Chapter Two
Sierra
–ten weeks and three days earlier
Do you know what happens when you get rid of a deadweight husband who thinks you’re an embarrassment?
You soar.
And I’m ready to soar until I hit the sun!
The engine of my cherry-red Ferrari roars like a lion as I hit the gas hard. Today is the first day of my reclaimed singlehood, and I plan to make it awesome.
As I take the final curve into the company parking lot, something catches my peripheral vision. Todd. My ex would look presentable if he lost the twenty-five pounds of blubber he started gaining the moment our wedding vows were exchanged, all of which went to his waist. He looks like he’s wearing a saggy, partially inflated swimming tube underneath his blue and yellow Rams T-shirt, which is his go-to when he wants to appear down to earth. If he’d spent the last two years doing something other than eating a metric ton of potato chips every evening while complaining about my job—which paid for those potato chips—he might be having an easier time squeezing past the two security guards who are doing their best to block him from getting to the building.
Todd sees my car—it’s impossible to miss a flaming-hot Ferrari—and shouts, waving his arms like he’s lost at sea and just spotted a friendly vessel. Thankfully Freddie Mercury belting out one of my all-time favorite songs, “Don’t Stop Me Now,” is drowning out whatever garbage is spewing from Todd’s mouth.
My shoulders moving to the upbeat tune, I ignore Todd and slide smoothly into my parking space. I turn to the passenger side, where I’ve seatbelted in a large hamster cage.
My sandy-colored Roborovski hamsters, Bullet and G-Spot, are hopping and running in their wheel. Even hamsters know amazing music when they hear it. But not Todd. He actually told me he found Queen “crass” several months into our marriage, which resulted in a huge argument.
I should’ve known we were doomed. What kind of heartless jerk hates Queen? And really, an adult man should have at least as good taste as a hamster.
And yet I stayed, out of a desperate hope that died a sad, lonely death six months ago. I grieved. Todd raged.
Stop thinking about it.
I kill the engine, swing my tote bag and purse onto my shoulder, then unstrap the cage and carry it in my other hand as I climb out of the Ferrari. Without the car door and Freddie Mercury, Todd’s shouting becomes clearer.
“Sierra! We need to talk! You can’t end it like this!”
I roll my eyes. He’s probably distraught that he can’t access my funds anymore. Fortunately, he didn’t get a penny, thanks to the prenup he signed.
Or maybe he’s worried about his job as an adjunct professor of English Literature. My family has strong ties to Wollstonecraft College and has a building named after us. He probably assumes I’m going to get him fired. But just because he’s petty doesn’t mean I’m going to stoop to his level. I want him out of my life, not professionally and financially ruined. People with nothing to lose are impossible to reason with.
He tried to change my mind after I filed for divorce by sending me hand-written copies of John Keats’s poems. But that just shows how little Todd knows me. He would’ve done better to serenade me with a Queen song.
Then again, a butthole like him doesn’t deserve to sing the great song.
“Sierra!” he screams, channeling Brando from A Streetcar Named Desire. “We aren’t finished!”
Oh, yes we are.If he keeps this up and continues to stalk me, maybe I will be forced to use my influence at Wollstonecraft. I’m sure the head of the English department can think of something to keep Todd occupied.
I walk into Silicone Dream’s gorgeous lobby, which gleams with glass and polished stone. In the center is the huge lavender statue—a monolith, really—of the company’s first product. We put a clock on it to make it more functional, since the firm is all about fun functionality.
“Good morning, Sierra. Looking fabulous today,” says Dan, the head of security. He’s a tall man in his late forties, thick with bulging muscles that intimidate anybody who thinks they can screw around here just because we make sex toys. The light reflects off his shiny bald head, and tats flex on his arms as he waves and gestures. He talks more with his hands than his mouth.
“Good morning, Dan.” I smile. “Your team’s doing a good job out there.”
“Thanks. I’ll let ’em know.” He squints, gazing out through the glass walls. “That your ex they’re wrestling?”
I sigh. “Yes.” Todd didn’t want a divorce. He wanted the respectability that came with being a college professor, and the lavish lifestyle of being my husband, even if my job embarrassed him to the core of his being.
“Shoulda treated you better.” Dan’s never liked Todd, probably because my ex viewed him as a barely literate moron—a fact I didn’t know until very recently.
“He should’ve treated everyone better.”
“Can’t argue with you there.” A corner of his mouth twitches up as he looks at the cage. “Cute little things. What are they, hamsters?”