Red Strings Attached

By Lainey Schmidt

Red Strings Attached is a fictional story inspired by real relationships.

When fact meets fiction, it makes for an epic love story you can’t put down.

Nellie is 24 years old and sets out to create a fresh start for herself by returning to college to make a career change and start a more professional path. Her expectations of this new stage in life takes a sharp turn in a different direction when she meets both of her Red String loves in a span of two years- Just in time to fall deeply in love with the man her heart and body are drawn to before she meets the one that is best for her mind and soul. Love is blind, love is blissful and love is brutal. The task of juggling her new career and greatest loves pushes her to choose fight or flight while trying to make life changing decisions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532096761

Lainey Schmidt

If you’ve ever been driven crazy by a former relationship, this book is for you. It’s a story that you can relate to even though parts of you may wish you were foreign to this chaos. Grab your ice cream, grab your wine and open this book. You won’t be disappointed.

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Copyright © 2020 Lainey Schmidt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9675-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9676-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020904201

iUniverse rev. date: 03/10/2020

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 Take Two

Chapter 2 One Please

Chapter 3 Noted

Chapter 4 Above Average

Chapter 5 High Hopes

Chapter 6 Just A Game

Chapter 7 The Way We Do

Chapter 8 S.O.S.

Chapter 9 Your Loss

Chapter 10 No Place Like Home

Chapter 11 Short Lived

Chapter 12 Blurred Lines

Chapter 13 Broken

Chapter 14 My Cup of Sugar

Chapter 15 Us And The Sun

Chapter 16 Rise Up

Chapter 17 Don’t Say Girlfriend

Chapter 18 Say Something

Chapter 19 Old News

Chapter 20 Mr. Money

Chapter 21 I’d Rather Be Poor

Chapter 22 Spades

Chapter 23 Go For It

Chapter 24 Moving On

Chapter 25 Taylor, Go To Bed

Chapter 26 The Mind Has A Heart of Its Own

Chapter 27 Good Bones

Chapter 28 What I Need

Chapter 29 My Turn

Chapter 30 Can I?

Chapter 31 Wave Break

About the Author

Prologue

I’ve never liked the color red. I despise it really. I avoid it at every opportunity unless it’s perfectly polished nails or a matte lipstick. When I caught an article online about love that followed suit to the cliché, big-red-heart, mushy love jargon, I almost lost interest. I wish it were called the blue, orange, or even green string theory. The red string theory has consumed my view on love. After my interest was piqued, I turned to multiple sites for additional information. It was rare for me to want to dive in deeper on a mini article intended for likes and shares, but I related to it and knew it would add clarity to where I was with past and current relationships. I should have been preparing for the long day of work ahead of me the following day, but with wine in one hand and my dog flopped over one of my legs as my husband read a book beside me under lamplight, I knew I wasn’t getting up anytime soon, so I thought, What the heck? and dove in.

It is said that we are all born with a red string attached to our pinky finger on one end and to our soulmate’s thumb at the other end. No matter how life twists and tangles the thread, it will never break. The theory has been passed down through generations and cultures and has been reworded in many ways to fit its relative niche. My favorite version is that we all have two red strings, one attached at each pinky. Just as we have a devil over one shoulder and an angel over the other, we have equally contradicting loves on either finger. We may fall in love many times in a lifetime, but only twice will we experience genuine love—our most true-to-the-core loves. It doesn’t matter what decisions you make in your life or the paths you choose, how you meet someone, or if that person seems like the one in the moment. You’ll meet the when-you-know-you-know kind of love, and if you’re really lucky, you’ll meet your two red strings. I met both within two years—the most insane, unbelievable two years I’ve lived yet. I learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of during this time. This rare, invaluable lesson included heart strain, ache, and break, but most importantly, great life changes that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

One string connects you to your passionate love. This love is the gasoline to your fire—hot, intense, and chaotic. You drive each other crazy, to the point where you feel you’re at the cusp of insanity, but you can’t get enough of it. You’re happy in your craziness. You can’t be without each other. When you are, you itch to reconnect. You raise each other’s blood pressure. You’ll argue and fight, but you’ll never leave. If you ever consider breaking up, you’re pulled back together like magnets. It’s the love that Frida Kahlo and Diego are said to have had together. It’s love, it’s hate, it’s passion, it’s even romantic, and there’s enough fuel in your tank to keep this beautiful fire burning for a lifetime.

Then you have your peaceful red string. This string is connected to a love that is calm, effortless and just feels natural, like your body and mind could do it on autopilot. In this love, you are each other’s motivator, you bring out the best in each other, the love is pure and true. It’s full of trust and care and the kind of passion that makes you love every second of just being in each other’s presence. You could live without each other, but you’d never want to.

These two are your people, the ones on this planet for you. Even when you think you’ve burned bridges or disconnected yourself; this person is always there. The strings cannot be separated, and your bonds cannot be broken. There are many people in the world who will never meet their red-string loves and some who won’t act on the feelings they get when they do meet their people. The guarantee in the theory is that your decisions in life won’t dissolve your threads. It doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be too shy, stubborn, or scared to act on it. Did you feel your chest vibrate when the barista touched your hand by accident? Do you go into the same spot in the library to study because you know the guy with the glasses will be at his usual spot as well? It might just be lust, or it might just be one of the greatest loves of your life.

