Josie isn’t new to broken hearts; she’s suffered her fair share. But ending her two-year relationship with John—the cheater—is her tipping point. So she creates a plan to go on a single’s cruise, even though she's sworn to never do such a thing. She needs to get away from everyone she knows so she can try out her new, more self-assured persona. And try it out, she does…until she meets Nick, a man she's sure will teach her a thing or two about who she is…and who she isn’t.
Am I really here again?
Josie wished that this time, this relationship, would be different, but being a hopeless romantic, she was constantly giving the men in her life more latitude than she should. More than they deserved. And that’s exactly what she was doing yet again.
This time with John. He had started out so charming. That’s why she'd allowed him to convince her that he was the one, even though she'd picked up on some warning signs that maybe he wasn’t the man she'd believed him to be.
Like the time they'd been eating a romantic dinner that had taken Josie two hours to prepare, when John had gotten a call mid-appetizer. Being the area’s top lawyer, John often got calls at all hours of the day and night. Instead of ignoring his phone until the end of the meal or simply answering and saying he’d call back once they were finished, however, John had excused himself from the table and spent the next twenty minutes in the other room talking a little too quietly with God-knows-who. Josie had always prided herself on being understanding, but the colder their meal got, the hotter her anger raged.
When John finally returned to the table, there was no, “I’m sorry babe, that was work, and I really had to take it” or “Baby, I hate to deal with that kind of stuff when you’ve cooked such an amazing meal for me, but I’ll make it up to you later”, like she typically got whenever his work invaded their personal life. He'd simply returned to the table in uncomfortable silence, leaving her to wonder what the call had been about and who was on the other end of the line.
Slowly, over time, Josie came to feel like more of an option than a priority in John’s life, but she didn’t fully understand why until her best friend, Celia, whom she trusted to be completely and totally honest with her, even when she didn’t want to hear it, revealed that she had seen John eating lunch with a cute little blonde at the new bistro in town. He often met clients or colleagues for a quick lunchtime meal, so normally that wouldn't bother Josie. But Celia had been adamant that John's meeting with the woman was more intimate than that, because he'd positioned his chair right next to the skinny little bitch and had his arm draped over her shoulder, his lips close to her ear.
After summoning every ounce of courage she had, Josie asked John about the woman Celia had seen—and he had eventually admitted to having an affair.
“Damn it, Josie," he'd snapped in response. "Don’t try to make yourself the victim here. You’re just as much to blame for this as I am, because you didn’t take care of me sexually.”
Just as much to blame? Is he fucking kidding me?
Sadly, a response like John's was typical of the men in Josie’s life, because they never took responsibility for their own actions. Yet this time, Josie had finally had enough. She told John it was time for him to leave. For good.
Afterward, she wondered why she kept making the same mistakes over and over again when it came to the men she let into her life. Why did she always pick the guys who, in the end, didn’t deliver the kind of love and attention she needed to feel happy, safe, and secure? And why was she so quick to ignore the signs that things weren’t as good in the relationship as she wanted to believe?
Tempted to sit and why herself to death, Josie knew she wasn’t likely to get any real answers by taking that route. She’d already asked herself the same questions several times before, and each time had concluded she’d likely never know why she did what she did. Not without enduring years of counseling she wasn’t interested in getting anyway. Yet that still didn’t mean she had to accept it. No way.
Josie decided right then and there that she would not only prove that she was capable of finding a man who would treat her the way she deserved to be treated, but she would drive him so wild in bed that he wouldn’t even remember his own name. She would prove John wrong and reinforce the fact that his lifeless penis was on him, not her.
Literally and figuratively.
