My Life in Shambles: A Standalone Romance

  MY LIFE IN SHAMBLES

  A NOVEL

  KARINA HALLE

  Copyright © 2019 by Karina Halle

  First edition published by Metal Blonde Books

  April 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by: Hang Le Designs

  Edited & Proofed by: Kara Malinczak & Laura Helseth

  For Scott - may we always hold out for “brilliant”

  CONTENTS

  1. Valerie

  2. Valerie

  3. Padraig

  4. Valerie

  5. Padraig

  6. Valerie

  7. Valerie

  8. Valerie

  9. Padraig

  10. Valerie

  11. Padraig

  12. Valerie

  13. Valerie

  14. Padraig

  15. Valerie

  16. Valerie

  17. Padraig

  18. Valerie

  19. Valerie

  20. Padraig

  21. Valerie

  22. Valerie

  23. Padraig

  24. Valerie

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by karina halle

  1

  VALERIE

  Philadelphia

  You can never go home again.

  Or so they say.

  They also say there’s no place like home, and at the moment I’m torn as to which statement makes the most sense.

  I’m standing in the driveway of my parents’ house, the house I grew up in, suitcase in hand. Light snow falls around me, gathering in my long hair like white glitter. To add to the poetry of the scene, the house is all warm and glowing against the dark night and I can see the giant, perfectly-decorated Christmas tree in the big bay window, just where it’s always been. My cab drives away, plumes of exhaust rising behind it, and I’m alone on the street.

  It’s such a change from New York City. Even though the suburbs of Philadelphia aren’t anything to sneeze at, I’m already missing the hustle and bustle and anonymity of the city.

  Especially the anonymity.

  I take in a deep breath and walk carefully down the driveway, even though my father has probably shoveled and salted and sanded it a million times over. My gait is never that steady, even in shitkicker boots, so I’m usually more cautious than I should be.

  Before I can even knock on the front door, trying to find a spot that isn’t covered with a giant Christmas wreath that looks like it was made from a small forest, the door opens.

  “Rie-Rie!” my oldest sister, Angie, exclaims, throwing her arms out and pulling me into a tight hug. The smell of my mother’s gingerbread cookies follows her out, enveloping me too. “You made it!”

  “Rie-Rie!” her five-year old daughter Tabby says, and the whole reason I have the Rie-Rie nickname, appears from behind her mother’s legs, wiggling her fingers at me and wanting a hug.

  I drop my suitcase and crouch down to her level. Tabby is gorgeous, just like her mother, with shiny blonde curls that Angie fears will go dark one day. “How are you, Peggy Sue?” I ask.

  “My name is Tabitha,” she says, scrunching up her face. “Why do you always call me Peggy Sue?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I tell her, giving her a squeeze. “Are you excited for Christmas? Santa is coming tonight.”

  “I was hoping you were Santa.”

  “Well, you know he doesn’t use the front door.”

  “He could. We just need to leave him the key.”

  I grin at her, and when I get back to my feet I notice my father and mother have joined the impromptu greeting session in the foyer.

  They both come at me at once.

  My father with his arms out and a heartfelt, “Good to see you, baby girl.”

  My mother with a sympathetic tilt of her head, hands clasped at her front. “You look so tired.”

  Of course I look tired. I’ve been pulling my hair out, stressed to the max, crying nonstop for the last week. Figures my mother would point that out. She likes to get you when you’re down.

  A second glance at my body from her warrants a proud, “But you’ve lost weight.”

  I ignore that and sink into my father’s hug. He’s always been so good at giving them.

  “I think you look beautiful, Valerie,” my father says to me warmly. He’s very sensitive to the things my mother says these days, not like when I was younger. “I’m glad you’re here. Come in. Want some eggnog?”

  Angie takes my suitcase away, tucking it in the corner, while my father hustles me over to the kitchen. On the polished granite center island is the eggnog punchbowl and the moose cups that my father bought decades ago, inspired by the Christmas Vacation movie. I think he still wishes he was Clark Griswold.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” my mother asks, leaning against the counter and tapping her perfectly manicured red nails against it. I’m guessing she asked her manicurist for a specific shade of Christmas red.

  “She doesn’t have to talk about anything,” my father says as he pours me eggnog from the bowl, and it’s then that I notice he’s wearing his jolly snowman tie that he always wears on Christmas Eve. “Here you go, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him, and take a sip, the rum and nutmeg hitting me hard. “Whoa, Dad. This is strong.”

  “You need it,” he says. “Want a cookie?” He turns around to bring the tray of freshly baked gingerbread men out, but my mother shakes her head.

  “She doesn’t need a cookie,” she says, and then gives me a sweet smile.

  “Hey, she can have a cookie if she wants it,” he scolds her, narrowing his eyes.

  “It’s okay. I’m not hungry,” I tell him, waving the cookies away. The truth is I’ve lost my appetite, so while I’d normally be tucking into one, this time I don’t feel like it. At least this way I don’t have to deal with the pre-cookie shame and calorie-reduction calculations.

