Love and Chaos Read Online Free Page A

so—Urgh, why am I thinking about my ex-boyfriend at a time like this?
    Five-inch heels before noon: not cool. The Soho Grand lobby, at least, is kind of sexy and dusky, so I don’t feel too out of place, but once I’m outside, the freezing white glare of the February morning is horrific.
    I feel like everyone is looking at me and thinking, Slut. I try my usual walk-of-shame trick of dialing up the attitude and pretending I’m too gnarly for this shit, but it doesn’t work.
    Deep inside my body I’m nauseous … in my soul, or heart, or brain, or something. Cold and itchy.
    I always do the wrong thing. Always.
    It’s always an accident.
    But it’s always wrong.
    A tall doorman with kind eyes puts me in a taxi, and I say, “Union Street, Brooklyn, please.”
    And then as the cab starts driving, I lean forward, bury my face in my knees so the driver can’t see me, and cry.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    When I get home, I throw my dress and shoes in the very back of my closet so I don’t have to think about them again. Then I put on my favorite old jeans and a pale gray rowing sweater that belonged to my dad when he was at Princeton. I saved it from being thrown out in one of Annabel’s house purges years ago, and I wear it on special occasions, when my soul is cold and anxious and I really need comforting. It’s like sartorial Xanax.
    Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars.
    Grabbing my latest romance novel, Heart Crossing, I glance at the back.
    Angry, petulant Ivy hated the imperious Captain Drummond almost as much as she hated love. When the only way to save her invalid aunt is to marry the captain, she thinks she knows what to expect. But she didn’t know she was about to meet her match.…
    They always meet their match in the blurbs, have you ever noticed?
    Yeah, I know it’s seriously uncool to read romance novels, and yeah, I know that it’s lame that the dude is always a rich guy and the chick is always a secretary and all that. I don’t care. A good romance novel is simple, predictable, and makes me smile. Perfect escapism.
    Except today, it’s not helping me escape. I keep starting paragraphs and halfway through, I’ve already forgotten what I’ve read.
    Three thousand dollars.
    I can’t bear to be alone with my thoughts today. And there’s only one solution.
    Cheers to me.
    Swigging vodka periodically and smoking out my window when the urge takes me, I play around with some vintage silky scarves covered in faded gold Art Deco prints that I picked up last week at Brownstone Treasures, this little place on Court Street, and sew them into a cool little clutch bag.
    I have to pick the bag apart and resew it four times, but by about 6:00 P.M. and after the rest of the vodka, it’s just how I want it. Perfectly sized to fit my phone, keys, cigarettes, money, and lipstick, with a little flat handle so it sort of hugs my hand just right, and padded with extra layers of scarves so it scrunches softly. The rain is hammering down outside, it’s freezing cold and dark and endlessly, endlessly February. But right now I don’t care. I’m sewing something out of almost nothing, making the dreams in my head into reality, creating something new and real and lovely.
    My phone rings. I glance at it and quickly press “Ignore.” Annabel. My mother. Probably calling to give me shit for leaving the other day. I don’t want to talk to her until my dad calls me. I haven’t heard from him yet, but maybe he’s waiting until we can talk in person. He usually comes to New York about once a month for work.
    The combination of hangover and vodka suddenly has me starving. So I smile at my handiwork once more, and then head down to the kitchen for some raisin toast with extra butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar (one of the best things in the whole world, by the way).
    Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars.
    It’s not like I’m a bad person just for blacking out, right?
    My vodka stash in the freezer has run out, so