Rewind (A Perfect Forever Novella) by Susan Ward

 
     
    ONE
     
    It started as a joke.  Just something I worked on one night after learning the last girl from my sorority clique was getting married. I really didn’t do it out of spite or resentment. I didn’t even do it because I polished off a full bottle of Zinfandel that night. It’s just how I fill my evenings when there is nothing better to do: design a blog page, give it a name— How to Train Your Fembot —and start to post.
    Who would have ever thought this page would take off the way it has in the past six months and who would have thought there were so many vain guys out there looking to bag a Fembot?
    I don’t really think of my sorority sisters as fembots , any more than I think of myself as the token brunette. Sure, I was the only brunette in the clique inside my sorority of rich hotties at USC, but that was totally random and had nothing to do with this being California.
    I don’t really resent them all landing their super-duper great guys, marching down the aisle into their oh-so-perfect lives. I had a super-duper great guy. I just didn’t marry him. Oh well, that’s another story for another day and a different blog. Tonight, I haven’t finished teaching overachieving men how to achieve their fembot-perfect wife.
    Rule #477: If you want to make the Fembot crawl to you, figure out who her best friend is, and then flirt her up. As much as they pride themselves on ‘the sisterhood’ the second the BFF’s back is turned, she’ll make her move.
    My fingers pause and I stare at the screen.
    You ought to know rule #477 in spades, Kaley Stanton.
    It’s what got me into my current mess. I’m so stupid to have fallen for that one, and definitely over a player like Graham Carson. Graham could write this blog probably better than I do. He made his way through my sorority sisters with a slick talking velvet encased machete.
    Damn. It was a mistake, misplaced female competitiveness, and it cost me Bobby Rowan. I wonder where Bobby is these days. Two years. I never expected not to hear from him for two years, despite the fact that he was very emphatic, in an oh-so-not Bobby way, that we were over after I foolishly confessed to a pointless, drunken one night stand with Graham Carson, thinking that truth would make it all something I could fix.
    I take a hearty sip of my wine. I called that one wrong. I definitely have no one to blame but myself. And I definitely deserve to be home alone on a Saturday night writing my pitiful blog post.
    I open the drawer in the bedside table and pull out my secret scrapbook. God, I’ve become like one of those lonely cat-ladies, one of those girls with secret scrapbooks, bitchy blogs, and dateless weekend nights.
    I start flipping through the pages. As sad as I feel, the pictures make me smile. There is just something so right about how Bobby and I look together. I felt it the first day I met him. We were meant to be, a perfectly imperfect forever kind of couple.
    I’ve never been able to imagine myself with someone else. I’ve loved Bobby Rowen since I was seventeen and, up until two years ago, he was also my best friend.
    I refill my wineglass, put away the scrapbook and turn on the TV. I’m restless tonight. I should sleep, but there is something frantic and twitchy running through me. A feeling of lack of completion, of loss, and of need.
    How long does it take to get over a guy? Maybe it would happen faster if I could find someone interesting and occasionally enjoy that sex thing again. How long has it been since I’ve gotten laid? I try to remember. I can’t. That’s how long it’s been.
    God, I always miss Bobby the most on nights like these: alone, blogging, thinking, and drinking.
    Ding. I look at my laptop screen. S hit . I forgot to log off, but then again, I never get any chats or comments on this blog except from my one virtual fan who randomly has been dropping in the last six weeks. A lot of people read it, the traffic numbers are very good,  but no