  “Where’s Sandra?” I ask, changing the subject off of cookies and onto my other sister.

  “She’s out with her friends,” my mother says, and I swear there’s some kind of jab in there about me.

  While I was a bookish loner growing up and have just a handful of good friends, Sandra is the life of the party and is very social. More than that, she’s spiteful. Whenever she’s back in town for the holidays or some family gathering, she always goes to her old watering holes so she can show off. Now she’s known to the world as Cassandra Stephens, an accomplished actress with her own STARmeter on IMDB, and she loves rubbing her success in the faces of those who didn’t believe in her. I don’t blame her one bit. I often dream of the day I might do the same, shove any crumb of success in the face of all those people who called me a freak while growing up.

  “Can I just say one thing?” Angie asks, appearing beside us, holding a glass of wine.

  “Angie,” my father warns because we all know it’s never just one thing when it comes to her, and whatever it is will probably hurt. She takes after our mother. I’m already wincing.

  “No, really, it needs to be said,” Angie says.

  I sigh. “What?”

  May as well get this over with because I figured this would be coming.

  “I knew that boy was no good,” she says. “I knew it from the moment you met him. I mean, come on. His name is Cole Masters. He sounds like a villaino
us douchebag from a show on the CW.”

  “Douchebag!” Tabby yells, even though I know she has no idea what it means.

  “Angie, your language,” my mother says, more for the fact that she hates vulgarity rather than any swearing in front of her grandchild. “You’re more civilized than that.”

  As for my sister calling my ex-fiancé a douchebag, well, I can’t argue with her. A month ago I would have defended him, but now there’s no going back to that.

  “I know,” I say, my heart heavier than ever. I hate that everything Angie had been saying from the beginning was right.

  I met my fiancé … okay, ex, just a year ago.

  We were at a mutual friend’s birthday party in Bedstuy.

  Cole is handsome as all get out. Movie star handsome. Even Sandra said he should be in films. But Cole was all about New York money and had huge success with an app and now heads his own company, all at the age of twenty-seven.

  He was also very enigmatic and persuasive and I fell for him hook, line, and sinker. The fact that he wanted me, just a lowly writer with more curves than straight lines instead of the size-zero Instagram models with pillows for lips that were throwing themselves at him, took me for surprise. I suppose I managed to charm him as much as he charmed me.

  Our romance was a whirlwind that turned into a tornado that ended up in us getting engaged after only six months.

  And exactly one week ago, Cole pulled me aside in our shared apartment in Brooklyn and told me he wanted to call off the engagement. He wasn’t sure about the marriage thing anymore but he wanted us to stay together regardless.

  I told him I’d think about it. Went for a long walk to the river and back.

  Managed to grow a spine for the first time in a year.

  Told him if he didn’t want to marry me now, he probably wouldn’t later. And yeah, I will fully admit we got engaged too fast, but I wasn’t about to still stick around in a relationship with him when he didn’t want anything more.

  Which meant, in the end, it was my fault that I had to move out of the apartment and sleep on my friend Brielle’s couch for the last few days, and also my fault that I lost the man that I loved.

  Then again, if I really loved Cole, wouldn’t I have chosen to stay with him even if he didn’t want the commitment?

  I just don’t know anymore.

  But Angie seems to know. She has that look on her face, and it’s not just that her cheeks are raging pink like they always are when she drinks wine.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I really am,” she says while my father snorts. She gives him the evil eye. “I am.”

  “You just like to tell her I told you so,” my father points out before he has a long sip of his eggnog, the drink getting on his mustache.

  “No,” she says, rolling her eyes, even though we all know my father is right. “I just know what kind of guy Cole is. Believe me, I’ve been there. He wasn’t any different from Andrew.”

  My mom shakes her head, not amused. She hates any mention of Angie’s ex-husband, one I’m tempted to point out was way worse than Cole. But this isn’t a competition of who had the shittiest ex.

  “Plus, he went to Harvard,” Angie adds. “That’s bad news.”

  “You went to Harvard,” I point out.

  “And that’s where I met Andrew,” she says pointedly. “Believe me, the guys that go there have egos the size of Jupiter.” She pauses. “It’s a wonder I managed to stay so humble.”

  I exchange a wry look with my father before I say to her, “It’s Christmas Eve. I don’t want to think about how my life is falling to pieces right now. Let’s just drink the eggnog and pick on Sandra when she gets back.”

  But when Sandra does finally get back from her shenanigans at the local bars in town, we’ve already had my mother’s Christmas Eve duck for dinner, my parents have retired to their bedroom, and Tabby’s fast asleep in hers, leaving Angie and me downstairs blowing through bottles of wine.

  “Val!” Sandra squeals as she comes in the door, nearly falling over as she runs to me in her snow-crusted high heels.

  “Careful!” Angie cries out, but Sandra just wobbles her way over to me, collapsing beside me on the couch in a fit of drunken giggles. She manages to drape her arms around me and starts swaying us back and forth.

