Shattered Pearls Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Sidney Parker

  All rights reserved.

  Editor: Lori Sabin

  Cover Design: Hang Le

  Interior Design: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording, photocopying, or by informational storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Names, places, characters, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692076866

  This book is dedicated to Peter.

  Your strength amazes me,

  Your mind inspires me,

  And

  Your love humbles me.

  You are the air that I breathe…

  Love, Sidney

  CONTENTS

  Seven Years Earlier

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Acknowledgments

  About Sidney Parker

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  My whole world exploded in a matter of seconds. Everything I thought true in my life, every dream I cherished, every lie I persuaded myself to believe, it all came to a screeching halt when my heart was ripped from my chest and shredded into little tiny pieces. The world went dark and my lungs quit working, my breath felt trapped inside. Time seemed to stand still while my heart ceased beating. All because of a simple monotone phrase from the man of my dreams. The one I worshiped with every breath of air. My lover and my best friend, his voice gravelly and deep in my ear through the telephone:

  “I’m not in love with you anymore.”

  The world crashed around me. My body gave way as my legs buckled and I slid to the tile floor, my back catching a kitchen drawer pull, scraping my skin open. I could feel the burn, the sting as my fresh wound began to weep, bleeding the pain out of my soul.

  Tears cascaded down my face. An ugly waterfall of hurt drenched the front of my shirt and my chest, scorching my flesh as they dripped over my skin. My fingers worked compulsively over the long strand of pearls I wore around my neck, a gift from my grandmother.

  As a child, whenever I was upset or scared, she would give me her necklace of pop beads. I would spend hours popping them apart and back together again, running my fingers over the beads, feeling the smooth roundness, the continuity of the plastic pearls. It calmed me.

  I kept fingering the pearls, over and over trying to find a tiny piece of that calming effect now, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t want my voice to betray the hysteria that had begun to build inside of me, or the pain. I tried to speak, but for a moment my voice would not comply with my mind. I swallowed silently and cleared my throat.

  “Why do you feel that way?” I asked him.

  I sounded so cold, so matter of fact, barely a quiver could be registered in my tone; even then, it was audible only to me. Isn’t that the way I always tried to come across? As if I didn’t care?

  Life had created such a brittle shell surrounding me over the years, a shell to protect me from pain and loss. How could he possibly know the hurt he was causing me if I never let him see inside? Did I ever really let him know me? The real me? Maybe that was the problem.

  I did care, I cared too much. I wanted to believe the fairy tale he created was real, that what we shared would last, but deep down, I knew.

  Love was a temporary figment of one’s imagination. It didn’t last nor was it real. And it always ended in pain, one way or another.

  “Why?” I asked quietly one more time to the silence in my ear. There was no answer, only the sound of my own pain. He had disappeared, just like everyone else, he was gone.

  I gave the pearls laced through my fingertips one last tug in frustration. The strand broke, sending them scattering in every direction, just like my shattered dream—beautiful, perfect pearls, disappearing into life’s oblivion.

  EMILY

  “Hi, I’m Emily Golden and I’m an addict.”

  My index finger looped through a curl escaping the headband meant to contain my hair. It tickled my cheek. I swirled my finger through it, brushing my thumb over the strands of hair repeatedly, over and over. Old habits died hard and playing with my curls was one of them. So was picking the wrong kind of men.

  “I am an addict,” I repeated, but this time I smiled. “I’m addicted to asshole men.”

  A small throw pillow came sailing across the room, nailing the top of my head. Maggie Stuart has been my best friend since we were five years old and I came to live with my grandmother. She loves to throw things, especially at me.

  I would never forget the day I arrived at Nana’s, a scared and confused child, my rag doll clutched tightly to my chest as if someone might take her away from me, too. Everything I possessed was in a box in the back of Nana’s old Station Wagon with the wood panel sides.

  Maggie sat on the front steps, waiting, her own baby doll placed next to her on the cement, a wilted dandelion in one hand and a baggie of chocolate chip cookies in the other.

  As I stepped out of the car, she skipped toward me, her hands extended with her offerings. Maggie’s smile was bright with anticipation of a new friendship; mine was tentative and fearful. The smile of a five-year-old girl with an old soul, already having lost so much.

  Maggie has been my best friend ever since.

  I am Emily Golden and I am addicted to asshole men. You know the ones, the bad boy, the I-can't-commit ones, the players and the cheats. I have this warped desire to save them, to change them, and to mold them into what I want them to be. If I do succeed in changing one, I throw them away. The problem isn’t the men. The problem is me, and I’m a mess. It's going to destroy me someday.

  I need a new addiction, and I need a new life!

