Laken
Think back to your favorite rom com movie. Okay, now think about the turning point where the hero or heroine is broken, dejected, and thinking life couldn’t get any worse. Maybe they look like they’d been thrown down a wood chipper, or maybe they’re pacing and mumbling to themselves, in need of a white jacket that ties in the back.
Good, now check me out. Yep, that’s me sprawled out on my old, ripped, brown leather couch in the shredded evening gown with mascara running down my face like some circus clown reject. Don’t judge, until you’ve heard the whole story. I promise there’s a reason for all of this, and I’m fully justified in the fucktastrophe you’re currently witnessing.
My life is no rom com. I’m no heroine. I had it all in the palm of my hand and then my future went to shit, swirling down the proverbial toilet of life.
Overly dramatic? Stay with me.
Scooping an oversized spoonful of ice cream from the carton wedged between my knees, I shove it in my mouth and chase it with a few gulps of white wine straight out of the bottle. It has to be at least six a.m. on Sunday morning, and as I flip through the channels on the TV, those annoying rom coms I was just talking about stare me in the face—mocking me. All those movies I used to devour, I now loathe and want to see die a slow death. Real life never wraps up in a pretty red bow at the end as they make you believe. No, it’s messy, brutal, and rips your heart out only to pulverize it.
Turning the wine bottle up again, I kick off my heels and settle on the movie Titanic.
Oh, good. A happy ending type of romance.
And that’s the way Shelby, my roommate, finds me as she swings open the front door to our tiny Bed-Stuy apartment in Brooklyn, staring at me as if I’ve been inhabited by some gluttonous alien. Shelby’s a first-year medical intern with a crazy schedule and she’s used to coming home at odd hours. What she’s not used to is seeing me argue with a television screen.
“Holy shit!” Her hand flies to her mouth in a veiled attempt to hide her shock. “Were you mugged? Oh God, did they follow you home? Do they know where we live? I have jewelry, you know.”
Giving her a side-eyed glare, I lick the dripping ice cream off the spoon and choke the life out of the wine bottle. “Nope.”
Walking farther into the room, she wrinkles her nose at my vices. “Then are you pregnant?”
“Piss off.”
“Okay,” she says, drawing the word out slowly as to not spook me. “Do you plan on going to work today, or are you just going to stay drunk until we’re homeless?”
Let me stop here and remind everyone that I am not, in fact, drunk or homeless. I’ve lost my shitty job, but the fact of the matter is, that it’s everything else I’ve lost that’s caused this. And it’s my own fault. A catastrophe of my own doing, like those contestants on The Price Is Right who bid four hundred and twenty-five dollars for a brand-new dining room just to get on stage. They look so smug until the asshole next to them bids four hundred and twenty-six. Seriously? Didn’t they see that coming? That shit next to them had planned all along to make them feel secure in their win until it was time to turn the knife. Suddenly they’re blocked in. Stuck. Screwed by their own stupidity, because Maude from New Hampshire doesn’t give a shit about their feelings. Maude has an agenda and her agenda is to screw them out of a new life….and a dining room.
I had everything. It was mine for the taking, and all I had to do was tell the truth. And I would’ve. I mean, I planned to…eventually.
Shelby stares at the hell hole I’ve turned our apartment into and kicks a discarded Ho-Ho wrapper out of her way with the toe of her white sneaker. “Clean this shit up, Laken, then get a shower. You smell like fermented ass.” Giving me one of her patented eye rolls, she stomps off to her bedroom and slams the door.
Taking another long swig from the bottle, I swish it around in my mouth before swallowing and calling out over my shoulder. “No, really, I’m fine. Just my life ending, thanks for your concern.”
And this is where my story begins. As a reluctant nanny to one of the most powerful families in New York City, I’ve waited for a chance like last night. All I needed was my foot in the corporate door—an “in,” if you will. Once it fell into my lap, I latched on like a drowning woman on a life preserver. I met the executives I needed to meet, shook the hands I needed to shake, and integrated myself into a world I’d tried two years to infiltrate. Finally, for once in my life, I almost had everything. Like Leonardo DiCaprio, I was king of my own stupid world.
Funny about that movie, Titanic, right? Jack thought he had it all. He almost took a nose dive right over the bow of that boat like some lunatic trying to save dumbass Rose when she almost ate it off the railing. Not such a genius move. It should’ve been a clue to anyone watching that ol’ Jack wasn’t firing on all cylinders when it came to that red-haired chick, and shit wouldn’t end well. And you know what? It didn’t. Rose plopped her happy ass on that floating piece of wood while Jack’s balls became little nutcicles and he froze to death.
You think that shit would’ve happened in real life? Hell no. Jack would’ve told Rose to scoot the fuck over, or he would’ve dumped her never-letting-go ass right in the North Atlantic.
Only the strong survive. Eat or be eaten. Call of the wild, rule of the jungle.
You probably think I’m the Jack in this story, right? That I’m at home pining away because I believed the rich girl loved me and didn’t want me to die cold and alone at the bottom of the sea. You’d be partly right. But here’s where you may not feel as sorry for me as you do right now. I’m also the Rose.
Yep. I duped my Jack into thinking I’d share the piece of wood with him too. I made him care about the fake me—the one that didn’t exist. All to get ahead in life…to get the prize I’d always wanted. Until what I wanted was him.
I’m Laken Cavanaugh, and this is the story of how one unsupervised moment in Central Park started a chain of events that landed me at rock bottom; drinking six-dollar chardonnay straight from the bottle while stuffing my face full of chocolate ice cream.
Chocolate.
Funny. I’ve always been a vanilla girl until him. In so many more ways than one. Now, I’ve lost my job, my career, my future, but most importantly, I’ve lost him. And it’s all because of one little white lie. Well, a lie and the root of all evil. The bane of my existence. The reason why I’m one more drink away from detox and a padded cell.
My boss.