I clicked on the ‘Look Inside’ feature for His Sexy Bride, and the book is so damn short that the free ten percent sample only gives me the table of contents.

Find someone else on this app who has time for you.

Ryan

PS—Your friends’ list is at ZERO as well.

Letter Topic: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello, No Sex, Just Platonic…

Dear Bella,

Wait a minute.

You’re clearly writing under a pen name—both here and there, and against my better judgment, I ventured to your author website and read through your blog’s first few pages. (Some of your blog posts are longer than some of the books you’ve published, but I digress.)

I noticed that you’ve previously written about some things that we have in common, that you have an appreciation for the written word, and that—despite my baseless ASSumption, you do read two new books a week.

I’m not interested in being your boyfriend or doing anything more than having long-form conversations—just like you.

My apologies.

I’d like us to start over.

Ryan

Seven months later…

ONE

Bella/Christina

“Can you believe that your father is having another kid with that skank?” My mother’s voice sounded over my speakers Saturday morning. “Next time you fly over there to see him, tell him I said that he needs to grow the hell up! He’s fifty years old and still making babies like hotcakes.”

I groaned and held a pillow over my head, trying to block out her words, but it was no use. My mother’s voice could overpower the loudest of thunderstorms.

“And did I tell you about Max?” She shrieked. “He had the audacity to think that I wouldn’t go to the judge and demand alimony. He made five hundred thousand dollars a year when we were together, and he thinks he’s going to walk away without giving me a dime? He must not know who he’s dealing with, Chrissie!”

BEEEEP!

Sighing, I kept my eyes shut for several seconds—trying to drift off to sleep again, but it was no use. I was now wide awake, and I only had myself to blame for not foreseeing this sooner.

Every three months, like clockwork, my mother unloaded her bitterness onto every blank space of my studio apartment’s antique voicemail system.

It always started simple, almost like she was a mature mom who was capable of leaving the past behind. She ranted about her job, wondered why her “beloved and only daughter” would rather live in Charlotte, North Carolina than by her side in Miami. Then she’d say, “I love you so much, Chrissie,” seconds before revealing the same center stage act each time: Extreme, vulgar pettiness about my dad.

“One last thing I need to say!” Her voice came over my speakers once more. “Your father’s bimbo of a wife is a cunt. Always has been, always will be. She’s currently posting all of her latest pregnancy pictures on Instagram with her whole, hashtag, Grover family forever, and hashtag, Mrs. Grover for eternity bullshit. I’m shocked he doesn’t slide right out of her whenever they fuck, since her vagina has to be wide as a canal after all those kids. And you know what? I’m tempted to comment on one of her posts and tell her that Mr. Grover’s tongue was once licking my asshole. I wonder if she’d put up so many pictures of him kissing her on the lips then!”

BEEEEP!

What the hell? I sat up and tossed my pillow at the machine, toppling it to the floor.

I already knew that she’d call back and leave her final, “I miss you so much, Chrissie, and I hope you’re still doing well with your tutoring job! Call me back when you get a chance!”

There was no point in feeling guilty about missing that one.

She and my father had been divorced since my junior year of high school, but their hatred for each other still burned like wildfire. Teenage sweethearts—at first, they spent more time convincing everyone else that they were in love that they forgot to tell each other. The night that they were finally going to put each other out of misery and “take a much-needed break,” they found out that they were pregnant with me. Then they got married.

“Stupidest fucking decision that I’ve ever made,” they still said to this day.

They’d moved on to new spouses and lives, but they continued to use me as a pawn in their unresolved game of hate.

Tossing the covers off my body, I slipped into my bathroom and took a quick shower—washing away all of the negativity from those voicemails. I wrapped myself in a robe and headed over to the kitchen—turning on the Keurig and my laptop.

I couldn’t afford to waste any time dealing with either of my parents right now. I had a deadline to meet, and the final scenes for My Hot Neighbor weren’t going to write themselves.

Thank God, I never told them that I quit that tutoring job and started writing smutty books for a living…

Taking a few deep breaths, I made a cup of coffee and set a timer for forty minutes—my usual time for penning a sex scene.

Picking up right where I left off yesterday, I typed a few lines and deleted them. I copied and pasted a word here or there for inspiration—“cock,” “wet slit,” “hardness”—and hoped that the sex would unfold as easily as it usually did, but before I knew it, the timer was sounding and there were only three sentences standing on my page.