Read With a Little Luck: A Novel for Free Online

Greg heard it. Most of June and July were consumed wondering why Greg didn’t ask me to the end-of-the-year dance. The satisfaction of seeing Greg, his husband, and their adopted Chinese babies on their Facebook page would almost erase the shame of me actually taking the time to look him up nine years later. But rejections die hard. I would know.
    Which brings me back to Bad Luck Chuck. When you rarely hook up with guys as it is, and then the one time you think youconnect with someone you get slapped in the face/ego by reality, you tend to want to hibernate. Or eat pie. Or do whatever you do when you feel like crap.
    In my case, I vent. Small problem? I’m on the radio. So my lack of a filter and occasional inability to keep my innermost thoughts “inner” sometimes leads to moments of regret.
    “I mean, really,” I hiss into the mic. “Is this what it’s come to, fellas? Your lady doesn’t put out on the first date, so you never call again?”
    The board lights up, and instead of going into a song, I open the lines.
    “Maybe he just didn’t like you,” says the mean female voice on the other end. “I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. You sound like an Aries. Maybe he hates anyone who’s an Aries. He has good taste if he does. Filthy, filthy Aries—”
    “You’re right,” I say, cutting her off mid-crazy. “He spent the night making out with me and staring into my eyes because he hated me.”
    I hang up on her, but I have four more blinking lines to choose from. One caller is maternal: “You’re too good for him.” The next is a girl who’s recently experienced something similar, and once I’ve established that we’re not talking about the same guy, I move on to the third caller, who is a guy offering to take me home tonight and definitely call me tomorrow.
    As I politely decline and hang up with him, I notice my cellphone ringing, so I start a song and answer. It’s Natalie.
    “Have you lost your mind?” she asks.
    “No more so than usual,” I answer.
    “You’re complaining about this guy on the radio? Because that doesn’t seem desperate at all.”
    “I’m not trying to woo him at this point, so I don’t care what itseems like. I think it’s a valid point. It used to be women had to wait three dates before having sex or they’d look like sluts and the guy would never call again. Now if you don’t look like a slut the guy will never call again? Who can keep up?”
    “It was one guy. One instance. Not statistically significant. Not a reason to shout it from the rooftops. Or the airwaves, as it were.”
    “Oh, God.” I exhale. She’s right. “I got a little carried away, huh?”
    “Little bit,” she says. “But I caught you in enough time to just put it behind you and move on. Play some more music. Breathe.”
    “On it,” I say. I throw on “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones and take a few breaths.
    These are the things that happen when you let your emotions take control of you. And I rarely do. Or I try not to. Having closely calculated moves at all times pretty much ensures that these lapses don’t happen too often, but when they do I can usually trace it back to an unfortunate event, and if I were to look back at the night I met Dustin, it’s so obvious. The freakin’ umbrella. Duh. If that wasn’t a sign of bad news to come, then I don’t know what is. One of the most famous superstitions of all. Yet I shrugged it off because he said it was “his” umbrella. “His” bad luck. So I chose to live in the fantasy. I took his word that just being in close proximity to such an event wouldn’t cause me any strife, but apparently I was wrong. Fine, he may get some bad luck coming his way, but it was a clear sign that I should have stayed away from him, and I didn’t pay attention. Not to mention he ruined my sweater! Anyway … you live, you learn, you stay away from people with unwieldy umbrellas and lame emo T-shirts.

The only sure thing about luck is