Influenced Eva Robinson (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📖

Sighing, she looked at the photo of him more closely. Truth was, she vastly preferred looking at pictures of Marc to trying to write a chapter about how to get men to worship you. Honestly, what the hell did she know? She was stalking her ex-boyfriend online. She was jealous of a sheep. The book was a complete farce, and that was why she couldn’t write it.

Something about the image of Marc bothered her, and it took her a moment to realize what it was.

Who took the photo? He never knew how to set the camera so it would go off on its own, and the angle of the image suggested it had been taken by another person.

Her heart was squeezing. She was being left behind. No—locked outside a wall, banished from a gleaming city she’d once inhabited. In the ancient world, traitors were literally thrown off the city walls into pits of dead dogs. That was what this felt like. This was why he hadn’t looked at her Instagram stories in weeks, hadn’t liked any of her photos.

Who was he with now? Her mind spun in a million terrible directions as she imagined someone much, much better than her. A truly wholesome woman with honeyed hair, gorgeous even when she first woke up. Someone who raised money by running marathons for charities and couldn’t wait to have children and always remembered gifts for nieces and nephews. Marc’s mother adored her. She was vegan, probably.

Rowan took another sip of wine, and a bit of it dripped onto her laptop. She wiped it off as quickly as she could. She’d already ruined three laptops by spilling alcohol on them.

Now, grief electrified her body. He hadn’t written back to her messages in weeks. Their breakup had been messy, yes, and he’d been so angry with her. But he’d always written back in the past year. She was sure he still cared about her. He’d said it, in fact, when he broke up with her. I will always care about you.

She just didn’t believe it anymore.

Vaguely, she was aware that someone was on the riverside walk below, walking back and forth beneath her window. Staring up at her. But right now, she wasn’t sure she cared. If someone tried to murder her, at least Marc would pay attention to her again.

A wild laugh escaped her at that thought.

Keep it together, Ro.

Loneliness cut through her, and she wondered who she could talk to.

She picked up her phone and called Heather.

Heather picked up after one ring. “What’s wrong?”

“Why do people always say that when I call?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Rowan drained her wine glass. “I know this isn’t your wheelhouse. I have an agent to talk about the book stuff with. But I’m absolutely stuck. And I think perhaps it’s because it’s all lies.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me give you the real version, Heather. Chapter six,” she announced. “How to destroy a perfect relationship and regret it for the rest of your life. Make the one true love of your life so angry that he has to end it, and you’re forever locked out of the life you were supposed to have. Let him know the real you—the really terrible side beneath the beauty—until he stops loving you. Stalk him on social media like millennial Miss Havisham until you die alone in a room filled with old recycling and bras, and you don’t even have cats to eat you.”

“Oh, no. Please don’t write that. And please don’t write anything like that on Instagram. No one wants to know the truth, trust me. The allure lasts about a day, and then your career is over. Write people’s fantasy version of life. That’s all you need to do.”

“I’m not sure who I am anymore.”

“Take up a hobby. Find the glamor again. Glamor and mystery. That’s all you need to do.”

“I tried writing something about educational equality, but I could hear their voices. The haters. They were saying my family bought my way into Harvard, and that I should kill myself.”

“Never read the comments, honey. Never.”

Rowan sighed. “I know.”

“Glamor and mystery. And then just watch Netflix, like a normal person.”

“I’ll get you some glamor and mystery if it kills me.”

“Nope, no killing. Just relax.”

When Rowan hung up, movement caught her eye. It was that person marching back and forth on the riverside walk across from her apartment. She could actually hear the footsteps from here, the heels against the pavement. The person was pushing something, like they were on a grim patrol before her house.

“Hope you’re enjoying the view,” she muttered. “Creep.”

She poured another glass of wine to calm the adrenaline surging through her veins. The footfalls echoed across the street, forming a rhythm in her mind.

Shivering, she turned away from the window.

She felt her blood pumping hot. No matter how much she tried to forget it, her mind kept circling back to that photo of Marc in the countryside.

When they were together, when she was naked and stretched out on his bed, he could never keep his eyes off her. He’d stop mid-sentence and just stare. His features would soften; words would escape him. She needed that to happen again.

Slowly, an idea began to dawn in Rowan’s mind. Exactly how she could get Marc to notice her again.

Within moments, she was rushing back inside, sliding her laptop onto the countertop. Heart pounding, she rushed to her bathroom sink, where her makeup was spread out over every surface. Given the amount of wine she’d had, it wasn’t easy to get her eyebrows just right, but she’d done this so often that she was able to eventually get them into perfect Liz Taylor style. The eyeliner took a few tries, during which she grunted in frustration and smeared it off to start again.

Sweeps of highlighter, blush, a deep red lipstick, and liner to accentuate her full pout. Dewy makeup, suggesting a postcoital glow—pure sex. She needed to remind Marc of exactly what he was missing with his willowy, boring