My Phony Valentine (Holidays with Hart, #1)

by Courtney Walsh

People don’t really speak like this in real life, do they? As if their rear ends were planted squarely at the top of their neck and talking out of the hole that’s there?

I glance at the line. It’s moving as fast as a sloth on Benadryl.

Most people outgrow their bullying once they graduate high school, but it turns out that’s not true for boxed-wine sociopaths like Margot.

Some people are mean no matter how old they are.

I’m a one-trip person. I’ll cut off circulation in my forearms before I make a second trip.

Then, to his grandma, “Are you comfortable? I think you should sit in the living room.” He reaches out to help her and she smacks his hand away. “I think you should go sit in traffic.”

he’d go for that. “It’ll be like Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in that hooker movie,” she says.

“Oh, sure, Richard Gere on the fire escape is a terrible ending,” Gram says with a huff.

It’s not the kind of smile that would alert the paparazzi, but it’s the kind of smile that a person could hold onto. The kind that could make, say, a man in a tough spot hope that things could turn around again. Like an anchor. A safe space to land.

Adulting is hard. Even at twenty-eight, I haven’t mastered it. There are moments when I don't want to be strong, or independent, or responsible. There are moments I want someone else to take the risk, or make the decision, or tell me what to do.

People don’t always let us become who we are. They try to keep us in the box of who we were.

That’s the danger of wanting to be loved—you start to see possibilities everywhere. Even where there are none.

Is it possible to be nostalgic for something you never experienced?

Sometimes there are moments when someone says something to you, and as soon as they say it, you’re awash with a calm you didn’t have before.

school boyfriend right out from under all of our noses. I’ve always learned that villains don’t know they’re villains, but I don’t think that applies to Margot. Some people, it seems, just enjoy being mean.

“Everyone gets hurt,” she says. “Until they heal. And then it’s time to try again.”

“Otherwise, we’d all end up sad and alone.”