Plastic Confidence (Good Bye Trilogy #1) (23 page)

I
am in passionate love and I believe in me. There is nothing plastic about that.
Rock on.

MUSICAL PLAYLIST

FOR PLASTIC CONFIDENCE

Metallica
–Fade to Black

The Cult
–Sweet Soul Sister

Guns N’ Roses
–November Rain

Dinosaur Jr.
–Out There

Smashing Pumpkins
–Cherub Rock

Coldplay
–Speed of Sound

The Shins
–New Slang

Radical Face
–Welcome Home

Van Morrison
–Into the Mystic

Otis Redding
–I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

P
lastic Confidence is the first book in the Goodbye Series. If you liked this book please read Alisa’s other books and follow Alisa Mullen at the following links.

#1
–Plastic Confidence
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22007695-plastic-confidence

Amazon -
http://bit.ly/plasticconfidence

FB Fan Page
–
http://tinyurl.com/l5jgo2b

Goodreads
Page–
http://tinyurl.com/m69qsof

Amazon BIO Page
–
http://tinyurl.com/l9plrxr

Twitter
–@alimullenbooks

Google Plus
–
https://plus.google.com/+AliMullenbooks/about

Website:
http://alimullenbooks.wix.com/alisamullenbooks

Blog:
http://alimullenbooks.wordpress.com/

Books By Alisa Mullen

The Chosen Series

Unsettled

Unchosen

Unrequited

Unmarked
–Due out Fall 2014

Novellas and Short stories

One Missing Link
–Novella

Act As If
–Sinners Saints Anthology

Please enjoy the first chapter of Book Two, Artificial Love, due to release in the fall of 2014.

ARTIFICIAL LOVE

Book Two
of
The Good Bye Trilogy

By Alisa Mullen

ONE

Johnny Lennox

I heard a whimper from the other side of my bed.
Female. I turned my throbbing head slightly to the left to see a head of long dark brown hair. Jules. I placed my hand on it and started to pet it like she was a fucking kitten. I knew it wasn’t Jules, but in my drunken splendor every night, I made sure I brought home the one that most closely resembled her.

Female turned over and I flinched.
Bad idea. She had piercings in every part of her face. Four in the eyebrows, one septum, and three–I kid you not–in the cheek, and one in the lip. I scrubbed my hands over my eyes and told myself once again that I had to stop fucking Jules by proxy. It wasn’t working. I stretched and looked at the clock.

Damn, I had an appointment with Dr. Snooze in less than twenty minutes. I grabbed a smoke, a new habit I had picked up since Jules left me over two years ago, and threw on whatever to head out.

“Where are you going?” Female looked sad that we weren’t going at it again, I was sure.

“I have an appointment with my shrink,” I answered as I looked at the wall of Jules. I had printed over seven hundred photos at the local Walgreens and plastered them to my wall. Some were from when we were just getting to know one another. Some were of her on stage. Some were of us as we played guitar together on the tour bus and then a lot of them were of the photos Mark, my private investigator, had taken on Martha’s Vineyard where she has been living all this time.

As part of my therapy, I took one photo down. It was a duplicate anyway. There were four more exactly like it still taped to the wall but Dr. Butt-munch didn’t need to know that.

“Why are there so many pictures of Jules Delaney on your wall?” Female asked as she started to pull up her halter dress. Ugh, piercings everywhere.
Everywhere
. I mean, Jules’ piercing were tasteful and stunning. I loved them. She was so beautiful.

“Research,” I answered flatly.

“Wow, she is so beautiful. I didn’t get a chance to her in concert before she left the band. But Ethan is definitely a good fit for Love Sick Ponies now,” she went on.

I was going to lose it on her. Ethan was a terrible replacement for Jules. He couldn’t sing the songs like her. He certainly didn’t wear the low cut, plaid schoolgirl skirt I grew to love.
I.Grew.To.Love.

“Yeah, he is alright. Listen, I got to go. It was nice to um... get to know you?” I asked. Normally, they were gone by morning but I
must have been too fucked up to tell her to get out when I realized she wasn’t Jules.

“Sure.” She looked pissed as she flew by me and opened the door. “My name is Christine by the way. You might want to learn a girl’s name instead of screaming out Jules when you come.”

Hell, I knew I did that. She wasn’t the first to get pissed and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. I called out Jules. That was my form of dealing. Dr. Scratch-a-Dick said we would get to
that
after we tackled the photo wall.

Luckily, I had remembered to charge my phone the night before. I plugged the ear buds in and started my Jules playlist. She sang to me everywhere I walked in downtown Manhattan. It didn’t matter if it was snowing or raining. Her voice got me through each walk. It was a necessity that I had not told Dr. Pickle Cock about yet and I still wasn’t sure if I was going to.

I made my way down Madison Avenue and noticed that a few people pulled out their phones to take pictures of me. I pulled my Red Sox hat down lower and steeled my expression for the public. No, I was not depressed, like the magazines kept writing. No, I was not still in love with Jules Delaney. Lie. No, I was a happy bassist for the popular band, Love Sick Ponies. Yes, I was happy. I made attempts at a grin while I listened to Jules belt out
One Leg Up
and I tried not to show the normal tear that fell down my face when I heard her last beautiful illustrious note. She was an angel. An angel that I had turned into a saint the very night that she left my apartment forever.

Lionel Ritchie played about the sun and the rain as I stepped into the low lit office. I took a seat and grabbed the first magazine I saw. I was five minutes late but sometimes the good doctor had real whack jobs that required a few extra minutes. I could tell the level of crazy when they came out of his office either looking like they had just been probed by aliens or their cat had just died. I never walked out looking like either.

I only had a few months left with this state mandated therapy crack nut until I was done. My mother, the loving therapeutic figure that she is, said that Dr. Goldman was one of the best. Golden she had described him. Then she laughed and I didn’t. He hadn’t done much for golden material since Jules had not come back to me and Jules had not realized that she still belonged to Love Sick Ponies. So, when I ran my car into a ditch after seeing her with Brennan kissing in their elaborate estate in Vineyard Haven, the cops said that my alcohol level was too high to give me just a warning pass. Instead they fucked me. I was tested for drugs weekly. I was not allowed to drive a car for like forever and I had to see Dr. Fucktard every week for almost a year.

I flipped through Fan Date magazine and my heart stopped when I saw her beautiful smile. She was so happy and looking down at her white wedding gown while holding a bunch of wild flowers. I tore the page out but not before I saw her grinning down to her tattooed finger. She never wanted a tattoo. Obviously, Brennan made her get it.
Asshole
. The guy totally manipulated his way into her life. He didn’t deserve her at all. He was a total douche that hurt her way more than I did. Well, at least as much. Okay, maybe cheating on her twice did trump a lot of bad relationship etiquette but fuck it. She was mine.

My heart warmth dropped at least twenty degrees as I read “Mrs. Jules Curtis” as the headline. Was that supposed to be funny? That was nowhere near a fucking joke. She wasn’t a Curtis. She was a Lennox.
My Lennox.
My name.
My leg started the nerve shake when Doc came out to see me with ripped up pieces of the magazine and a scowl on my face.

“Good Morning, Johnny,” he said as he took in my disheveled look.

“Morning, Doc,” I answered numbly as I pulled myself up from the chair and threw the magazine down on the table. I put the ripped photo of Jules in her wedding dress in my pocket and breezed past him to go find the chaise lounge that I had fallen asleep on countless times. Today, I was too fucking pissed to even imagine sleeping. I probably wouldn’t sleep for days after knowing that my girl was officially married.
Happily married.
I was so fucked.

To be continued…