4th & Girl

Follow us online:

Website

Facebook

Reader Group

Twitter

Instagram

Goodreads

Bookbub

Amazon

The Day I Stopped Falling for Jerks Excerpt

* * *

The Day I Stopped Falling for Jerks podcast

Episode 1: “Is this thing on?”

Hi, everyone.

I’d like to welcome you to episode one of my very first podcast.

[quiet, hesitant laugh]

I’m a little nervous, so please bear with me as I try to figure out how to podcast.

See, I’m more a writer of words than a podcaster of words, but what I’m about to tell you is honestly too damn big to fit into one of my columns.

Way too big.

It’s a real doozy, guys, but I have to get it out.

And I’m hoping, once I finish recording this—since my boss says I might start feeling symptomatic of, say, poisoning, if I ruin this new venture—I’ll actually be able to upload it to Scoop’s website. Apparently, I’m told, podcasting is the wave of the future, and if we—meaning Scoop—don’t get our foot in the door first, we—meaning I—might as well find another room. Room meaning office.

I’m pretty sure she’ll fire me, okay?

Still, I figure pouring my guts out to a bunch of strangers has to be at least close to therapeutic, so consider my fingers and toes crossed that my technical inability doesn’t mean it’s for nothing.

[mumble from producer]

Oh, good. I’m told the uploading portion of this podcast will be taken care of by someone else. Smart move, guys.

[laughs again]

Okay, so where do I even begin?

[long, audible sigh]

Well, I guess my love life would be a good start, huh?

I mean, it’s the whole reason I’m here, ready to pour my heart out to you.

The past.

The present.

The future, as I’ve sworn and promised it to myself.

They’re all kind of a hot mess, but it’s really the chaos I’ve gotten myself into this time that made me decide to take action.

Think of a woman trying to stand up in a hammock during an earthquake, and then throw in a writhing pit of cobras dancing below it for good measure. Add in the task of juggling several oddly shaped objects and a horrible lack of hand-eye coordination, and you might have some idea of what I look like while trying to navigate lust, like, and love.

Relationships, dating, finding love…God, you guys, it is so hard.

I envy those people who manage to find the love of their lives on a first date or—even more mind-blowing—a chance encounter a la love-at-first-sight that blossoms into a long-term courtship.

Like, how in the hell does that even happen?

It feels like some trippy, magical unicorn kind of shit or, worse yet, an evil consecration for those with a special, dark gift. And I’m not exactly comfortable exploring how many pagan gods I’d have to promise ill-willed deeds to in order to experience the easy road to love.

Hell, even the hard road.

As long as it didn’t end in disaster, I’d be ahead of where I am now—where I always seem to be.

See, I’ve been a serial dater, a constant cultivator of bad relationships, for as long as I can remember.

Even my kindergarten boyfriend, Kenny, is a prime example of what I’ve come to know as normal.

He was a swoony little bastard, even at the ripe age of nearly six, and I was a naïve five-year-old, hungry for pure love. We were happy for about a day and a half, but when another skirt-wielder, Amber Carter, ran by, the apparent love of his life—Kenny’s description of me—wasn’t the only twinkle in his mossy green eyes anymore. One push off the monkey bars, and my first official relationship promptly ended in what would be one of many breakups for me.

Think of all the very worst guys to date—the players, the weirdos, the clingy momma’s boys, and the jerks…good God, picture the jerks.

Do you have those men in your head?

Well, I, Luciana “Lucky” Wright, have dated them all.

It might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not. I’ve been there, done that, written the book, and filmed the Lifetime movie.

And all those good-for-nothing men left me with were weeks filled with Netflix binges fueled by ice cream and the same damn question rolling through my mind—Where are all the good men?

You know, the men who are actually worthy of us. The men who know what they want and have good intentions to boot. The ones who know how to truly love a woman, one woman, for the rest of their lives.

Are they underground somewhere? In one of those highly discriminatory bunkers from the movie Deep Impact, perhaps? Do I actually have to discover the meaning of life to get the password?

I honestly don’t know. But I believe, in order for you to truly understand my frustration, I need to show you the final straw in my never-ending cycle of dating jerks. The moment that made me say “Sayonara, Jerks!” and write those fuckers off for good.

It’s going to feel like some serious Romeo and Juliet kind of shit, but I can tell you, a Shakespearean love story it is not.