Writing Mr. Right Read Free Page A

staring at her from her iPad screen, married to a woman exactly like his first wife in every way save for her hair color – the very woman he broke her heart to pursue.
    Georgia’s phone was ringing. She woke in a strange daze of memory. She wasn’t distressed, but her chest was still tight. Then she remembered, and the pain rolled in anew. She rolled onto her side, snatching up the cell – it was Cassie.
    “I’m trying to sleep.”
    “Well, cut it out. They’re going to call around five, your time.”
    “I know. Don’t I have hours?”
    “Um, no. It’s 4:40 PM there, isn’t it?”
    Georgia glanced at the small alarm clock on her nightstand. It was indeed. She’d slept all day. She was still exhausted.
    “God, I don’t want to talk to fucking anyone right now.”
    Cassie gave a sympathetic whine. “I told you not to go on Facebook.”
    Cassie had been Georgia’s assistant for less than a year, but she knew her damn well.
    “God, why did that asshole have to post so many pictures? You were doing so freakin well! How are you holding up?”
    Georgia took a deep breath and sat up. “I’m alright.”
    “You are?”
    “Yeah.”
    Cassie listened a moment as Georgia shuffled into the bathroom and fearlessly peed with Cassie still on the phone.
    “If it makes you feel any better, there was literally only one picture of the bride and groom together,” Cassie said, stumbling for consolation.
    “Nope, can’t say it makes me feel better.”
    “Well, I mean – that means that even on their wedding day, his bride was more interested in being near her bridesmaids than her groom. I mean – exactly what you said, right? Back when? About his choosing women that don’t -”
    “Cassie, can we not talk about it?”
    “Oh god! Of course. Of course! I’m sorry. Just thought you might want to vent, or something. You know? I mean, I’m worried it really upset you.”
    Georgia took a deep breath. “It did.”
    It had. She’d seen the picture of him, and it was the only attractive photograph she’d seen of the man that broke her heart in well over a year. Still, seeing the pictures didn’t break her heart or make her long for the man she’d once thought so well of. It made her angry at the gods.
    The true crime of Walter Timlin wasn’t that he’d broken her heart, or that he’d waited until the day her beloved Grandmother died to break the news that he’d ‘never loved her.’ No, Walter’s greatest crime was something far more sinister.
    He’d taken her faith – in love, in magic, in destiny. He’d taken her belief that there was someone out there for her, waiting to love her with the same unbridled passion she offered in return. Given that Georgia was a romance novelist, that was a pretty awful crime to commit.
    “Well, lay it on me. I’m here for you. I’m happy to remind you of what a shitty human being he is -”
    Georgia chuckled. “Surprisingly, I don’t need a reminder of that, thank you.”
    “Well, I’ll do it nonetheless. He’s a scum bag. He’s a soulless cu -”
    “Honestly, Cass. I don’t need that. I’m not upset he married her. They can have each other, they deserve each other.”
    Cassie paused. “Then what’s wrong?”
    Georgia slumped back down on the edge of the bed, her head down, the phone tucked under her wild tangle of dark red curls. She exhaled. “I’m heartbroken. I’m upset that he’s married.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “That he’s married. That someone who is that soulless and terrible gets to have all the things I want, and I don’t even have the memory of ever really being loved.”
    Georgia’s words broke off as she heard them from her own lips.
    “Oh Gigi -”
    “Why does a man that awful get to have the Happy Ending, and I’m sitting in a hotel room alone, again?”
    Cassie paused as Georgia’s face contorted, twisting in a rampant ache of hopelessness. She knew this feeling well. She felt it more often than she’d ever admit. Georgia