  “I’ve missed you soooo much.”

  I pat her arms which are covered in some sort of shimmery lotion that sticks to me. “I missed you too. Last time you were in New York you didn’t even call me,” I point out.

  “I know, I’m so sorry,” she says, burying her face in my hair and turning into dead weight. I think she’s fallen asleep for a second but suddenly she perks right up, staring at me with glassy eyes. “But I only had a few days and I had meetings the whole time. I know you understand.”

  I do understand. Even though she’s got a supporting role on a crime TV show as one of the main character’s girlfriends, she’s becoming a bigger and bigger deal every day, which means she’s traveling all over the world for meetings. Most of the time those meetings are just networking in bars and restaurants, but I totally get that her awkward younger sister wouldn’t be allowed.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Angie says to me. “She’s come to Chicago twice and didn’t see me either.”

  “Which is why we’re going to Ireland,” Sandra says, pointing at her. “In, like, four days. You’ll be so sick of me, I promise.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Angie says, smiling as she sips her wine.

  “Why aren’t you coming again?” Sandra asks as she elbows me in the side.

  “Ow, Jesus, those are weapons, Sandra.” I swear she’s gotten even skinnier now but that’s what Hollywood does to you. That or my mother.

  “Seriously, you should come,” she goes on, leaning forward to pluck the bottle of wine off the coffee table.

  “I can’t,” I tell her.

  “Actually, the reason you couldn’t before is because Cole didn’t want you to. Isn’t that right?” Angie asks.

  I sigh and take the wine from Sandra and pour myself another glass before she has a chance to chug it straight from the bottle. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The truth is, Cole had invited me to his parents’ estate on Martha’s Vineyard for Christmas and New Year’s, and I had been extremely excited to go. He comes from a big, massively wealthy family. Now, my parents are well-off but his are old money, the kind you only read about in like The Great Gatsby.

  Cole also said if I went to Ireland instead, he’d miss me too much and that I’d fall in love with some Irishman. And he pointed out how badly his family wanted to meet me.

  So naturally I had to turn my sisters down.

  Which I’m now regretting.

  Big time.

  I mean, on one hand, there’s the magic of Ireland, or the other where I’m woken up by Brielle’s cat farting in my face every day.

  “But you can work from anywhere, right?” Sandra says, snatching the wine bottle back. “Like, you don’t really have an office.”

  I wince as she proceeds to drink from the bottle. That’s all hers now. I don’t know where she’s been.

  “We do have an office,” I point out. “You just don’t have to go. You can work from home if you want. Of course, now I don’t really have a home so I’ll probably start going to the office after all. Maybe they’ll let me sleep under the desk.”

  “Jeez, you youngins are so hip these days with your open concept, show up if you want to, offices,” Angie comments. “Is that the future of journalism?”

  I wish I had some comeback to that but she’s kind of right. Though, at least she’s recognising what I do as journalism for once.

  See, I went to school at Columbia for journalism, and after navigating the very stressful freelance waters for a few years and hunting ceaselessly for something full-time and dependable, I finally got a job as the arts and entertainment writer for the online news site, Upward, shortly after I met Cole.

  It’s pret
ty much my dream job. The pay isn’t the greatest but I do get health benefits, and it’s fun and exciting and I feel like I’m finally doing something with my life. Like I’m someone important, someone who stands out, someone my parents can be proud of. Someone I can be proud of.

  Of course, I’m still freelancing on the side because I’m always needing the extra cash but at least it’s something I love and I can pay the bills.

  A sharp snoring sound cuts into my thoughts and I look over to see Angie with her head back in her chair, fast asleep. When she’s out, she’s out.

  Sandra snickers. “Man, she can’t handle her wine anymore.”

  “To be fair, we had at least a bottle each,” I point out. “And she’s been chasing Tabby around all day.”

  She sighs and stares at me from under her heavy false lashes, looking both drunk and sincere. “I’m really sorry I didn’t call you last time I was in New York.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m sorry that I don’t get to see you or Angie much anymore. Only when we’re here for Christmas or birthdays or whatever. That’s why I wanted you to come to Ireland. It should be a sisters’ trip. The Stephens sisters take on the Irish. I mean, it’s our grandmother’s homeland after all and you still look like you’d fit right in with the country.” She picks up a long strand of my hair, dyed dark red, and tugs at it. “Just come. I’ll pay for everything.”

  I give her a steady look. “You are not paying for anything. I’ve saved up enough as it is, and anyway, I have to work. Right after New Year’s is when everything starts up again. In fact, I’m supposed to turn in an article tomorrow and the day after that.”

  She squints as she studies me, leaning in close until I smell her booze breath, and pulls harder at my hair. “I can tell you want to come. Don’t lie about it.”

  “I’m not lying,” I tell her, prying her fingers off my hair. “I want to come. I just can’t.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s not it. You just can’t be spontaneous.”

  “I can be spontaneous,” I practically yell.