crying out loud. She didn’t know if she’d be able to do all of those things, but she was going to try.
And she had a plan in mind now.
Two pages after the spine-cracking instructions, she found a blank page and there, she wrote up at the top:
Wreck this life: My new plan
Her hand started to shake and she had to stop, suck in a deep breath. “Wreck my life. What in the hell . . .”
She almost sat up and closed the silly thing, almost put it away. This was nuts.
But even as she thought about it, she made herself remember what Zach had said.
Stop trying to plan her life so much. Start trying to just live.
For her, that was practically anathema. But that was what she needed to do. What she needed to focus on.
“Just write it down, damn it.” Gripping the pen, she wrote a neat little 1.
1. Stop worrying so much about the future
Okay. The first step. The next idea was easy.
2. Call Roger and tell him off
Once she had that down, the next few things came in an outright rush.
3. Flip off the next photographer you see
4. Get a tattoo
5. Have a torrid affair with a hot guy
Staring at it, she rubbed her fingers over her lips, reading it through again. And again. Stop worrying. Call Roger. Flip off photographer . . . get a tattoo?
Have an affair . . . !
Her belly was in knots now, just looking at the list. Completely knotted and twisted and she thought she just might be sick. And when she thought about number five, images of Zach kept dancing through her mind. Part of her was gleefully shrieking, Yeah, try to convince yourself that you don’t want him . . .
But it was Zach. How could she want him?
Another little voice whispered, how can you not?
He was hot, hot as lightning-hot, and in theory, she knew that. It was a little different with somebody you’d known all your life. Hell, the two of them had sat around snickering together when they’d discovered how to find bad porn on the Web back when they were still kids. Zach had really gotten in trouble over that one and he’d never once told his mom that Abby was the one who’d showed it to him.
But it wasn’t just that he was hot. She was a child of Hollywood and she’d grown up around beautiful people. Maybe she didn’t live that life anymore, but she knew how superficial beauty could be. Zach was anything but superficial. He was real. He was kind. He was funny. And under the kindness and the humor, there was an edge to him that had emerged . . . somehow. She didn’t really know when, but sometimes just standing near him, even knowing him as well as she did, it sucked the breath out of her.
Yeah, why shouldn’t she think about it?
But thinking about it and doing something about it were two different things. She couldn’t go chasing after her best friend. She’d barely managed to seduce the guy she was engaged to.
With a weak laugh, she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Zach was no Roger. Even she could admit that . . . Zach was a hell of a lot more, and she couldn’t even keep Roger interested in her.
Zach was a friend. A sexy friend. Her best friend, but it was going to stay on a friendly level and she just needed to get this whatever-it-was out of her head. Grabbing the journal again, she opened and read the list through. Nerves pulsed inside her. Could she do this? she wondered.
Panic gripped her, hard and tight and she was almost certain that she couldn’t. Didn’t know how and the longer she stared at the list, the harder it got. No. That was it. She couldn’t do this. Reaching for the page, she went to rip it out.
Before she could crumple it in her fist to do so, though, she stopped. Stopped and sat up, staring down at the page while her heart started to race. “What’s so damned hard about any of this?” she whispered.
Zach had a gazillion tattoos and it wasn’t like he’d mind giving her one.
She could handle that.
Telling Roger off? She wanted to do that and hey, what a way to prove him wrong. He thought she wasn’t being true to herself? Here was just one more way to show him how very wrong he was.