Another theory that I cannot get behind is when they say that time heals all wounds. I call BS on that one. Physically, yes, science has proven the body will regenerate itself every seven years. Bruises will heal, scars will fade, and bones will mend. However, the mind is an exception to this rule. Our bodies can forget about it during this so called regeneration period. Its well-being is irrelevant to time. For the mind’s heart—the one that aches at the sound of someone’s name, a memory, or the realization of their absence, that one is unrepairable—time doesn’t stand a chance. The mind’s heart makes decision making in relationships almost impossible, it’s what blinds us to who we’ve become when we give someone all of us without looking back to see how we’ve changed. It will wreck us and never skip a beat—especially those of us who are suckers for love, the ones who think life might just turn out like a movie or a good country love song if we hope for it hard enough. That’s me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s gotten the best of me in the past and will continue to in the future. I melt at the end of every romance film or at the climax of a good book, and don’t even get me started on weddings. Tissues please! When the bride and groom exchange vows and promise to be there for each other through the thick and the thin, the good and the bad, you would think my dog died in that very moment because of my incoherent sobbing. Even as a plus-one to a wedding of a friend’s friend, the wedding of a couple I don’t personally know, I’m crying through most of the ceremony. At the age of five, when everyone’s favorite mermaid sailed off on her ship happily married to her earthbound prince, I sobbed. My parents couldn’t figure out why I would cry at the end of this movie every time I watched it until the reason behind the repetition shined through. They should have shipped me off to boarding school then. When it became my turn to try out love, I walked up eager and doomed with my heart in hand.

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Take Two

I decided to go back to school after a few failed attempts at getting life right. I felt like I didn’t belong in the small town I lived in and knew there was more out in the world, more opportunities and achievements I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. I needed a reset. I enrolled in an expedited graduate program to begin this new journey. Because I already had my Associate of Applied Science, I would earn my Bachelor of Applied Science in just one year—one academically intense year. Earning another degree in only a year sounded like the perfect fit because I had already lived my college years in small apartments with roommates and more late nights than I would have liked. I was over the idea of college as a whole, but my current degree wasn’t going to get me the life I wanted. If I was going to go back, gain more student debt, and delay a full-time job again, it was going to be for only one year. I pride myself on my willingness to work hard and take anything on with a positive attitude, and I walked into this experience with that exact mentality. I toured the school and was very impressed by the staff members I met. They were poised, older ladies perfectly dressed in their tailored suits with freshly painted nails. They looked a little tired, which I should have taken as a subtle nod to my upcoming twelve months. They lectured me on the college’s image and expectations for their students in regard to how they would dress, behave, and carry on the prestigious title after graduation. I fit their standards and agreed with them. It was a breath of fresh air hearing that I would be in an adult setting with professionals working toward a common goal.

I decided to participate in the live-in student program. In this program, local funeral homes agreed to hire students to work as minimally paid interns while living on the premises rent-free. Most funeral homes had housing connected to them because of the high demand and late nights the funeral directors endured. This program would allow me to apply what I learned each day in a hands-on setting. Not to mention I would be paid a small amount for my internship and receive free housing. In Chicago, rent was insanely high, so for me, it was an easy decision.

The kind ladies summed me up pretty quickly and, because of their first impression of me, offered me an opportunity to be their pioneer in this program. You’re so personable, Penelope. That’s very important in this field. I was used to getting comments about being pretty or having good hair. While those comments were nice, it meant so much more to have a compliment from a stranger on anything other than my appearance. I’m certainly not one to hide from flattery, so when they informed me that it was a new contract with a funeral home that hadn’t yet enrolled in the internship program and they felt I would make a great first impression for the college and open the door to a long relationship between the two. I nodded excitedly at the opportunity for an interview. It was a long drive to the funeral home, which was a red flag, but I chalked it up to city living and kept driving. Also, it was the only option left for internship housing, so the cons of a far drive versus high rent buffered the mileage. As I pulled into the parking lot and saw the sparkling water rippling onto shore, a shore only a foot below the edge of the parking lot, and an in-ground pool that overlooked the gleaming lake, my jaw dropped. I took a second after putting my car in park to inhale, exhale, and subtly put my fists on my hips in the effort to do a nonchalant power pose in my driver seat. I can do this. It’s going to be great, I whispered to myself before I unbuckled my seat belt and opened my car door. This location was beautiful, as was the funeral home. Freshly renovated and well kept, the building had older bones, I could tell from the outside, and it was located on a street surrounded by older homes, but I’ve always been a water baby, so the sparkling ripples called to me. I knew this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The interview went very well, and the suite I would be living in was just that, sweet. It had floor-to-ceiling windows lining the west side of the wall, allowing for a huge, perfect view of every day’s sunset. This was my new home, my new life, an accomplishment I was incredibly proud of. I had moved away from the home I had known up until this point and into foreign territory—territory with a brand-new Jacuzzi tub.

I was sitting in a chair at a table in the café of the college that would host the best year of my life. But right then, it felt very unknown, as did the strangers around me. We were all waiting to be called into our classroom to begin orientation and find out what exactly we had just signed up for. We strangers did what polite strangers do best, made small talk. I genuinely wanted to get to know the people around this table. We all appeared so different, yet all had the same career drive. I knew we had a lot in common. We were a wide range of ages, ethnicities, experiences, and stories, all trying to start a new