Star Mate Matched, Margo Collins [the unexpected everything .TXT] 📗

repeated as I stomped down the sidewalk of Central Park West and turned onto a path into the park itself.

FML.

After a few moments, I realized I was actually muttering the words aloud. “Fuck my life.”

The bright sunlight on this beautiful late spring Saturday had brought out even more New Yorkers than usual, and many of them were stopping to stare at me as I sailed past, muttering and scowling.

I stopped to kick off my high heels, and then scooped them up to carry them in one hand. Sure, I knew it was a terrible idea to walk through any part of New York City barefoot—even (or was that especially?) in Central Park. But at this point, I figured what the hell.

It wasn’t as if my week could get any worse.

I mean, I suppose I could die of tetanus.

But at this point, that would probably be a blessing.

The only thing I had with me right now was my phone. It was almost out of battery, but I still needed to try to figure out where to go next. I dialed the super’s number for my old building, the one I’d lived in until I had finally moved all my stuff into William’s apartment.

He was no help.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Nora,” George said. “We rented your apartment out already. The new tenant’s moving in today.”

I bit back a scream of frustration.

And to think that as recently as the previous Monday, I had promised myself that I would not allow anything to ruin my happiness this week.

That resolution had started going to hell by lunchtime Tuesday, when my boss had stopped by my cubicle to call me into his office.

“Hey.” I leaned my head in through his door. “What’s up, Peter?”

He waved me in. “Hi, Nora. Please close the door behind you.”

I did as he asked, but my heart started beating a little harder. This was not Peter’s usual style.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Have a seat.” He folded his arms on his desk and leaned forward, an odd expression on his face, as if he were trying to look like he really, really cared about what he was going to say. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to make some cutbacks here.”

I froze. Oh, hell.

“And, to be frank, we’re starting with the employees who seem the least happy to be here. The ones who maybe don’t quite fit in as well as they would like.”

“What the fuck, Peter? I’ve been here five years. I fit in just fine.” At least, I thought I had.

He pursed his lips, then made a strange clicking noise. “Well,” he temporized, “with your situation changing, we think you’ll be able to find something new quickly. We’ll be happy to give you a glowing recommendation, of course.”

“Wait. You’re letting me go because of William?”

“No, no, of course not,” Peter backtracked. “Your marital status would never affect your employment.”

Yeah, right.

Seriously? I was getting let go because I was about to marry someone wealthy?

I stood up in the middle of my manager’s self-serving, smarmy words about what a valuable employee I had been. “Fuck off, Peter. And yes, I expect the kind of recommendation letter that will land me any job I want.”

Peter’s mouth pursed into a tiny, disapproving bow and his tone turned cold. “Of course.”

My desk was packed, and I was out of there before my colleagues had returned from lunch.

When I got home that night, William was less sympathetic than I had anticipated. “Peter’s not wrong. It’s not like you’ll even have to have a job after the wedding.”

“That’s not the point.”

William glanced up at me from his phone. “You’ll be fine. Do you know how many times I’ve changed jobs?”

I rolled my eyes. “Changing jobs because you started a new company is not exactly the same thing as getting let go, William.”

He waved a disinterested hand in the air as he went back to perusing the screen. “You can come work for me, if you really want to do something.”

I bit back a scream. I had been thrilled when William asked me to marry him. He had swept into my life like a hurricane, taking me out of my normal, everyday life and twirling me into a life of movie premiers, fundraisers, galas, nights at the theater. The kind of glamorous New York life I had dreamed of when I moved here but had never been able to afford.

And maybe his friends treated me like a bit of an oddity, like William’s charity case, as if dating someone who’d grown up in a middle-class home in Kansas was somehow the equivalent of lifting someone straight out of the gutter.

But William didn’t seem to care—and most of the time, it didn’t bother me, either.

Except for times like this, when he simply could not understand how upset I was over things that would have no effect on him.

“Anyway,” he said, “it will give you more time to work on the wedding.”

Yes. The wedding.

The one that his mother had taken over.

The one that seemed to have less and less to do with me at all.

As far as I could tell, my wedding was a vehicle for William Paterson’s mother to show the world how wonderful the Paterson family was.

The wedding I had just walked out of.

In my wedding dress.

No wonder people were staring at me—a deranged woman in a designer wedding gown that I hadn’t even liked, stomping through Central Park barefoot and muttering obscenities to myself.

Suddenly, all I wanted to do was sit down.

I’d made my way deeper into the park without even noticing it, ending up on one of the less-used paths, but there was a bench ahead of me, one that would give me exactly what I wanted—peace and quiet. But not total solitude—there was another woman sitting there, quietly reading a book and eating her lunch out of an insulated reusable lunch bag.

Whatever. Close enough to alone by New York standards.

I marched straight to the bench and flung myself into it, heaving a long-suffering sigh.

Maybe I really