath a bed in the first place?” I asked Maggie.

“A friend of a friend. Her brother was the one throwing the party. I had been talking to her just before all hell broke loose and she told us to come in and hide, thank God. Can you imagine if we had been arrested? I’d have been grounded for life and you would have given your grandmother a heart attack. You put her through so much. She never gave up on you, though, even after all the stupid impulsive things you did.”

“Was I that bad?”

Maggie was quiet for a moment, thinking about her answer. I wanted her to be honest. I didn’t like what I remembered very much. I didn’t like myself much, not as a teenager and not even who I was in my recent past.

“You weren’t bad … we all did crazy stuff back then. You were just a bit wilder than most. There was an underlying anger in you, that ‘I don’t care about anything’ attitude. Most of the time we all understood it. I mean—your parents died when you were little, and it was just you and your grandma.”

I smiled when I thought of Nana. “She was a saint,” I murmured softly.

“She had more patience than anyone I have ever known,” Maggie agreed with me.

I didn’t remember a lot about my parents. Everything we owned was destroyed in the fire. My clothes and all my toys, the dollhouse my father made me, the pictures in the scrapbooks my mother was always busy working on. All the memories my parents carefully collected over those first few years. Everything was gone in an instant.

The photographs I had now were ones my grandmother saved and most of them were of my mother as a young girl.

I had been staying overnight with my mom’s best friend so my parents could have a date night. An old house on the east side of St. Paul. A night of wine and romance and a forgotten candle left burning. My young life as I knew it ended in flames.

As I grew older, my anger amplified, not because my parents died and I didn’t, but because slowly, I was forgetting the few memories I had of them, the movie reels that ran through my mind allowing me to see my family—my parents with me playing, eating dinner, doing things families do. Having those memories helped me feel like I was normal. As the pictures faded, it hurt because it made me different from my friends.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get us arrested that night!” Maggie laughed, her voice pulling me back to the present.

“I can’t believe you still wanted to be my friend. I dragged you with me so many times. I was awful!” I admitted. “And I still remember the hangover from that party. I think it lasted for a week.”

“Paybacks.” She laughed.

“All over a stupid guy I wanted to impress.”

I thought about my younger years as I went to open another bottle of wine. Why did I make the choices I did? What was it about the men I kept choosing and still do to this day, the type of guys that broke my heart? I needed to make some changes and I needed to make them now.

Maggie, as if reading my mind, asked, “What made you start thinking about this now, Em? I know you broke things off with Jailbait, but I didn’t think you cared much about getting too involved with any guy.”

Oh yes, Jailbait, the nickname my friends gave my latest disaster, Steve Nelson. Eight years younger than myself, he was a dead ringer for Johnny Depp with an attitude. He thought the world owed him and he could take brooding to a whole new level. Sexy as all hell, but very hard to be around for long periods of time. Anger seemed to radiate from him. He could fly into a complete rage over something so simple, and I never knew what was going to set him off. Sometimes it scared the daylights out of me.

Twenty minutes with Steve and I was exhausted. And because he didn’t feel the need to work hard and make a decent living, he cost me a fortune. It took a while, but Jailbait was history. He stormed out a month ago after I cut the money off, telling me I was a waste of time and he didn’t need the hassle.

“I’m just tired,” I replied. “I don’t want this life I’m leading anymore. I want something different and I want it to mean something. Sometimes I even think I want to have kids, a husband—you know, the whole white picket fence kind of life. Can you imagine me married … and a mom? Maybe I’m just going through a midlife crisis.”

I knew I wasn’t making sense, but Maggie got me, she always had.

“So what you’re saying is you finally want to meet a nice guy and settle down, actually grow up?” she teased me.

“I think I really do,” I answered her honestly. “But first, I think I need to figure out who I am and what makes me happy. Because right now? I don’t have a clue.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” she asked.

“I’m not exactly sure yet, other than I’m not going to date at all until I get it figured out.”

“Seriously?” Maggie was shocked.

“Seriously. Getting into a relationship while I’m trying to figure out what I want would just complicate things. I need to take care of me first.”

“Have you ever dated a nice guy?”

I thought about how I should answer her. I had dated a few really nice guys, one in particular, but it had been a long time.

Every woman had that one man, the one who came into her heart, made a home in there, and never left. The man who, no matter how hard you tried to forget, was the one you compared every single guy who followed him. The one who made everyone else not quite enough. The one who left and broke your heart.

“Yes, I have,” I told her. “But not for over seven years.”

I hadn’t told Maggie about him, the one, because I was still trying to find a way to forget.