Perfect Regret (Bad Rep #2)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

1

I didn’t do depressed. I wasn’t one to wallow when life sucked. I was the girl who picked herself up, dusted off the bullshit and kept on trucking. I doled out the advice about making lemonade out of lemons and put one foot in front of the other.

I didn’t get pulled down into crappy emotion filled holes.

But that was before I got dumped.

And we’re talking remove his testicles with a teaspoon dumped.

It hadn’t been pretty. It hadn’t been civil.

It had been nasty and hurtful and had reduced me into a giant pile of pathetic.

And instead of bouncing back and getting into the life groove, here I was, lying on my bed feeling so sorry for myself that even I hated me.

Riley Walker had been reduced to the sad and lonely dumpee. And that wasn’t a person I had ever thought I’d be.

Because Damien Green and I had been perfect. Things had been fantastic. We had fit together like the proverbial missing puzzle pieces, each complementing the other just as we were supposed to.

Our relationship had been simple. Easy. And maybe that’s why this hurt so badly. Because now I was forced to admit that my simple and easy relationship had bored my former boyfriend to death.

So much for soul mates and eternal, undying love. Clearly what Damien and I had couldn’t make it past junior year and was causing me to question my judgment when it came to guys and dating and all that other blah blah stuff.

And I hated questioning myself. Because for a girl who always had the answers, I was finding that I had woefully failed the test.

So, yeah. Love sucks.

And to commemorate my recent descent into early spinsterhood, I had compiled a play list of the most obnoxious and annoying love songs ever written. Nothing says heartache and the overwhelming urge to disembowel yourself with a butter knife quite like an hour of Celine Dion ballads.

I picked up the remote and cranked the volume of my stereo, gritting my teeth through another round of “Because You Loved Me.” If I was going to wallow, I might as well do it right.

I caterwauled along with the lyrics, adding my own tone-deaf rendition to the horrendous soundtrack off my life. I ignored the knock on my bedroom door, singing louder to try and drown it out

“Dear God, enough already!” Maysie yelled over the kitschy strains of some ridiculously horrendous One Direction song. She cupped her hands over her ears as she entered the room.

I pointed at the open door. “Get out,” I told her, trying to put feeling into the words. Too bad I only sounded tired and defeated.

Maysie threw a pair of ear buds at me and I didn’t bother to try and catch them. I appreciated the dramatic effect of letting them hit me on the chest and fall off my side and onto the bed. My best friend and roommate of the last year and a half rolled her eyes.

“I thought I had the market on over dramatics. Don’t you think it’s time to give your best friend and the rest of the people living in the building a break? Because if I have to hear Vanessa Williams sing about Saving the Best for Last one more time, I won’t be responsible for my actions,” she complained.

I picked up the ear buds and sat up. Balling them in my fist, I chucked them back at her. She caught them clumsily. “And how about you let a gal listen to cheesy music and mire in the untimely demise of her relationship?”

“And friends don’t let friends listen to Chicago,” Maysie said, turning off the stereo just as the beginning notes of “Look Away” started to fill the room.

“Hey, I was enjoying that,” I whined.

Maysie shook her head. “I don’t think anyone this side of 1985 enjoys that, Riley,” she quipped and I couldn’t deny her point. I hated it when she out snarked me. There was something fundamentally wrong about that.

Maysie, clearly bent on an intervention, came over and sat down on the bed. She put her arm around my shoulders and I tried to shrink away from her.

I hated the touchy feely stuff and she knew it. I wasn’t the kind of girl who squealed and hugged her friends. Sheesh, I wasn’t five. I had successfully avoided the stereotypical trappings of my gender and was proud of it. I wasn’t some crazy fem Nazi. But I sure as hell didn’t spend hours doing my hair and make up. And I most definitely didn’t moan about why a guy didn’t call me. I hated each and every show on E! and I refused to upgrade our cable package just because the Style network was now available.

So why, do you ask, was I subjecting my eardrums and sanity to an over-indulgence in feel sorry for myselfitis, which was a clear sign of estrogen gone wild?

Damien Green happened, that’s why.

Stupid, too-cute-for-his-own-good and recent Riley dumper Damien Green.

“You’re supposed to be at Barton’s in thirty minutes. Maybe you should get up and get dressed. Do that whole shower and grooming thing that most people do,” Maysie remarked, squeezing me tightly, with a grin. I glowered at her with every ounce of baleful irritation I could summon.

Maysie tossed her annoyingly shiny hair over her shoulder and winked. Looking at my best friend, I couldn’t help but wonder for the millionth time what sort of crack fate had been smoking when it threw the two of us together, thus creating the most unlikely friendship in the history of unlikely friendships.

Maysie Ardin was my polar opposite in every way. She was girlie and gorgeous and way too into shopping and color coordination. Whereas my wardrobe was monochromatic in color and style. I didn’t do skirts, I sure as hell kept all flesh from the ankle upwards perfectly covered.

Not that I was a prude. Screw that. I just hated dressing like I was headed for a nightclub at ten in the morning.

But Maysie, she treated fashion like a religion. If you need more convincing that our friendship was a result of something far more whacked than coincidence, take this on for size. She had rushed a sorority! The unholy pinnacle of the stereotypical bullshit college experience.

Though, to be fair, she had woken up and smelled the fake about the illustrious Greek system after the majority of her so called sisters had single handedly trashed her reputation last school year.

The girl had been put through the ringer. But I thought she had come out on the other side for the better. And seeing the concern and understanding on her face, I knew why we were friends and always would be. Because my girl was loyal to a fault.

“Yeah, yeah. Personal hygiene is overrated,” I muttered, getting to my feet and going over to my dresser to pull together my outfit for work. Thank goodness it only consisted of a polo shirt and black pants. Given the level ten crappiness of my mood, I didn’t think I’d be able to put together anything more complicated.