  Maggie threw another pillow to distract my rambling thoughts. I took a sip of my wine and glanced over at her, beckoning her wisdom.

  “First of all, Em, your taste in men has sucked since grade school. The boys you were friends with back then were troublemakers and misfits. As we got older, you had crushes on the absolute worst boys in school. You wanted to save them. You gave your poor grandmother every one of her grey hairs with the stuff you did. It's what you’ve always done. Are you thinking it's time for a change? Do you want to try something new?”

  I knew she was laughing at me, but I also understood she was trying to make a point. This couldn’t go on.

  Memories of my childhood, the terrible teen years, and college came screaming back at me. Sometimes I wondered how I made it to my thirties. So many people came and went from my life; I
didn’t remember half of them.

  “Do you remember the fourth of July party? What were we, sixteen?”

  Maggie started strolling down memory lane.

  “I remember, it was the summer between sophomore and junior year...” I laughed, remembering.

  “I was so mad at you for dragging me to that horrible party. You wanted to go because of some guy you liked so much. I can’t remember his name.”

  Images of that particular party and that boy came to mind. Trying as hard as I could, I couldn’t recall the kid’s name either. I must have been so in love!

  “You had the worst crush on him and he was so bad. If I remember right, he got expelled his junior year, didn’t he?” Maggie was going for the jugular now.

  “Yeah, he was busted for dealing. The only time he ever really talked to me was to invite me to the party. I was so drunk that night that I really don’t remember much,” I admitted.

  “I kind of interrupted when he was leading you into the house. He wasn’t very happy with me, but I didn’t care. I heard the sirens, and I knew the place was about to get raided. There were so many kegs and illegal fireworks blowing up all over the place, not to mention the pot. All I had to do was breathe the damn air and I was getting high from it.”

  “I just remember hiding under a bed during the raid and somehow I fell asleep!”

  I cringed, thinking back to that time of my life. I gave so little thought to the consequences of my actions or to the trouble I could have gotten myself into, or dragged Maggie into with me. I just didn’t care.

  “How did we ever wind up underneath a bed in the first place?” I asked Maggie.

  “A friend of a friend. Her brother was the one throwing the party. I had been talking to her just before all hell broke loose and she told us to come in and hide, thank God. Can you imagine if we had been arrested? I’d have been grounded for life and you would have given your grandmother a heart attack. You put her through so much. She never gave up on you, though, even after all the stupid impulsive things you did.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  Maggie was quiet for a moment, thinking about her answer. I wanted her to be honest. I didn’t like what I remembered very much. I didn’t like myself much, not as a teenager and not even who I was in my recent past.

  “You weren’t bad … we all did crazy stuff back then. You were just a bit wilder than most. There was an underlying anger in you, that ‘I don’t care about anything’ attitude. Most of the time we all understood it. I mean—your parents died when you were little, and it was just you and your grandma.”

  I smiled when I thought of Nana. “She was a saint,” I murmured softly.

  “She had more patience than anyone I have ever known,” Maggie agreed with me.

  I didn’t remember a lot about my parents. Everything we owned was destroyed in the fire. My clothes and all my toys, the dollhouse my father made me, the pictures in the scrapbooks my mother was always busy working on. All the memories my parents carefully collected over those first few years. Everything was gone in an instant.

  The photographs I had now were ones my grandmother saved and most of them were of my mother as a young girl.

  I had been staying overnight with my mom’s best friend so my parents could have a date night. An old house on the east side of St. Paul. A night of wine and romance and a forgotten candle left burning. My young life as I knew it ended in flames.

  As I grew older, my anger amplified, not because my parents died and I didn’t, but because slowly, I was forgetting the few memories I had of them, the movie reels that ran through my mind allowing me to see my family—my parents with me playing, eating dinner, doing things families do. Having those memories helped me feel like I was normal. As the pictures faded, it hurt because it made me different from my friends.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get us arrested that night!” Maggie laughed, her voice pulling me back to the present.

  “I can’t believe you still wanted to be my friend. I dragged you with me so many times. I was awful!” I admitted. “And I still remember the hangover from that party. I think it lasted for a week.”

  “Paybacks.” She laughed.

  “All over a stupid guy I wanted to impress.”

  I thought about my younger years as I went to open another bottle of wine. Why did I make the choices I did? What was it about the men I kept choosing and still do to this day, the type of guys that broke my heart? I needed to make some changes and I needed to make them now.

  Maggie, as if reading my mind, asked, “What made you start thinking about this now, Em? I know you broke things off with Jailbait, but I didn’t think you cared much about getting too involved with any guy.”

