The Hopeless Romantic's Guide to Avoiding Love: A Novel

The Hopeless Romantic's Guide to Avoiding Love A Novel Jolie Harris Copyright Copyright © 2023 by Jolie Harris All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. LCCN 2022921789 ISBN 979-8-9872877-1-2 (paperback) | ISBN 979-8-9872877-0-5 (ebook) https://www.jolie-harris.com Cover art by Nicole Hower Edited by Laura Cifelli & Jennifer Bernard This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. To my husband and my kids, for giving me the confidence to follow my dreams Step 1: Admit the problem. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away… I, Sylvie Hanson, awake to find myself in a grand canopy bed in the midst of a pop star music video. The room is ignited by sunshine, as are the roses and glitter that shower down around me, and exotic birds sing from the great oak tree just outside the bay window. The reason for this lavish celebration? My birthday. The birthday that I have deemed the most momentous of all the ones that have come before… because I am thirty. In the thick of the sparkles and rainbows, my super sexy, devoted boyfriend presents to me a warm platter of cinnamon rolls, a giant heirloom diamond ring and the promise of forever. He tells me I’m gorgeous and smart and that the only thing he’ll ever need to make him happy is for me to say yes. Obviously, I say, “Hell, yes!” With that, he informs me that he has transferred money from his trust fund so as to whisk me off to an island where we will consume tropical drinks, swim in the ocean, and have lots and lots of unprotected sex, which will ideally lead to pregnancy. With a sigh of complete and utter content, I stretch my arms and roll over in bed. “Wanna go again?” the deep voice of a man asks groggily as his hand clumsily feels around for my breasts. I open my eyes one at a time. No, no, no, no, I think to myself, because rather than a rich, sexy boyfriend, beside me lies Bert—my large, dumb, albeit very hot booty call. I slap my hand over the nightstand until I feel the smooth, flat rectangle of reverence—my phone. A Happy Birthday text message from my mom confirms it, my dreamy thirtieth birthday is just that: a goddamn dream. I remember now that, thanks to his two premature ejaculations, Bert gave me the most mediocre birthday sex of my life, which means I have relapsed. Bert is beautiful, strong, and, since college, has been bringing me sexual solace in times of desperation. He even obliges when I fantasize he’s a lumberjack and make him lick maple syrup off the most tantalizing parts of my body. So, one may wonder, why are you so disappointed to see Bert lying next to you? He’s handsome, he’s reliable, and he licks syrup off your nipples. What’s the problem? The thing is, I’m breaking my recently instated rules by being here in his bed. Which, if one is as nosy as I am, leads to the next question: What rules? Let’s start with the fact that I love Love. Capital L, Love. I am here for it. I’m here for all of it—romantic comedies, star-crossed lovers, the Twilight saga, and on, and on… That all-encompassing magic of storybook love is a fixation I have held for the better part of my life. It first manifested in the form of acting out love triangles and sex scenes with my Barbies and drawing indecent pictures in my diary. Later, novels and nearly anything on early 2000’s The Learning Channel (more commonly known as TLC)—basic cable channel 22 where I grew up —appeased me. I spent many nights up late reading books like The Time Traveler’s Wife and listening to the dialogue of My Best Friend’s Wedding and TLC’s series, A Wedding Story, as I slipped into sleep. Frankly, I’ve never been head-over-heels for the classics, as I’m partial to neo-coming-of-age and contemporary romance, but I’m not so obtuse as to lack appreciation for how much the classics have revolutionized romance and feminism. It was during my first year of college, however, that I simultaneously discovered erotic chick lit and masturbating, making for — how should I put it? — a formative time. Like all my favorite fictional love stories, I wanted a grand, beautiful, perfect (maybe even sort of demented) love! I wanted a Big. Epic. Love. I needed it. As with any good love story, there would be minor complications, of course, but they would never amount to anything more than what my soulmate and I could handle because we would be armored by our love. The full reality of how unrealistic and platitudinous this wee dream of mine is, as well as the fact that feminist icon Gloria Steinem would gag at such a notion, hit me full force as I approached this momentous thirtieth birthday. I began to realize that my vivid imagination and appetite for romance have been lying to me. Indeed, my great aspirations of living out a fairytale love story have left me seeking perfection, and caused a series of relational misfortunes. The great epiphany of turning thirty (at least I’d hoped) is that life is full of ambiguity, and that love in its truest form doesn’t always resemble the stories that inhabit my bookshelf. As it is, I’m tired of ending up broken-hearted. Thus, I’m currently “in recovery” from years spent as a hopeless romantic, and I’m trying to do things differently these days. So it’s not that I have anything against Bert. I could even appreciate premature ejaculations (the enthusiasm) and mediocre sex (it’s still sex). It’s simply that, as much