  Oh yes, Jailbait, the nickname my friends gave my latest disaster, Steve Nelson. Eight years younger than myself, he was a dead ringer for Johnny Depp with an attitude. He thought the world owed him and he could take brooding to a whole new level. Sexy as all hell, but very hard to be around for long periods of time. Anger seemed to radiate from him. He could fly into a complete rage over something so simple, and I never knew what was going to set him off. Sometimes it scared the daylights out of me.

  Twenty minutes with Steve and I was exhausted. And because he didn’t feel the need to work hard and make a decent living, he cost me a fortune. It took a while, but Jailbait was history. He stormed out a month ago after I cut the money off, telling me I was a waste of time and he didn’t need the hassle.

  “I’m just tired,” I replied. “I don’t want this life I’m leading anymore. I want something different and I want it to mean something. Sometimes I even think I want to have kids, a husband—you know, the whole white picket fence kind of life. Can you imagine me married … and a mom? Maybe I’m just going through a midlife crisis.”

  I knew I wasn’t making sense, but Maggie got me, she always had.

  “So what you’re saying is you finally want to meet a nice guy and settle down, actually grow up?” she teased me.

  “I think I really do,” I answered her honestly. “But first, I think I need to figure out who I am and what makes me happy. Because right now? I don’t have a clue.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?” she asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure yet, other than I’m not going to date at all until I get it figured out.”

  “Seriously?” Maggie was shocked.

  “Seriously. Getting into a relationship while I’m trying to figure out what I want would just complicate things. I need to take care of me first.”

  “Have you ever dated a nice guy?”

  I thought about how I should answer her. I had dated a few really nice guys, one in particular, but it had been a long time.

  Every woman had that one man, the one who came into her heart, made a home in there, and never left. The man who, no matter how hard you tried to forget, was the one you compared every single guy who followed him. The one who made everyone else not quite enough. The one who left and broke your heart.

  “Yes, I have,” I told her. “But not for over seven years.”

  I hadn’t told Maggie about him, the one, because I was still trying to find a way to forget.

  EMILY

  Saturday mornings were evil. Especially after staying up way too late drinking wine and watching sappy movies.

  I groaned as I rolled over to look out the window. The sun was already up high enough to stream light beams through my window. I didn’t hear any noise coming from the living room. That’s where I left Maggie last night after she passed out. Being a good friend, I covered her with a quilt.

  My head felt like it was going to split open at any moment from the little monsters inside beating on their drums. Bastards!

  Slowly, I moved from the bed and to my bathroom. Looking into the mirror, I took inventory. My hair was still dark auburn. There were no nasty little grey hairs sneaking their way in yet. It was long and curly, which made my morning routine easy. Either I braided my hair, twisted it
up on top of my head, or I wore it long and wild. I hated to fuss. I liked to get up and get on with my day, not spend hours in front of a mirror. Turning around, I glanced over my shoulder to check out my back side. My butt still looked like it was in place and not resting on the top of my legs yet. I wasn’t skinny, but I wasn’t chubby either. Since I worked from home in front of a computer all day, I knew I needed to get out and exercise more often. I was a freelance editor. Some days it was too easy to get lost in a great story and spend hours curled up in a chair reading. I needed to make a point of getting up and moving around.

  Turning on a stream of cool water, I splashed my face to wake up. Dressing in a pair of yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt, I headed to the kitchen to find some aspirin. I knew I had a jumbo bottle somewhere just for occasions like this.

  As I passed by Maggie, I momentarily thought I should take a picture of her. It wouldn’t be nice of me and it wasn’t pretty. Her wild mass of hair was hiding part of her face and her mouth was open. A little bit of drool had dried on the corner of her chin, leaving a white crusty blob. One leg was resting against the back of the couch pillows and the other was hanging off with a foot on the floor. The quilt I had covered her with was bunched up over her body in a tangled mess. A soft snore escaped her lips. Hmmm … I couldn’t remember where I put my cell phone. Honestly, I was a lousy friend that way, but then so was Maggie. If we ever hated one another, there would be a photo war on Facebook due to the hundreds of horrid pictures we’d taken of each other. That’s what best friends did. We reminded each other we were human.

  After finding the aspirin and taking three, head still pounding, I started the coffee. Thank God for Keurig coffee machines. They made my morning medicine in less than a minute.

  Filling two mugs, I headed back toward Maggie. She was still sprawled over my couch, but at least her eyes were open, glazed but definitely open. I set her coffee on the table in front of her.

  “I love you more than life, Em,” Maggie proclaimed as she sat up and pushed her dark, wild mane of hair out of her face. Using her fingers and the binder that always seemed to be on her wrist, she pulled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head. Maggie made frumpy look chic. Reaching for her coffee, she took a sip, wincing from the heat.